I loved listening to Jeff talk about his inquiry school. One of the things that stuck with me the most was his emphasis on the difference it makes when students are motivated by their own driving questions for inquiry. Jeff said that in their school, students get down to task and stay on task practically on their own. He said this is possible because they create their own projects and they are studying things that interest them, and that they want to study. In my mind, this represents an all-around win that educators could consider more when designing lessons and units. Forcing students to study content that doesn’t interest them and that they don’t see the point in learning can be a painful process for everyone involved. I think that options exist for allowing autonomy in the direction that students take their learning, even in small applications. Where the opportunity for a completely inquiry-based approach doesn’t feel accessible for an educator, little alterations can be made to give students more say. Maybe instead of creating an assignment from one question, students can choose from three, with an added option to create their own question. Maybe medium is open-ended. Maybe work can be individual or group. Maybe students can choose whether they work in the classroom or the library during workblocks. These are things to think about when integrating inquiry into a teaching practice by steps.
On a note of practical tools, I checked out the “Trello” tool that Jeff mentioned they use at PSII. It seems like a great tool for helping students organize an inquiry load. It allows for the organization of different project elements like to-do lists and outlines. It’s a useful organization tool that allows you to lay out several projects in one screen. It also has a chat feature, so students could communicate with peers or teachers through it. They could ask questions about a specific aspect of a project using this feature. Here is a link for a short tutorial on it: