Why Mindtronics and Inquiry? Discrepant Events Inquiry teaching and learning Watch the Video below: 3rd Grade: An "Ah-Ha" Moment Tim Bedley 10 sec - Aug 16, 2006 Jacob discovers his own error when he engages in a critical thinking activity called "Reaching Consensus." William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Home Tree Media     Teachers using the inquiry method of teaching easily convert and update discrepant event lessons. Learning works best when using Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! Why? Because it's all about using the discrepant event method.       Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! will show you how to get the most from your student-centered lessons.  The two books will also show your students how to solve problems, not just by question asking, but also by using the scientific process, and by using teamwork.   Would you like some proof before you use more discrepant events in your teaching?  The following brief text presents findings from a new study.  The study examined complex problem solving.   Problem Solving: Teamwork May Be Best   Teams of 3-5 People Better at Solving Complex Problems Than Individuals   By Miranda Hitti, MD   http://www.webmd.com/content/Biography/8/101415.htm   WebMD Medical News   Reviewed By Ann Edmundson, MD    http://www.webmd.com/content/Biography/9/112146.htm   WebMD     A new study shows that complex problems are best solved by teams of three, four, or five people, compared to people who tackle the same problems by themselves or with one other person.Just ask Patrick Laughlin, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  They published a study on the topic in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.   The study included 760 university students.  All were given a complicated code in which the letters A through J randomly represented the numbers 1-10.  Laughlin's team asked the students to try to crack the code as presented in a series of equations.   Go It Alone or Get Help?   The researchers randomly assigned students to work by themselves or in groups of two, three, four, or five.  Everyone got plenty of scratch paper and the same ground rules.   Teams or individuals worked on the equations and then submitted their answers.  If their answer wasn't right, they tried again.   Teams of three, four, or five people were better at solving the problems than the individuals, submitting fewer wrong answers before arriving at the solution.  Even the top-performing individuals didn't match the teams of three, four, or five students.  After the tests, participants generally rated the challenge as enjoyable, whether they had worked alone or in groups.   Groups of Three   What about the two-person teams? They were about as good as the individuals who were best at problem solving.  Brainstorming seemed to work best in groups of at least three people, the researchers note.  "Group members combined their abilities and resources" to outperform individuals on the task, write Laughlin and colleagues.  The researchers point out that the problems, while complex, obeyed the rules of math and logic and had clear answers.  The students weren't tackling personal or emotional problems, which may be harder to nail down or prove correct.   SOURCES: "Copyright (c) 1996 - 2004, WebMD, Inc.  All rights reserved" Laughlin, P. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2006; vol 90: pp 644-651.  News release, American Psychological Association. Introduction to Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! Resources for this Web Page Amazon Customer Reviews of Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! If you really want to reach your students, November 15, 2005 Reviewer: J. T. Wilbanks "Tara" (Longview, TX USA) "I am a former student of Dr. Bruce and by accident read Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! in preparation and review before my class was to do an in-class model of discrepant event. I thought Dr. Bruce was a little out there until I began to read the book... I realized that this man is not only brilliant - but he is a gifted and wonderful teacher - heart and soul. The ideas that are presented in this book are "out of the box" and they are not the same old boring teaching that all of us have encountered in the public schools. If you want to engage children, challenge them, and get them thinking critically then you will want to read this book and explore for yourself the ideas and models that Dr. Bruce and his wife share in this enlightening and revolutionary book. It is a resource that all school teachers and even parents should have and to use with children. It has the capablility to help an ordinary teacher become an extraordinary teacher." ..an important resource for teachers, May 16, 2004 Reviewer Michael M Yell "yellmm" (Hudson, WI United States) "In the mid eighties I first came across the strategy known as discrepant event inquiry in a book by William and Jean Bruce. Discrepant Event Inquiry is a teaching strategy built around intellectual confrontation. From my senior high government and economic classes to my current seventh grade history classes, it is one of the most motivational teaching strategies that I have ever used. In this strategy, the teacher presents students with a puzzling, paradoxical, or discrepant event/story at the beginning of a lesson. Students ask questions, pose hypotheses, analyze and synthesize information, and draw tentative conclusions while attempting to find an answer to the puzzle. By engaging students in hypothesizing and working together to solve a puzzle, inquiry serves as a strategy for higher order thinking as well as an excellent means of investing student in the content to come. Inquiry is used in order to motivate students to begin thinking about a new unit, idea, or concept that you will be dealing with in your lesson. Discrepant-event inquiry is a natural for social studies, history and science classes. Mindtronics contains descriptions of the strategy and 100 inquiries in the social sciences, history, and science. As teachers know, the Internet provides a new and unlimited opportunity for gathering information for lessons. Mindtronics contains live links to dozens of Internet sites for each discrepant event inquiry. With the 100 inquiries, the live links, and the clear description of the strategy, Mindtronics is an excellent and important resource for the social studies and science teacher." Michael M. Yell 1998 National Social Studies Teacher of the Year ();"> );">National Board Certified Teacher Home Tree Media

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About Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! by Jean K. Bruce

Cloaks-and-Daggers Occasionally, an idea sweeps into your life and makes you re-think everything in your curriculum, such as planting “cloaks-and-daggers” in your program of study.

