Sunday, February 24, 2013

Lifelong Learners

Technology is being used more and more in the classroom. At early ages people begin using and learning on different types of technology. All students at the preschool I used to work at had scheduled computer time, even at the early ages of 18 months.

I have never used blogs in school. When I was in school we weren't exposed to blogs and on the opposite side of things, as a teacher I have never used blogs in the classroom. I have used blogs to find ideas to use in the classroom, though, and those have proven to be very resourceful.

As a special education teacher, I am not sure how well I can incorporate the use of student blogs. It might work best if maybe I had a blog for the classroom and students helped contribute to it by adding pictures and captions of their work and the things we're working on. They could talk about the things they're learning in the classroom as we go through the year.

Contributing to the classroom in this way moves the participants in this class from students to learners. David Warlick noted the differences between the two in a post on his blog. This will change the way my students participate in the classroom and increase their motivation.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Inquiry and Project Based Learning

Welcome to Ms. Lopez's blog! This blog will be an aid to me and others who are learning about incorporating technology in the classrooom.


As a special education teacher, inquiry and project- based learning may help my students gain a better grasp of subjects and topics. Making connections is important and is a good skill to learn. To understand how these are important to the classroom, we must first know what they are:

  • Inquiry-based learning is seeking information by asking questions. It is aninvolveent of the students in their own learning. It is also the movement away from listening to and memorizing facts that can be regurgitated. With inquiry-based learning, students must create a question related to the topic inquiry to be explored, conduct an investigation, gather information, discuss the findings, and reflect on what was learned.

  • Project-based learning is a system of learning that promotes the exploration of individual interests through research. It allows students to investigate real world problems and create solutions and ideas based on research and data. This is used in the classroom as a tool to facilitate inquiry skills and helps students become self-sufficient in the quest to answer questions. It builds intrapersonal skills, collaborative efforts, and meets the end goal of learning about topics through real world situations.

Inquiry and project based learning is important to my class and unit plan because they both call for students asking questions and students finding answers. Looking at the essential question "How do disasters impact communities?" there are many ways one can think of to implement inquiry and project based learning. Looking deeper at unit questions, inquiry and project based learning can be used to discover how disasters cause change, how natural disasters affect the world, and how disasters have changed history.