The Inquiry HubAn inquiry-based school coming to Coquitlam School District

September, 2012 – http://inquiryhub.org

Inquiry Hub is an Coquitlam Open Learning initiative. The COL Inquiry Hub provides grade 8-12 students an innovative, technology driven, full-time program which allows them to pursue their own learning goals by shaping their educational experience around their interests instead of structured classes.

Connect - Create - LearnThis is the process behind the Inquiry Hub. The COL Inquiry Hub brings students together in a technology-facilitated environment and encourages them to explore their own questions from key themes:

• Community and global issues• Environmental sustainability• Media Art, design and technology

Inquiry

Inquiry based learning is a key tenet of the COL Inquiry Hub. When students get to choose their own topics, with guidance and support from their teachers, peers and community members, these learners will produce thoughtful, rich and compelling answers.

Inquiry

When students explore their interests in-depth, they will often discover insights worth sharing with others. At the Inquiry Hub, we believe that an integral part of learning is the ability to share what you’ve learned with others in meaningful ways. Be it a presentation to a small group, the entire school, the local community or online (with the world), we will work with students to craft their message in thoughtful, well represented ways.

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Inquiry

An important skill to learn is how to ‘write to a specific audience’, and there is no better way to promote this than to give learners a legitimate audience for their work. Through the use of blogs, wikis, digital portfolios and social media tools, we’ll invite the world to be a participatory audience in the work that our students do.

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Inquiry

Collaboration is a learned skill that is essential in today’s world. Our goal will be to have students collaborate on projects that matter, in many different communities. We will provide opportunities for projects to extend beyond age-group peers to include younger and/or older students, parents and teachers, community members, subject area experts, and students from around the globe.

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Inquiry

“In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers.” ~Peter SengeAt the COL Inquiry Hub, students will be provided with many opportunities to be designers, stewards and teachers. We believe that every student has the potential to lead!

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We can learn a lot from (and within) play. Play promotes discovery and invites the idea that we can have fun learning, even from our mistakes. From the MIT Media Lab’s advocation of ‘Lifelong Kindergarten‘ to Google’s promotion of employees getting 20% of their work week dedicated to personal-interest projects, it is quickly becoming apparent that ingenuity and creativity are both sparked from an environment that incorporates play into learning.

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A key principle in the new learning theory Connectivism, considers networks to be a central metaphor for learning. The theory suggests that ‘learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions’. The COL Inquiry Hub will use a hybrid model that blends classroom, community and online experiences, and so students will be exposed to a multitude of learning networks.

Coming to Coquitlam, September 2012…

The Inquiry Hub is new initiative by Coquitlam Open Learning and School District #43. The COL Inquiry Hub is a full-time grade 8-12 program which offers the following benefits for students:

• Instruction which blends classroom and online experiences in a hybrid model

• A student-driven inquiry approach to learning

• Significant reduction of formally structured class time and emphasis on a learning commons where students do daily group project work and individual, computer-based learning

• Class environments which group students around interests and project focus rather than grade levels

• Parents and community as active learning partners

• Extensive use of peer mentorship in cross-grade project work

• Core, inquiry-based program offerings which are extended through the extensive list of COL online courses

http://inquiryhub.org

http://inquiryhub.org Photos from istockphoto.com except for: ‘Voice’ -“Neon Mic” by fensterbme on flickr, and ‘Play’ - by David Truss

Logos: Inquiry Hub, Coquitlam Open Learning, & SD43 are all from School District 43, Coquitlam.