What Makes Inquiry Teaching in Digital Form (CD-Rom books) so Attention Grabbing? Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! look like normal books. Yet, one teacher described the difference between teaching with ordinary methods and Mindtronics! the following way: “It’s like biting into a plain cake and gradually discovering you’re addicted; you want more, and it’s fat free!”

Piece of Cake

Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! work From the discrepant event narratives in Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! you learn about people of integrity and villainy. You learn about murky secrets. You learn about peoples' weaknesses and strengths. You learn about past trials of the national state of mind. In a time when terrorism lives with us daily, in a time when we worry about the planet our students will inherit, Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! succeed in helping us laminate underlying layers of learning together. The lamination bonding of knowledge strengthens our core ability to figure out problems regardless of the subject matter.

Bubbling Cauldron Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! work because they invite us in to remove the lid from the bubbling cauldron, peek in, and inspect, turning good lessons into great lessons.

Is it Science, Social Studies, or a Mystery Thriller? Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! will direct your students’ energies away from superficial answers. Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! will guide your students’ viewpoints to a rewarding way of thinking about past, present, and future events, human thinking, values, science, and questions about how humans responded or will respond to the future. We humans stopped using our minds to just keep up; we need tronics of the mind to survive.

What is Tronics of the Mind? Tronics of the Mind is about: Forging the Blade. Really? A finely made sword develops by its means of construction. Different types of steel bonded together forge the blade by lamination.

Mind Sword

Top Quality Sword A top quality sword gains its ability to withstand pressure, stress, and yet be durable, and resistant to damage through intensive processes of lamination. For centuries, people used many lamination methods to make a well-built sword. Modern sword smiths use the same techniques to forge new swords.

Poor Quality or Astonishing Quality? If you only care about producing a sword of poor quality, you make it without lamination. The layered construction method is what famous sword smith's used. The Japanese believed that some swords, often the Samurai swords, carried such heady qualities that simply stabbing the footprint of a foe would smite the enemy. Go To Top

Battle in the Classroom No matter how much a teacher likes his or her students, and, no matter how much a student likes his or her teachers, students and teachers regularly feel as if they're facing a battle in the classroom. Much the way a soldier feels about the attention and respect he or she derives from a reliable and efficient piece of equipment that could save his or her life, teachers and students, in a manner of speaking, need powerful swords: sharp minds.

Sharp as the Serpent's Tooth For a sword to stay sharp, smiths must make the blade hard. Yet, the harder the blade, the more likely the blade will reach a brittle, overly rigid state. How do you generate a sharp mind with the ability to withstand pressure without high-minded rigidity? How do you create a sharp mind with the ability to withstand stress, and remain durable, and resistant to harm? I can almost hear your answer. Yes, we allow our minds to do what comes most natural: fold and refold our understandings through intense input and output processes in the positive transfer of knowledge.

Transduction of Knowledge This positive transfer closely resembles what occurs when your ear converts sound waves into nerve impulses. Knowledge, here, is a conversion of stimuli detected in receptor cells transported by your nervous system. Such a transduction of knowledge, or knowledge lamination, helps knowledge adaptation. It also helps our minds shape analysis and continue our ability to evaluate.

Excalibur was the King's Entity Transducer

Have you Checked Your Entity Transducers Lately? Have you thought much about the entity transducers for your eyes? Our mind/eye entities--the ones transducing our eyes' conversion of energy from our minds, to our eyes, and back to our minds--are the rods and cones in our eyes. What are our ear transducer entities? Our ears convert mind energy back to our minds by way of transducer entities called hair cells. I like to think of Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! as the transducer entities for inquiry learning.

Weapons or Advantages? Humans have long thought of the sword as a valued and honored protective weapon or implement. Nowadays do people think of thinking as a valued and honored weapon or advantageous implement?

