Call me old fashioned, but, the idea that students can participate in “real inquiry” without a hands on component of data collection rubs me the wrong way. As it is, students experience very little of the “real world.” Their lives revolve around their computers. Students are still surprised to see the moon in the sky during the day. Obviously they are not observing the natural world around them. The Duschl and Grandy notion of inquiry should be the second stage of inquiry. Students should first experience inquiry through hands on experiences. Then the cyber data sources can be utilized to promote inquiry. However, if students do not understand that cyber data has been collected using scientific instruments, using that data will not be a successful inquiry.

I agree with you 100%. Data that is collected by students has meaning in itself. In my post I speak of the need for students to "buy" into the information being presented. For inquiry to work, the students have to want to learn. I can think of no better way to give meaning to a data set than to have students collect it themselves.

Teaching people to be good observers is an important thing to do. I can see doing it in a science setting and I also do it in my teaching in math class, but a class I took in kenetic scuplture a couple summers ago really drove the point home to me.

I am NOT an artist, I have trouble drawing a straight line with a rule, but in order to stretch a bit a took course in using kenetic scuplture to tie physics, math and art together in teaching at the middle school level. One of the things we did in this course was to observe scuplture and then comment on it.

I had a very hard time doing this unitl one of the art teachers in the program pointed out that I was doing much more than observing, I was analyzing what I was seeing rather than just recording what was there. First seeing a scuplture as a set of intersecting planes and surfaces freed me to later look for the "context" and "meaning" of the work.

So in many arenas being an observer first is a good rule.

Z-YA;

Arnold

Judy, I also agree that hands on collection of data is very important. With information just handed to students, they forget how to learn. Do they know where or how the cyber data originated, or is it just a bunch of numbers to graph and hope it comes out pretty with nice colors and designs?
Once the hands on data is collected, students should do viable applications of the data.