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BIG Question Institute Webinar on Inquiry Hub

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Here is the video from the BIG Question Institute Webinar teachers John Sarte, Al Soiseth, and I did on our school, Inquiry Hub Secondary. (On Vimeo)

Here is the comment I wrote on the webinar recording page on the BIG Questions Institute site.

Thanks for the opportunity to share Will, it was great to connect.
Here are a few links that we were going to share that we didn’t get to on the final slide:
http://Educators.inquiryhub.org – Created for the Cmolik award, which we lost out to Peter Liljedahl, mentioned in the webinar.

And our school YouTube page, which includes the ‘How far will you go’ student created video I mentioned.

And a couple posts I’d like to share… the ‘Teacher as Compass’ post that it turns out you prompted with a Tweet… and my ‘Learning and Failure’ post. We didn’t really get to this in the presentation, but one of the things I’m most proud about at our school is how we teach students to embrace would be failures as learning opportunities from which to grow and improve.

Thanks also to all who attended. Happy to share other resources such as our Inquiry courses.
Dave

As always, feedback appreciated, either here or on the BIG QI page.

Join our webinar this coming Wednesday

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This Wednesday, Jan 17 at 4pm PST, please join us to learn about Inquiry Hub Secondary School.  I’m looking forward to connecting with Will Richardson again, I’ve followed him and been influenced by his thinking since I started blogging in 2006. When he suggested connecting for a webinar I knew that I wanted a teacher with me, and who better then my colleague John Sarte. John is a founding teacher at Inquiry Hub, and he has been truly instrumental in developing the vision of our school, and helping us create our unique learning environment. Here are the webinar details, I hope that you can join us!

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FREE WEBINAR: “Inquiry Hub: The Dream, Create, Learn School” with Dave Truss and Dr. John Sarte – Hosted by Will Richardson

Details

Join us for this important overview of a compelling school model that highlights the power of project-based learning.

Inquiry Hub is a small Coquitlam School District (BC) high school that is unique in its approach and delivery. Known as the Dream – Create – Learn school, Inquiry Hub was born out of the idea that students don’t need to spend every minute of their day siloed into individual courses, without any unstructured time. It has evolved into a community of students who work both together and individually to complete the required curriculum while also designing some of their courses and their day around inquiries and passion projects that they want to pursue.

Grade 9’s and 10’s do cross-curricular projects using SCRUM project management, collaborating to get work done efficiently and effectively, and they also take an Inquiry Course designed around developing strong presentation skills and documenting their learning journeys, doing passion projects that they design. Grade 11’s and 12’s construct year-long IDS – Independent Directed Studies courses where they delve deep into their interests.

A key component of the program is DCL time, coined after the Dream – Create – Learn motto, where students are not in a structured class, but rather have unstructured time to work on their class projects, homework and assignments, and/or on their passion projects. Central to this is creating a community of learners who are eager to help each other and who have learned that failure is part of learning. Projects can be too big, too challenging, too overwhelming, but still result in a final product or presentation that exceeds expectations.

Wednesday, Jan 17 – 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PST

RSVP now to join us for this important session with principal Dave Truss and teacher Dr. John Sarte.  (You’ll need a free membership to Will Richardson’s Big Questions Institute Community to RSVP and join us.)

Slides are free

I think it was Rodd Lucier that told me ‘Slides are free’ after I did a presentation at a conference at Niagara Falls 6 years ago. I came off stage and asked for feedback and that’s what he said.

To give it some context, I had shared a slide with more than one idea on it, like this:

And then I quickly discussed each idea. It’s ok to share a slide like this for context, but then instead of talking about all 3 quickly on the same slide, I could have had three more slides, one for each idea. Here is the first example:

It costs nothing to add that slide, and 2 more like it, to my presentation deck. It’s a way to declutter what the audience is looking at, and let’s them focus on what exactly I’m talking about.

With tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls there is a loss of screen size for the presentation being shown, due to the webinar frame around the screen-share window. Words that are too small, or images of items that take up less than a third of the page become unreadable and decorative rather than functional. Too many words? Increase the font size and put the information on 2 or 3 slides. Breaking down a concept? Sure you can share a slide with the 3-4 ideas or images on it, but then add 3-4 more slides with each idea shared individually.

The extra slides are free, and the separated and uncluttered ideas on the slides are freeing for the presenter, and the audience.