Reflective Blog Assignment #2

1. How can a teacher find balance during this transition from more traditional knowledge-based content standards and more process-oriented skills?
2. What are key factors that help improve the success of inquiry-based lessons?
3. What role can technology play in assisting those factors?  Give specific examples

I believe it's a sticky situation to balance knowledge-based content standards and process-oriented skills.  I feel as if we want to lean more towards other strategies, such as inquiry-based learning, but our districts tell us to stick to routine and do it the old-fashioned way.  As teachers, our motto is "Adapt and Overcome".  We are trained to be flexible.  However, we are able to use our creativity to meet both our district's needs as well as the needs of our students.  Project-based learning is a method I would like to incorporate more in the near future.  I feel it satisfies both knowledge-based and process-oriented skills by giving students a framework and purpose for their projects, but giving them the freedom and opportunity to research and create them.  According to Wikipedia, inquiry based learning is best when there are several opportunities and ways to research and collect their information.  Additionally, it is something that needs to be carefully planned out and will require a lot of time invested in doing so.  Another way to improve the success of inquiry-based learning is to remember that is a student-centered method.  The teacher is there to be a facilitator and we have to tame the urge to take charge.  Technology can help in a number of ways.  First, by giving students the opportunity to use technology often will help build skills to use this technology effectively in their studies.  For example, if I wanted to have my students create a project to show their comprehension of a novel, a suggestion may be to create a movie trailer for their book.  By exposing them to programs, apps (such as iMovie), and other tools earlier, they will have a stable foundation of knowledge on using them to create their projects.  Technology is so versatile, it can be used with traditional, direct instruction or inquiry-based learning.