The idea of making something is really exciting. You like doing things with your hands far more than writing dumb old essays. You start to plan things out and work through the project. All the while, you having this nagging fear that maybe, what you want to make isn't going to be acceptable for the assignment. You decide to move ahead anyway and come up with a concrete idea to present to the teacher.
You start looking at the materials and tools that you will need. You think about the kind of time that it might take to create your amazing demonstration. Are there any other skills that you will need to learn? How much will this cost and where is the money coming from?
You plan everything out and you realize that you've got the skills and access to materials and tools. It'll take more time than writing an essay, but it'll be fun and worth every minute. You check it out with the teacher and he tells you to move ahead.
Click here if this is you.
You start working through the project and realize that this is going to take more time and money than you thought. You look for ways to cut corners.
Click here if this is you.
You start working through the project and start to feel overwhelmed. You've got an idea of what you think the end result will look like, but you're really unsure of how to get there. You start to panic.
Click here if this is you.
It doesn't take you long to get completely overwhelmed by the project. You bail on the idea and get back to the research. You'll figure this out later.
Click here if this is you.
At this point in the project, the project is becoming the focus of the assignment. This could be a good thing or it could completely dominate the topic of the inquiry and derail the curricular aspect. If the project frames the topic of inquiry in a unique way it could positively frame way the way a student thinks. Making a game for others to play, for example, forces a student to think of alternate outcomes of a scenario. Traditional research approaches, especially of historical research, tend to focus on a linear sequence of events that actually occurred. A game making approach has to introduce elements of chance and forces one to consider what could have happened as much as what actually did. I would encourage you to look at the game making approaches on the Examples page of this site if you want to explore this idea further.