Back in the day, before the dawn of the Internet, we looked to our teachers for the answers. We learned via a repeating cycle of lecturing, note-taking, and testing.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

With the Internet, however, everyone has the potential to become a content expert--to access the knowledge that was previously "kept" by our teachers. 

With that said, it's time to shift our instructional delivery from "I give, you get" to "I ask, you explore, discover, try, fail, try again, and succeed. Inquiry-Based Learning helps us educators reach learners in the Digital Age. 

Next time you feel like telling, try asking instead.

Want to learn more about Inquiry-Based Learning? Start here. 

I'm a visual learner. I need to see information to learn it. 

It makes sense, then, given that we live in a digital age, that our students are primarily visual learners as well. With that in mind, you and your students should check out this site--What's Going On In This Graph? --from the Learning Network of the New York Times.

It would be fun as a class to postulate on the story of the displayed data. There's always a good story behind the data. (Critical thinking--yay!) To help students begin their exploration, the NYT provides guided questions to get students interacting with the numbers. They even take it a step further with a "live moderated conversation" complete with experts in the field and making the convo global. (Communication--yay!)

For example, today's data set explores student loan balances over time. It's not a static data set, either. Students are encouraged to interact with the data and to explore what their potential student loans might look like. 

Oh, and by the way, interpreting data and defining visual information is also a skill-set expected of students courtesy of the Common Core:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7

• Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7)
• Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.5)

Stories aren't just found in books. Give data a try.

(Thanks to Rod Stewart for the inspiring title to this post. )

Have you seen the new Google Pixel 2 commercial? Before you read any further, take a look:

What’s your first impression? Mine is That’s brilliant. But it’s not just the commercial that’s brilliant, it’s the message.:

A question mark changes everything.

As the Google design team makes abundantly clear in this ad, statements are limiting, and placing a period at the end of a sentence indicates finality. No more ideas. No more moving forward. The end. Game over. ‘Nuff said.

But what if?

As we Google fans know (and as the company itself affirms), Google is a company “built on questions.” And as more schools go Google (70+ million G Suite for Education global users), we need to change our mark of punctuation:

We are learning.

We are learning?

Think about our CCSS “I Can” statements--the ones prominently displayed in every classroom to indicate content learned by students. Here’s one for high school biology:

How do we know they can?

Well, traditionally, a teacher will prepare slides about mitosis, give lecture notes about mitosis, copy study guides and worksheets about mitosis, assign homework and reading about mitosis, and then finally administer a unit test about mitosis. 

No more ideas. No more moving forward. The end. Game over. ‘Nuff said.

​I can.

​I can?

(By the way, notice the verbs I used above to describe the traditional learning process: prepare, give, copy, assign, administer. While these aren’t passive verbs--and this former high school English teacher should know!--they certainly designate passivity when it comes to learning. And notice that all the “work” is being done by the teacher. The students will watch the slides, copy the notes, complete the study guides and worksheets, do the homework and reading, and take the test. Check out the verbs I used in that last sentence. See a pattern? Those verbs make a point, and the point is this: If whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning, then we’re doing it wrong.)

A question mark changes everything.

What if we changed that period at the end of a traditional "I Can" statement into a question mark? 

Imagine projecting that question to a class and simply saying, Can you? Imagine allowing them to pursue their own learning, to show, to demonstrate, to create. What if we said, “Figure out a way to show how you can master that standard, whether it’s a screencast, a song, an infographic, a story, an animated Google Slides deck, a carefully-curated assemblage, a playlist...a whatever you can imagine! I’ll be here to guide you, to coach you, to encourage you, to direct you, but I will not do the work for you.” Imagine stepping to the side and allowing them to be active participants and owners of their learning.

I can learn.

I can learn?

Statements finalize possibilities. Questions open them up.

Still not convinced? Think about this for a minute: Google didn’t create the latest in innovative smart phone technology by making statements. Google did it by asking questions. 

So why aren’t we?

A question mark changes everything.