Declaration of Independence

Nail the Meld Mindtronics! takes us through a series of sorting, merging, question asking, and researching processes when presented with a discrepant event. These actions help us peel away layers of past and present knowledge. We then weld the ideas, rules, principles, assessments, and evaluation infusions into more layers, melding our theories, our hypothetical explanations, our arguments, and our partially conclusive evidence. Along the way, we hammer away at evidence, premises, rejected suspicions, and our support of different and new points of view.

About Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Home Tree Media Our minds, when paced through the tempering process of inquiry, memorize better. Now, after using inquiry techniques, our comprehension abilities fit our improved memory to deal with reality and fiction more effectively. Our minds' facility for deeper, deductive, reasoning and understanding gives us the capacity to figure out the difference between what's insignificant or significant. Our tempered minds elevate our ability to discern: symbols and signs gestures intentions expressions indicators morals purposes nuances characteristics relationships parallel meanings conflicts technologies linguistics and much more. Our tempered minds elevate our abilities in healthy rewarding ways. Our minds become strong and sharpened through the tempering process of inquiry, strong enough to banish thinking flaws.

Swords, Sharks, and Snipers Today, it's unlikely that some nut with a sword will cut you down on the way to the mall, regardless of the sword's qualities. Recall, in the past, though, people had to worry about sword attacks, more than shark attacks. Snipers gunning for people at overpasses existed only as a future threat.

Snap, Crackle, Never Pop An extraordinary sword possesses the following characteristics: it yields, presenting a malleability it welds readily it resists the heat of forging, rust, and corruption and, when an extraordinary sword bends, it snaps back into shape.

The Mind as a Rusty Bucket We're reminded often that hanging far above our fear of death and disease, the dread of public speaking sits in the number one position as the biggest panic producer. Is public speaking what scares us, or is it the threat of humiliation, or embarrassment? Have you ever dreamed of being a rock idol, movie star, famous speaker, or perhaps president of the United States? In spite of imagining your body standing in the spotlight as a famous person, without realizing it perhaps, you see your mind as a rusty bucket. Your rusty bucket mind contain holes. You suddenly realize that your rusty bucket mind contain holes big enough for nearly everything you ever knew to leak out, right onto the stage where you're speaking to thousands. Most rock idols, movie stars, famous speakers, and politicians must react with malleability, enduring and surviving, we're told, the fiery furnace route to fame, and do so by specific hard work, frequent revitalizing, and daily bracing for routine as well as unpredictable times; this imprecise state of mind is regularly referred to as, tempering. Should teaching pamper or temper? Go To Top

Excalibur, Oil on canvas

Secrets Exposed Until the 17th century people kept quiet about how to make extraordinary swords. Families, guilds for metal smiths, at times whole towns hid the facts about smelting, forging, and the tempering practices needed to forge mighty swords. By means of their own empirical testing, some people discovered the advanced processes and materials needed to generate swords with superb qualities. Without doubt, these brilliantly crafted swords offered reliability, credibility to the sword maker and the user, plus a higher level of protection. Still, the result to these discoveries marked new cause to keep their secret weapons, secret.

Silence Breeds Mystery Stories and myths sprang up, long ago, about phenomenal swords forged by supernatural beings. People bestowed names on the swords. Swords carried names such as, Dragon Slayer, King Lion Tooth, and Excalibur.

Camelot

Excalibur We've all read that the sword of King Arthur, called Excalibur, existed, certainly as a legendary weapon. King Arthur ruled Camelot with Excalibur.

Gold, Silver, or Bronze If you bought a replica of Excalibur today, you would discover that Excalibur is made of the finest stainless steel; it measures over 48 inches in length; and it has a leather wrapped handle. You could order it in gold, silver, or bronze.

Will Excalibur Replicas Work Magic? In the early days of sword making, the metals contributing to the sword's worthiness, the trace elements, occurred naturally. Chance helped ye ole metal smiths. In modern times, sword makers intentionally add trace metals. Diverse elements enhance the performance of the basic metal. This example of sword making shows another similarity of sword forging, tempering, and inquiry thinking (mindtronics/tronics of the mind): trial and error.

Trial and Error What do the facts about trial and error sword making reveal? Trial and error works although you might never know the valid meaning behind the results of your trials and errors. Did our early sword makers know all the complexities of laminating and welding metals to form superior swords? They, most likely, never knew most of the explanations for the complexities. Yet, they kept trying until they found what worked.

What-cha-ma-call-it Have you heard someone trivialize the value of thinking processes, especially if the process involved question asking? Bill Bruce and Jean Bruce (I'm Jean) wrote books about inquiry thinking to emphasize the process of discrepant event problem solving, particularly with question asking. In the beginning, when we first began field-testing inquiry methods, Professor Bruce's students often referred to the inquiry process as that "what-cha-ma-call-it" process.

