Useful Sites and Articles

 

Inquiry-based Learning

• Galileo Foundation - Sharon Friesen and Pat Clifford. Choose the ‘ICT & Inquiry’ or ‘Integrating Technology’ Links from the top menu bar.

• Thoughts, ideas and examples of inquiry from Yoram Harpaz - especially the “Communities of Thinking” article.

• Mark Treadwell’s Teachers at Work site newsletters, especially the October 2004 article on ‘e-portfolios and the Inquiry Learning Process’ and the three ‘Education in the 21^st Century  - The Dinner Party’ articles.

• ‘Using the Internet to Promote Inquiry’ is an excellent article on the Biopoint site which outlines ways to support students in the inquiry process.

• The Concept to Classroom site has definitions and thoughts on inquiry and an interview with Art Costa on inquiry.

• The Inquiry Page for info and examples of inquiry.

• Trevor Bond's Site - explains his SAUCE model and has links to other inquiry-based models.

• Herron's Four Levels of Guided Inquiry See also my modified version of Herron's model.

•  ICT-Infused Inquiry wiki - Developed from the Wintec  GDITE course ICT-Infused Inquiry.

• Guided Inquiry: Carol Kuhlthau and Ross Todd outline their framework for guided inquiry.

• Edutopia - the ‘Project based learning’ and ‘Technology Integration’ pages.

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Resources for Inquiry

• Top 100 Tools for educators - Ranks 100 ICT tools many of which are free. Well worth a look. Can also be downloaded as a pdf.

• Wikispaces - Join wikispaces first then create your own class wiki free of charge. Make sure you choose the k-12 educators option so there will be no ads on your wiki. For more ideas on wikis and some examples see the Wired Waihi Wiki.

• Rubistar is an excellent tool for creating assessment rubrics. The completed rubric can be downloaded to Excel and then tailored to suit your students.

• Voicethread - This is an online tool for having conversations around media. It is worth checking out, This tutorial explains what a voicethread is as well as giving instructions on its use.

• Netvibes - Create your own webpage where it is easy to add links to sites, feeds to blogs and numerous widgets.

• The LEA site is worth a visit. It has a collection of learning objects and also a Think Bag of inquiry-related resources.

• Questioning - Jamie McKenzie's questioning site.

• New South Wales Country Areas Programme - some useful resources.

• ‘Infusing the teaching of Critical and Creative Thinking into Content Instruction” by Robert Swartz & Sandra Parks (The Critical Thinking Co.) This book can be purchased online from The Learning Network NZ.

• Wordle - Create word clouds about information. Also shows word frequency - the more frequent the word, the larger it appears.

• Focus on Inquiry by Jeni Wilson & Lesley Wing Jan (Curriculum Corporation) ISBN 1 86366 721 0 This is a very readable book on inquiry. The first three chapters have an explanation of inquiry that is easy to understand.

• Birkdale Intermediate - They have several Problem-based Learning units available on CDs. These are excellent resources for inquiry and very reasonably priced.

• Google 101 Tips & Tricks -  some useful tips to help make Google searches more efficient

• New South Wales Country Areas Programme  - click on the Stage links to find lesson plans.

• TKI - Search for the topic that interests.

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Graphic Organisers

• Graphic Organisers

• More Graphic Organisers

• Yet More Graphic Organisers - literacy based, but still useful

• Enchanted Learning Graphic Organisers

• Education Place graphic organisers

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Child-friendly Search Engines

These sites may be more useful than Google for students who are new to searching.

• Yahoo Kids - This is the remake of the ‘Yahooligans’ site. Search results are kid safe.

• Kids Click! - Searches about 5,000 kid-friendly websites selected by librarians

• Ask for Kids - This replaces ‘Ask Jeeves for Kids’. Searches result in a list of keywords. Choose the keyword that best matches the information needed

• Cybersleuth - Works in a similar way to Kids Click

• Ithaki for Kids - This is a meta search engine which searches several kid-friendly search engines at once

• Quintura Kids - This kid-friendly search engine works through Yahoo Kids but includes a 'cloud' of related search terms as well as a list of results

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Useful Sites

• Inquiry with Technology - My paper on the Opoutere School Digiops project.

• My e-fellows blog

• My Inquiring Mind blog

• From Now On - Jamie McKenzie's site.

• Interactive Whiteboard resources can be found at the IWB site (this one has lots of learning objects some of which work fine without an IWB), Schoolzone IWB site and Promethean Lighthouse site.

• Software for Learning - the tki site with links and information related to  software for classroom use.

• Interactive Websites - links to many interactive websites on a variety of subjects.

• Penspace Wiki - the wiki for the Peninsula Rural ICTPD cluster I facilitate.

• Wired Waihi - the wiki for the Waihi ICTPD cluster I facilitate.

• Podcasts - your students can make podcasts using Audacity or Garageband then upload them to the Podomatic site

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Student Sites

There are large numbers of child-friendly sites on the web, these are a few of my favourites. Try adding k12 or k-12 to your search to get child-friendly sites.

• Iknowthat.com  - My all-time favourite site for all topics, not just inquiry. The science section has some great simulations and demonstrations.

• How Stuff Works - Everything you wanted to know about how things work, written for children.

• Enchanted Learning - information on a large number of topics in child-friendly language.

• Wikipedia - Great source of information if you make sure you check the info against other sources. If you can't find what you are looking for get your students to create an entry.

• Wikipedia for Schools – articles from Wikipedia have been checked for accuracy and suitability for students

• Wicked - the TKI student site

• Fact Monster - An online collection of reference works written for children

• Ask Any Questions - Ask an online librarian your question. Best used by students at home rather than during school time

• National Library - access to a large number of online resources, especially valuable for New Zealand information

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Webquests

• Dinosaur for a Pet webquest - My dinosaur webquest - I used this with a year 2 - 5 class.

• Webquests - these have been developed and used by me in my year 3 -5 class. They are in the Public pages section of the Opoutere School KnowledgeNet

• Webquest Taskonomy - Lots of ideas for webquests, can also be a source of ideas for ordinary inquiry units

• Tom March's Site

• Bernie Dodge's Site

• Mark Treadwell's Site - reviewed webquests

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Jan-Marie Kellow 2009
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Photos must only be used for educational purposes and must be attributed. Photos of children may only be used with my permission.