Module 5 - Connect with a Professional Community
This was an really interesting activity. I saw it as an extension of our earlier communications with professional communities from module 2, as well. I connected with the teacher forums at TeachersPayTeachers and had a great experience chatting with teachers from all over the world about what collaboration (and specifically, the principles of collaborative inquiry) means to each of us. My plan was to engage the community by posting leading questions and requests for opinions on statements taken from our class readings. It worked really well and I was thrilled with the level of participation! (*Note: this forum is behind a log in and account wall so I'll post some screenshots below.)
For the segment of the activity that asked us to identify "a set of core ideas related to Collaborative Inquiry based on course content," I came up with the following from my notes on the readings and discussions held in our course modules:
→ there are well-structured domains (like math and physics) and ill-structured domains (like music and social studies) that have different needs for instruction
→ you cannot use only direct instruction (like a lecture) to adequately teach ill-structured domains (imagine trying to teach someone to play a violin more expressively by telling them how but not letting them try)
→ collaborative learning is not just about group work; it is also about creating the circumstances in which students can build their own knowledge structures rather than relying solely on connecting new information to existing memorized facts
→ complex problem-solving is a unique type of learning and is underrepresented in traditional teaching... we teach kids how to solve a word problem by pulling out the type of equation to use and what numbers to plug in. We aren't teaching kids how to solve realistic and vastly more complex problems (like 'how do you survive for 6 months on a small income' - that's a HUGE and multifaceted problem to solve!)
→ technology is a power tool to enable collaborative learning, both in terms of connecting individuals and, perhaps more importantly, in terms of providing new models for communication (such as digital mind mapping software like Mindomo)
→ there exist concrete protocols and frameworks for enabling meaningful collaborative inquiry and design in the teaching workplace. These frameworks are useful facilitators (who lead these collaborative groups) and for anyone interested in learning the skills and sequence of collaborative inquiry among colleagues
