Karen's Story

Over the past twenty years as an educator, my favorite part of teaching has remained the same: seeing children excited about learning. Some of the happiest times in my classroom are when the students are involved in one of our interdisciplinary studies, and they become so engaged in a topic that they want to learn as much as they can about it. In order to enrich and expand these studies, I started including online resources and tools. Seeing how much the students could learn made me want to get better at integrating digital inquiry into my teaching.

It is rather ironic, though, that I ended up on this path. Twenty years ago, my first attempts with technology in school were resoundingly unsuccessful. Even years later, as more digital tools became available and I became interested in incorporating them into my classroom, I was hesitant because I was not competent with computers at all. It took a lot of instruction, guidance, and time for me to develop the confidence and skills I needed. I am thankful to my colleagues and family who helped make this growth possible, and who patiently introduced me to a variety of digital tools and resources.

The first classroom technology step was small, but I could see the possibilities. My students were studying geography and made a very long distance conference call to interview someone in Singapore. The next year, taking it several steps further, I learned what a wiki was, and my class examined videos of places around the world that were saved to one. These lessons brought the outside world into our classroom, and the students truly felt like they were travelling around the globe. They became increasingly motivated to read and write about the subjects we were studying; they asked more thoughtful questions, and searched for true answers. Parents would tell me how much their child would talk about the topics we were studying, and want to research these and other subjects further at home. It became clear to me that using this technology truly enhanced their learning experiences, giving the students additional opportunities to explore the world and extend what they were learning from books.

From the beginning, I had two personal guidelines. First, the use of technology would be substantive, not showy. I sought to create digitally enriched curriculum that would deepen learning. My second requirement was a practical one that teachers will understand: it needed to be manageable. This was something that was difficult at first, with a lot of trial and error, until I realized that I needed to view technology as a natural part of what and how I already taught, and apply my usual techniques to this new component. So throughout, my focus was on making this learning both meaningful and manageable.

These past ten years, I have enjoyed the challenge of exploring how to incorporate inquiry and digital literacy into my classroom. Although this work was more novel because my students were so young, I knew they could do it and I was motivated to find ways to meet their needs. It has been fascinating to observe how the depth of student understanding and the intensity of their engagement changed with my new practices. I also learned a great deal along the way, and corrected a lot of mistakes. Through this book I wish to pass along what I have discovered to make digital inquiry easier for other educators. I am thankful that Julie and Beth wanted to collaborate with me, and hope that our collective knowledge and experiences will provide a helpful combination of research and practice to others.