Letter to Administrator

Mr/Ms. Principal:

I would like to take a few minutes to tell you about an exciting technological teaching tool that I feel would be very valuable not only to my own class, but also to most content areas throughout our school. I recently took a "teaching with technology" class at the university where I was exposed to this technology. The name of this technology is WebInquiry.

WebInquiry are projects that are "open inquiry learning activities that leverage the use of uninterpreted online data and information." (http://edweb.sdsu.edu/wip/overview.htm) This basically means that students are given subject matter and sometimes a basic objective. They use the internet to answer the questions that they may have on the subject. Don't worry--the students will not be all over the internet "willy-nilly" during instructional time. There is a method to the maddness. The above web-site gives teachers and students the six stages spiral path to inquiry which includes a: hook, questions, procedures, data investigation, analysis, findings.

As you can see, WebInquiry is a technological tool that gives students and teachers an authentic way to generate inquiry, seek out answers, and formulate conclusions. WebInquiry can lead to higher levels of thinking and is in line with Bloom's taxonomy. Not only do I think that WebInquiry would be useful in my classroom (especially with the addition of the analytical portforlio piece), but also I have found by talking to other teachers that it could be useful across content areas. Please take time to look at the above website for yourself and would appreciate the consideration of implimenting the tool for the upcoming school year.

Thank you for time,

Chris Webb
English Department