Wishing I was in Australia

But alas, I am here in Indiana waiting for inches of snow to dump on my weekend.

The inquiry is complete..though the ultimate goal is not. I am still hoping to put my research to work with a trip of a lifetime. My husband was looking over my shoulder from time to time, and said "wow, you got some good stuff there." That's promising.

As for the project, I felt stumped choosing a topic, so the "watching and wondering" were hard for me. I think this is something that my students feel all the time as I give them writing topics, and or other chances for freedom. It's hard to know where to start. I did really enjoy my topic, it just took awhile for me to get there. The webbing was challenging at first too.. I never was really able to hear back from either of my primary sources. I was trying to contact Pam via phone, and we played phone tag for the better part of a week, and I tried to get in touch with my 'mate Stu in Oz, via Facebook, and haven't heard back from him. I wish I could have had those conversations, to make my inquiry even more authentic.

I liked "wiggling" around with my sources, and evaluating what I liked the best, and what was the most useful for my questions. There are so many bad websites though, that are just trying to advertise and sell, that I really felt that the books were my most valuable source. It concerns me when I think about my kids at school using the Internet so much for inquiry, and reminded me why it is so important to a) educate them about the web b) share valuable print sources and c) teach them to use databases, and some of the incredible articles that can be found.

I was frustrated with some of the websites that were supposed to help me incorporate technology. Maybe my computer is getting old (eeks) but I kept getting shut out of "notecard" and I also felt that Inspiration was not user friendly. I am someone though, who needs some time to really play around with technology, and I felt rushed with some aspects of the project, and felt I didnt neccessarily have time to "fool around." I have bookmarked those sites, and hope to return to Inspiration...don't know about the other one :) My kids at school come up to me all the time, at school when they are working at their literacy work stations, and the issue is always at the technology station. My frustrations reminded me of their complaints!

As I stated before, in the future,I think that I would definately narrow the Australian topic down to a particular itinerary and get information about the places included on the itinerary. I couldn't have done this, this time, because I didnt know enough to create an itinerary. Thus, I would say this was a success, and now I can take my information farther.