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When we are young, we are naturally curious. We ask many, many questions. As we encounter the world, our consciousness is bombarded by a plethora of opportunities for curiosity. And at this early stage of exploring and discovering the world we inhabit, there is no filter between our sense of curiosity and our expression of our it. If we are curious, we will be asking questions and heaven help anyone close enough to be a potential source of answers. - At school, our relationship to both curiosity and inquiry changes.

"The NMC is pleased to announce the interim results of the 2013 Horizon.K12 Project, as presented at the 2013 CoSN Conference in San Diego. The Horizon Project Advisory Board voted for the top 12 emerging technologies as well as the top ten trends and challenges that they believe will have a significant impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in global K-12 education over the next five years. These initial results will be compiled into an interim report, known as the "Short List," and described in further detail. The "Time-to-Adoption Horizon" indicates how long the Advisory Board feels it will be until a significant number of schools are providing or using each of these technologies or approaches broadly."

Check out the three PDFs included in the article: Core Teacher Apps, Core Student Apps and Inquiry Learning with iPads!

"Cultivating an innovative culture inside your classroom and enhancing your students inquiry-based approaches to learning is not an easy task particularly in the light of all the surrounding distraction coming from digital media. It is probably one of the major challenges facing educators and teachers in the 21st century classroom. However, no matter how big the challenge is there are always ways to come to grips with it. Our colleague Mia MacMeekin from anethicalisland has designed this beautiful graphic where she featured 27 ways teachers can help their students be innovative."

"The apps recognized as Best Apps for Teaching & Learning are of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. The apps foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover." American Library Association

Making, Maker Centred Learning and STEAM fit neatly alongside Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) for many schools. Commonly this approach includes a constructivist view of knowledge and teachers seek to establish conditions which allow students to explore questions and ideas with greater independence than may occur in the traditional classroom.  Learning becomes a collaborative partnership between teachers and students with a clear focus on a learner centric approach.

"Think your library needs a renovation? You might be right, but before spending unnecessary money on a major overhaul, you might want to think again. I receive inquiries all of the time from schools whose library's are not used, and thought that renovating their space was going to do the trick. Oftentimes, even with a big referendum that allows for a state-of-the-art renovation, those spaces continue to be unused. The solution to turning a library around is NOT a renovation, it is the culture. Upon my arrival at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was unused and that was referred to by my principal at the time, Eric Sheninger, as a barren wasteland.  We didn't have the luxury of a big sum of money to renovate our space, so we were forced to think of other ways to make changes in our space.  Those changes focused not on how the space looked, but on transforming the culture of the space. "

" In addition, it was my students who shared how much they loved how fast they were able to acquire the information and how they could easily put it into their project work. During inquiry learning , the iPads are so intuitive and as a result enable the learning to be so seamless."

"Our initial reaction when seeing the following infographic from Mia MacMeekin was to think about instructional design rather than classroom management. That is, work backwards from a student-centered, inquiry-based, self-directed, and inherently personalized learning model where students, while plugged in to relevant digital and physical communities and working closely with mentors and peers, solved important and authentic problems through a mix of design, creativity, and macro critical thinking. Then we awoke from our naps, wiped the drool from our lips, and realized that for many teachers, the reality they face each day is very traditional:"

" shift from a culture of compliance, to a culture of questioning in your classroom"

"Since experimenting with "20% Time" in my class a few years ago, I've been fascinated by the research and history of this practice in education and the business world. This has led me down a long road to finally writing a book (to be published by Routledge) on inquiry-driven education and 20% time."

"Teaching with video games is not what you think. Unless you recognize video games as an increasingly engaging, compelling, and interactive narrative form that is seeking to leapfrog film as the medium of choice not just for teenage boys who like Call of Duty, but, well, you too. And that teaching with them means taking as close a look at the creation and design of the stories and play mechanics and the interaction between story and player as you do the narrative itself. Which can act as a kind of schema to inform how you teach novels, poetry, government or science-as-inquiry."

"The following blog post is an excerpt from the book, "iPad in Education for Dummies" by Sam Gliksman."

"Project-based learning is not 'doing projects'. PBL is student-driven and specifically open to interpretation to ensure students learn through carrying out a project and not doing a project pre-designed by the teacher. They are driven to answer a 'big' question and carry out their inquiry and design in teams. They are also under pressure to present their results to a third party of some kind. The students decide on how to achieve the goals and are not carrying out teacher-designed tasks."

In response to growing interest and inquiries regarding flipping the iPad equipped classroom, I have begun considering the many ways in which the popular tablet's unique capabilities and myriad applications can play a role in flipped teaching and learning. Last week, in Part 1 of this two part post, we considered the topics of Finding and Creating Digital Learning Content, Delivering & Consuming Learning Content, and Ensuring Content Consumption. This week we continue our exploration by delving into how to use class time, reinforcing learning, assessment, and lastly - tools for organization and productivity (an important consideration in all types of classrooms, not just the 'flipped' ones!).