Inquiry based or Project based education may seem to be new concepts, yet they dates back to the beginning of this century. For those who know of John Dewey these concepts will seem very familar. For students this method of learning ends the listen to learn paradigm of the classroom and gives them a real and authentic goal and real challenges to overcome. For the teacher, inquiry based education ends their paradigm of talking to teach and recasts them in the role of a colleague and mentor engaged in the same quest as the other younger learners around. Much has been written about this type of pedagogy. Amoungst our favorite sites for inquiry base pedagogy is the Collaboratory Visualization (CoVis) project at Northwestern University. We suggest you visit their site and learn more about this philosophy of education.

Here at NCSA, our scientists engage in solving some of the great science questions. You can participate in some ways by using the tools from this site to understand complex science processes via our annotation tool.

Or you can begin to build your own library of digital video materials that demonstrate, illustrate and explain science. At this site you will find many resources to explain how to record, edit and analyse video as part of your curriculum.