Inquiry Simulator

The next class is spent exploring your topic further. You are given time to go to the Library/Learning Commons to look through books, watch videos, explore the online databases to try to find an aspect of the topic that interests you. You are assigned groups that the teacher is calling Inquiry Circles to talk to about what you are finding. You find that these discussions where you share your notes and ask each other questions about what they are reading is actually really helpful in exploring your topic. Through this process, you are constantly taking notes and writing thoughts in your Inquiry Journal.

A few days later, you are taken through an exercise that helps you to identify your specific research question. You read through your journal and find that there are actually a good number of directions that you could go. You weed out a few of the less interesting ones and focus on the criterea for a good question. Do you care about the answer? Do you have the time to answer it? Do you have access to the information to answer it? Will you be able to communicate the answer effectively?

Your blood pressure begins to rise again. What does the teacher mean by "Will you be able to communicate the answer effectively?" He hasn't told us what we're supposed to do you yet!!! Just before your head completely explodes, he shows the class some examples of what students have done in the past and why some of them were effective and some not. He talks a lot about the connection between medium and message and how some stories are best told in certain ways. You start to see a glimmer here. You think that he's telling you that you can share your learning with the rest of the class pretty much any way that you want as long as it communicates the message effectively. You think that you see that this means that message will determine the medium that you use to tell it.