Educator profile: Inquiry-based learning in an Ethiopian classroom
Once in a while, we catch up with Question Jam users to learn how they are using the tool. This time we spoke to Melissa Lingle-Martin who is an English teacher and 11th grade dean in Ethiopia.
Melissa teaches at Haile-Manas Academy - a private college preparatory boarding school for promising Ethiopian students. Previously Melissa has taught in the US and Bulgaria.
Since Question Jam is driven by questions, Melissa saw the tool as a good fit for her classrooms where she uses inquiry-based learning principles.
When introduced to the Question Jam tool, her students loved the gamification aspect of it, and it added a lot of energy to the sessions. Especially Melissa’s 10th grade students are fans.
Melissa has a few pointers for other educators who want to use the tool in their classroom:
Prepare and warm up: Use 5 minutes up front to brainstorm questions
Ask students to write down all kinds of questions relevant to the topic before you start the actual jam. The students should do this individually and without showing their list to anyone. The purpose is to warm up. Once the Question Jam starts, they have a list of questions ready to draw from, if they want.
Avoid usual teen dynamics: Have the students use random names
For teenagers it can be liberating to participate anonymously in a jam, you can achieve this by asking the students to pick random names as their player names. You can ask them to combine a color and a city as first and last names. Or have the students use a name generator such as Behind the Name or Name Generator.
Before running the Jams, Melissa also makes sure to tell students that at the end, they will explore the question and answers together using the word cloud. This way the students know what to expect at the end.
If you are curious to try out Question Jam with your students give the tool a try:
