Waving

As I think about what I want to say in this blog entry, I look at the title of this entry and envision myself waving my arms in the air trying to get someone's attention, much like someone at a ballgame who's trying to get the attention of someone three sections over! I think about that and relate that to how I plan on communication my ideas to others. I think what I have created out of this inquiry is important for my family to see and I'm proud that I was able to accomplish it. Therefore, I will be eager to "wave" at them and say, "Hey, look what I've done!"

When I have finished this project and have a sound start on the website (which I feel I do), I am going to send an email out to family members which provides them the link. I hope that they visit the site and enjoy seeing what I have created, thanks to their help. I also hope that they will want to add more to it and allow the site to continue to grow.

I have also shared this site with a couple of my colleagues here at school. I showed them what the project was about and then I showed them the site I created. They both had big smiles on their faces and enjoyed looking at the different pictures on there. Even though they aren't a part of my family, they were able to connect to the project in a small way by looking at the pictures and seeing who in my family they knew.

I shared my link in a previous blog. However, I want to mention that in no way is this site "complete." Nor do I ever envision this site being complete. While I have several pictures of family members on there, I want to continuing digging through old photo books and boxes to find other relatives. I also want family members to continuing adding to their personal information and allow Jeffrie and Casey to truly see what their lives were like.

At this point in the project I also wanted to point out the importance of creating something "exciting" with the information I have gathered. I could have simply taken a picture of family members and stuck it in a book or write a research paper including information about each person. Instead, I chose to focus on something that would keep me excited about the project and interested in finding out more about each family member. This is what Callison explains in the "blue book" when he is discussing Kuhlthau's Information Search Process when it is paired with an inquiry based project. He says "The end result is not only increased student learning, but an excitement about learning and teaching." (pg. 41) Previous to this statement he discusses how she came up with this process as a way not only to get an end result but to teach the students the process of getting to the end result. I feel this is very important because most of the time it's not the end result that will help us in the future it is the process of getting there that will be helpful. My brother must also agree with this because I just received his questionnaire back over the weekend. His response to the question about what he has learned over the years was: "Don't try to learn what to think - learn how to think." I thought that was a really cool statement for him to say since this project is for our inquiry into a topic!