Wishing

One of the things that surprised me about this process was how hard it was to find quality websites. It seemed like no matter what keywords I used, I kept getting the same sites. Some sites that I thought would have historical information, like The Blues Foundation, didn't. I think this is one of the main reasons why I use Pathfinders with my students. They would give up before they even started if they had to sift through the sites.

Even though I put a lot of effort into it, I feel like I didn't have enough time to do the project well. I like to think that I give my students plenty of time for the process; we usually take 2-4 weeks per project- and if I see things are going slower than anticipated- I'll add time. But this experience makes me more aware of the time constraints we all have.

I think my topic was still too broad, but I'm not really sure how I could've narrowed the history part - because I really wanted an overview. I guess I could've focused on a specific time period or a specific region or style of Blues.

Some of the technology requirements were frustrating - not creating the documents but creating the various accounts. I still don't know what I'm going to do for my fourth requirement. Maybe I'll have to publish my poem as a PowerPoint, but I really don't like that as an option.

Somewhere -sorry, I don't remember which article-I read that inquiry was more of a spiral approach that linear one, but I like YouthLearn's ("An Introduction to Youth-based Learning") description better: "...an inquiry-based approach is more web-like in how students pursue knowledge, as opposed to the linear, vertical, and compartmentalized structure of traditional education." The spiral only has one path, but the web has multiple paths - and I know I wore them out going back and forth between the stages. You didn't really see that in my blog because I did a lot of editing when I probably should've been commenting on my own posts. I think Annette suggested that we do that in one of her emails?? But I didn't remember it until it was too late.