Microsystems

Microtomy, Who Let That In? By first naming the thinking process "tronics of the mind" and then, mindtronics, we highlighted the microtomy-like, microsystem side of inquiry. At the time, however, we never mentioned, in texts, our discussions about inquiry microtomy and microsystems. Here's one definition of microsystems: Microsystems are the systems that intimately and immediately shape human development. Interactions among the microsystems, as when parents and teachers coordinate their efforts to educate the child, take place through the mesosystem. Why did we consider these particular terms (microtomy, microsystems, and mesosystems) to describe the inquiry course of action?

CSI Thinking Inquiry takes you to analysis and evaluation. Microtomy is the scientific process of preparing thin tissues using a microtome, to observe the tissues under a microscope. Your mind, resembling microtomy, turns the scientific process of researching, organizing, and observing all manner of evidence and clues (under the mind's microscope) into mindtronics. In addition, if necessary, you observe actual microscopic evidence with tools similar to the tools Crime Scene Investigators (CSI) use. The microtomy, microsystems, and mesosystems explanations, in our early field-testing, often confused students. Nevertheless, that was before most teachers and students knew anything about inquiry teaching through discrepant events.

Human Swords? Society today demands more than ever, despite our history, a highly effective, dependable sword: the multifaceted, dimensionalized, human mind. People serve as the newly recognized but under-valued commodity, especially teachers. Our minds have been valued since the early ages. Our minds have been valued for our creativity. Our minds have been valued for our usefulness. Was the valuation easy to live with? Go To Top

Defend Yourself Throughout history, some people acted as defenders of other people. Defenders of other people? What could this line of thought have to do with teaching and learning? The intense, seemingly unnatural technology of our world, the strange industrial perplexities, the gravitational commonplace hold of entertainment on our daily lives, and our fast-paced changing times have altered societies' scales of ordered disorder to wrap us into ready made, machined swords, defenders. Defenders of what? We must all defend ourselves.

Breathtaking In the 1980's, Bill and I traveled for nearly four weeks, with a large group of educators, to what was then the USSR. We visited many schools throughout the country. I had learned a little Russian. I talked directly to teachers and students of all ages. The students, particularly, showed surprising interest in the United States and our democracy. We loved our visit. It might seem sappy to you but we were happy almost beyond belief, to come home, to a free country where self-governing and independence work, a reality only dreamed about then, in the USSR. I really did kiss the ground as soon as I stepped onto American soil. Bill and I wept. I sobbed. We've never forgotten those feelings of true love, for our country. Even in America's great and breathtakingly amazing democracy, however, we must all find the capabilities to defend ourselves.

Stop the Machines! Nurse back to health the minds hollowed out, churned out, and stamped as ready-made machined minds. Teachers using machined minds bore students on a cataclysmal level.

Dr. Oxy Ox Let's pretend you know Dr. Oxy Ox. Dr. Oxy Ox won, in 2005, the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Dr. Oxy Ox knows more about medicine than any other person in the universe knows. Dr. Oxy Ox always sits or stands in front of students. He lectures. As one of Dr. Oxy Ox's students, you're on your own. You take notes. You try everything to learn something of what Dr. Oxy Ox tells students. It's difficult to just keep up. Dr. Oxy Ox knows everything!

Destruct or Instruct? Dr. Oxy Ox will destruct instead of instruct most of his or her students. Although you love medicine, Dr. Oxy Ox bores you out of existence. Dr. Oxy Ox displaced the biological beauty of natural inquiry learning, with machine precision. Does the machine precision notion refuse, as you've now most likely deduced, to equate with the advanced thinking that mindtronics evokes, with exceptional sword making, and exceptional mind making? Machine precision teaching. Machine precision teaching often, macerates our human ideas, our originality, and our inspiration, into dust.

Yaki-ire? Yaki-re was the beginning, we've read, of the hardening process for swords. The olden metal smiths mixed a coating of clay, charcoal, and pulverized sandstone. The olden metal smiths added layer upon layer over the sword blade. The blade passed through heat to a critical temperature. I believe you've got the picture.

Temper, Temper People never receive appropriate tempering if they've never been challenged above the critical measurement of memory and marginalized comprehension. You know that's true. Dr. Oxy Ox knows that's true. Nevertheless, by chance, Dr. Oxy Ox saw you teaching one day. Dr. Oxy Ox shrugged his or her shoulders and didn't think much more about it for a while. Your students graduated. Your students started attending Dr. Oxy Ox's classes. Dr. Oxy Ox found little memory of you as a student. Even so, Dr. Oxy Ox recalled watching you teach. Why?

