Trevor MacKenzie Presentation
If I’m being completely honest, before Trevor MacKenzie’s presentation I really don’t think I understood the concept of “inquiry”. Despite the fact that we had done our own inquiry projects last terms in one of our classes, I still had a weird and vague feeling whenever I heard the term “inquiry”. What’s most interesting for myself, is that I didn’t really have positive or negative thoughts about the term, it was simply just this entity or concept that was extremely cloudy for me.
And then came last week’s presentation.
Trevor MacKenzie and his enthusiasm for inquiry and teaching using different types of inquiry such as “structured inquiry”, “controlled inquiry”, “guided inquiry”, and “free inquiry” genuinely inspired me to learn more about how to implement inquiry in my future practice. I think what he did that really got me interested in the topic was the fact that he factual and relatable real life examples of how he has used inquiry in the classroom, how he changes it depending on his class and his students, and his overall enthusiasm and genuine interested in the subject.
I’d like to reflect further on two images that Trevor shared with us during his presentation.
This first image is what solidified my understanding of inquiry in Trevor’s presentation. As someone who very much learns through seeing and not hearing, seeing the pool example of different types of inquiry really hit home. I didn’t quite realize how distinctly different each type was and to what extent the teacher exerts control over the inquiry process itself. I quite appreciate how Trevor explained that for us to use inquiry in our classroom during practicum we should absolutely start in the “shallow end” of the pool as diving into the “deeper end” would likely create a confusing learning environment that the students are unprepared for dealing with.
One thing that I would love to experience further that Trevor mentioned was using different types of inquiry in the same classroom with different students. Trevor provided examples of this during his presentation but I personally feel that it would be extremely helpful to see it in action during a real class.
The next image I wanted to reflect on is the following characteristics of an inquiry classroom:
I think that by teaching and fostering these characteristics students can become extremely well rounded learners that are capable of (amongst other things) overcoming adversity, actively knowing how to pursue their own unique academic interests, and being motivated participants in classroom environments. This image would be something I absolutely want to have as a poster in my future classroom and I hope that I can weave these characteristics into my future practices.
Overall, Trevor MacKenzie’s presentation was incredibly inspirational and an experience that I am extremely proud to have participated in as a teacher candidate.
Although I’m not personally on Twitter, for those who are I’d highly recommend following Trevor on the platform here or @trev_mackenzie!
If you’re like me and use Youtube all the time, you can follow Trevor’s Youtube channel here for all things inquiry related!
Free Inquiry Update
My free inquiry focus for this week WAS to include more carbohydrate and health information for my foods. The reason why I haven’t included this information on more of my posts thus far is simply because it is extremely time consuming and I’ve been swamped with other projects and assignments!
However,when I was looking at the Ed-Tech educational competencies checklist I noticed the “Technology and Health” competency and thought to myself two things. First, I thought that my Free Inquiry truly aligns perfectly with this competency because it is documenting health information for diabetics and carb counters using an online platform for others to use! What I then realized after I thought of this, however, was that my eye’s hurt from spending so much time staring at my screen and my fingers were cramping up from typing up my Free Inquiry information…
This led me to do some self-reflecting on my personal practices surrounding health and technology and made me come to a realization. I’ve almost always been the type of student who sits down and does the majority of an assignment or project in a single session, but my multiple hour Free Inquiry and online reflection sessions have made me realize that in an ongoing class with tasks such as this one, this simply is not going to work for my physical and mental health.
So going forward I’m going to try to reduce my static screen time by compartmentalizing my Free Inquiry write ups into smaller parts more frequently and by doing so hopefully adopt slightly healthier lifestyle habits that I can apply to future online projects and tasks.
Until next time.
