Inquiry-Based Learning

Last Thursday, I learned about inquiry-based learning through an activity that served as an example of how this type of learning could be integrated into my teaching practices.  I ended up loving it.  Frankly, I enjoy having exact directions on how to complete a specific assignment.  I don't feel that it traps me in a box... In my opinion, I was not only able to learn about the topic (rocks/minerals) which is one of our main goals as students, I was able to discover that I absolutely loved looking at the different rocks and minerals that nature presents to us.  Therefore, inquiry-based lesson plans give great step-by-step instructions, and although it asks us certain questions to answer, it still left room for creativity because that's what the internet allows us to have - CREATIVITY.  I actually ended up googling "the top 10 most beautiful rocks or minerals," and that's how I came about choosing my mineral, rhodochrosite -- because the internet allowed me to have the freedom to perform more tasks than what my assignment asked for, while keeping me on track with the topic and questions that I needed to answer.  Using the internet also allowed me to discover more pictures of my mineral than what the suggested webpage had already posted... So in the end, I was able to do more research on rocks/minerals using the internet than what a book could ever offer.  The funny thing is that I spent two hours looking at other websites that had rocks/minerals for sale, because I became so fascinated by its beauty... and I want to warn everyone that the prices for nature's beautiful accidents do not fit into our recession-budget, so go out there, dig, and dicover these treasures yourself:)

On another note, I feel that inquiry-based lesson plans are very similar to WebQuests... they both serve as a platform for teachers to create engaging activities that include very descriptive directions in order to achieve the ultimate goal: to facilitate the learning process through technological means.  If I were to have to state a difference, the only thing I can truly come up with is that WebQuests have more of a similar structure with one another when it comes to the makeup of the webpages than 'facilitation plans' do... but then again, many WebQuests are based off of  a "pre-set" webpage from a few websites like questgarden.com