Can we still ask questions in schools??

In case you get the Chronicle of Higher Education, you might look at  http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/02/23/what-happens-if-we-just-ask-questions/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en which is a blog about:

What Happens if We Just Ask Questions?

February 23, 2012, 6:48 am

By Robert Talbert

in which he says, among other things, 

"The weekly Mathematica labs that we have in my Calculus 3 class are set up so that some background material (usually a combination of math concepts and new Mathematica commands) is presented in the lab handout followed by some situations centered around questions, the answers to which are likely to involve Calculus 3 andMathematica. I said likely, not inevitably. There is no rule that says students must use Calculus 3 to answer the question. The only rules are: (1) the entire solution has to be done in a Mathematica notebook, and (2) the solutions have to be clear, convincing, and mathematically correct.

What’s been good about this approach is that promotes an ownership mindset of the mathematics in the class. Students get very creative and engaged when they have some say in the proceedings and it’s not just parroting what they learned in class. The lab problems are created so that they apply what we’ve learned in class, but often students will find some creative workaround."