Something's Brewing You discovered, own your own, thinking, learning, and teaching with Mindtronics! When Dr. Oxy Ox watched you teach, he or she saw something in your students' faces he had trouble recognizing: the thrill of learning.

Ox Marks the Spot? Now, your students sit with sleepy eyes, glazed with tedium as Dr. Oxy Ox's voice drones past your past students' minds. Ox fails to mark the spot. Ox fails, up till now, to spot the spot. Dr. Oxy Ox sees, though, in your students, self-confident, effective, and efficient minds operating beyond anything Dr. Oxy Ox ever expects. Your students struggle with the mass of information they want to learn in Dr. Oxy Ox's class. Yet, your students, from the first few days of class, can apply what they learn. You helped them temper their minds.

Back to the Future Look back to the distant past. The old sword making ingredients and tools appear very down-to-earth. Compare. The ingredients and tools in inquiry are practical, realistic, and easy on the pocket. The resolve, the purpose, the above standard decision-making, and that individual echelon of non-conformity needed to accomplish highly prized sword making, err, ah, I meant teaching and learning, raises complications. The tempering gained from solving discrepant events, in Mindtronics! often produces a stimulated mind capable of high quality, analytical thinking. A Mindtronics! mind examines and evaluates on the highest levels. A Mindtronics! mind reliably applies gained knowledge. Think of the following simple equation when you think of a high quality sword: no tempering, no steel, no steel = no sword, no kidding.

Connect to the World
	No matter where you teach, Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! support the connection your students could make to the world. William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Home Tree Media

What happened to Dr. Oxy Ox? Will becoming a Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! teacher rank as one of the most inspiring things you’ll ever do with your students? You'll find out, quickly. You'll add knowledge, a fresh view, and an authentic depth of resources to your student’s power to understand. Thank you for letting us know that you bought Dr. Oxy Ox a copy of Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! from Amazon.com. Now, Dr. Oxy Ox uses Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! daily. We all live happily ever after.

The end? The beginning. Be that unforgettably gifted teacher!

Removing Excalibur from the Stone

Mindtronics! & Inquiry Alive! Your Excalibur!

Resources for this Web Page Article: PBS PBS, myths and heroes The Taking of Excalibur John Duncan Oil on canvas, 1897 City of Edinburgh Museums and Art Galleries, Edinburgh Excalibur - "Cut steel". Caliburn, Caliburnus. Sources Suite du Merlin from Post-Vulgate cycle (c. 1245). Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469). Arthur Drawing the Sword from the Stone Walter Crane Illustration King Arthur An Innocenti Illustration http://www.pbs.org/memorialdayconcert/stories/websites.html Caldecott, Moyra. Women in Celtic Myth: Tales of Extraordinary Women From the Ancient Celtic Tradition. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1992. Campbell, Joseph, with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1988. Cotterell, Arthur. Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Gods and Legends from Ancient Greece and Rome, the Celts, and the Norselands. London: Anness Publishing, Ltd, 1996. Delaney, Frank. Legends of the Celts. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1991. Fife, Graeme. Arthur, the King: The Themes Behind the Legends. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1991. Goodrich, Norma Lorre. King Arthur. New York, Harper and Row Publishers, 1986. Wood, Michael. In Search of Myths and Heroes. London: BBC Books, 2005. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 Telephone: 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272 Comments on the Construction of Japanese Swords by Harvey Stearn, BUSHIDO: An International Journal of Japanese Arms, Vol 2, No. 3, January 1981. Introduction to Japanese Swords by W. M. Hawley, 1973 http://legacyswords.com/nihontoCS/crosssections.htm Bruce Edward Blackistone, THE PROPERTIES OF THE SWORD, anvilfire.com http://www.anvilfire.com/21centbs/armor/atli/index.htm Excalibur, tile Designed by John Moyr Smith http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/images/tileexc.htm Graphic, from a set of twelve tiles illustrating the Idylls of the King designed by John Moyr Smith for Minton, c. 1875. http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl/laminate.htm http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/handbook/index.php?section=evidence Graphic: H. J. Ford (1860-1941), "Excalibur Returns to the Mere" from: King Arthur: The Tales of the Round Table, Ed. Andrew Lang, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/images/hjfexcal.htm The Craft of the Japanese Sword by Leon and Hiroko Kapp and Yoshindo Yoshihara; Kodansha International Ltd, Tokyo and New York, 1987, ISBN 0-870011-798-X. Freedom a History of Us http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/tools/browser2.html