Renee Hobbs uses an approach to professional learning that embodies the following principles:

1. A Professional Learning Community is One Where Everyone Learns from Everyone

2. Trust, Respect and Love are Needed for People to Thrive

3. Hands-On, Minds-On Learning Involves Talking, Making and Doing

4. The Power of Two: Creative Collaboration is Empowering

5. Reflection Matters

Approach

PART 1: Connect and Engage. Today, educators must prepare learners for an unknowable future. Across the grade span, educators help students internalize a set of robust practices essential for a lifetime of learning. These include: asking questions, evaluating and analyzing evidence, collaborating creatively to solve problems, communicating information and ideas in socially responsible ways, and reflecting on the social and cultural consequences of actions.

PART 2: Learn. Every educator can integrate learner-centered inquiry into existing curriculum using “create to learn” pedagogies that parallel the practices that are used by knowledge professionals in all fields to investigate, model and explain the world. Learn why inquiry practices in education activate intellectual curiosity. Explore digital texts, mindmaps, curation activities, digital annotation, digital storytelling, simple video production, podcasting, meme-making, and other digital learning practices that prepare learners for a lifetime of meaningful learning.

PART 3: Reflect and Apply. This is a hands-on, minds-on program where you collaborate with a partner to represent knowledge in different forms of digital media. We discuss the implications of such practices for classroom management, assessment of student learning, and more. You’ll have time to plan how to bring inquiry learning pedagogies back to your classroom by creating media that supports the needs of your learners.

Outcomes

Participants will:

• [ ] Understand why inquiry learning processes that build competencies and habits of mind prepare learners for full participation in a global knowledge society
• [ ] Gain knowledge about the relationship between digital literacy and inquiry pedagogies
• [ ] Learn how educators scaffold digital inquiry practices with sensitivity to the developmental needs of learners to activate intellectual curiosity in ways that promote meaningful learning
• [ ] Experiment with digital tools for creating media as a way to represent learning
• [ ] Consider practical ways to apply digital inquiry into classroom practice across all grade levels and subject areas

Audience

Target Audience: K-12 educators, all subject areas, librarians, school leaders