You spend a lot of time on this project, mostly because it is exactly how you enjoy spending your time. You can't blieve that you actually get credit for this! The project comes together well and you are happy with the result. You bring it in to the class to present and the combination of your passion for the topic and the project that you've created results in a very successful preentation. You find yourself answering questions and showing off the project for days after the class is done. Needless to say, the teacher is also very impressed and you get an amazingly high mark for your efforts.
OK, this might be a total work of fiction, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. In the course of a teaching career, we all meet certain students who have a deep passion for our subject area and when that passion combines with serious making skills and an understanding of how to communicate effectively using a variety of literacies, we can have students who go well beyond our expectations in this type of inquiry experience.
While we are always trying to engender that passion for our subject in our classes, we can also help the making and communication sides of the equation by making sure that we provide opportunities for students to learn these skills. Project Based Learning is ideal for this as we define an outcome and make sure that the particular making skills required to accomplis the project are learned. When a more open inquiry experience is offered further down the road, the students at least have a small bag of tricks available to them that can be drawn upon.