Reflection on my Project

I believe that there are many strengths to my project.

• I really liked the way I organized my Blog. I summarized what I learned about the process of inquiry through my own experience of working on this project. I also reflected on how I thought I could use what I learned to teach the inquiry process in my classroom. I think this organization scheme has added a lot of personal learning, not so much on nutrition, but on the inquiry process. Even though the focus of this project was on good nutrition and weight magagement, one of the products, the Blog, is a journal of our inquiry process. I believe that one of the main purposes of this project was to participate in the inquiry process so I can have a better understanding of the inquiry process. Therefore, I believe that the Blog product should not only reflect what we learned about our focus, but also about the inquiry process itself.
• I thought that my descriptions of my activities in the Blog were well written and clearly illustrated what steps I was taking to complete my study on good nutrition and weight management.
• I believe that my final product is a very useful tool for the audience (me) and clearly communicates what was learned during the project. It continually reminds me about everthing that is involved with good nutrition habits and weight management.
• The graphic organizers I created to compare/contrast the food pyramids and to organize the information that I collected were chosen with thought and are used in the appropriate way to help me apply my information. They were well organized and easy to read.

I think I did well on this project. It is hard to think about the weaknesses of my project. I think that I could have found more information on this topic through several other sources. I found the information that I needed but I am sure there is certainly more information out there that could have helped me develop my understanding of my topic more.

There were certainly challenging moments to this project. I think the most challenging thing for me was organizing all of my printed pages from the web. It was challenging becuase I had to get the information in a manageable form. But, I overcame it! The next time I do an inquiry project, the idea of printing everything I find will be changed. I learned that taking notes as you go saves a lot of time and really helps you be organized.

I learned a lot about the inquiry process by completing this project. Entries in my Blog specifically state what I would change, focus on more/less, and absolutely do again if I was to participate in an investigation like this again and/or if I lead an investigation like this with my students. Some of these include:

• Use graphic organizers whenever you can and have access and exposure to the many different kinds of graphic organizers.
• Collaboration is very important and needs to be a diliberate part of the inquiry process. Collaboration can help with clarifying thoughts, processing/analyzing/synthesizing information, gathering new information, and can serve as a support structure to help one be successful.
• Think ahead by planning out how you are going to do things before you do them, like searching for information, taking notes, creating a final product, sorting information, etc.
• Reflect many times during the whole process, not just at the end. This process is naturally recursive and it helps you understand when you need to go back and do some things again or when you need to go to the next step beucuase you are finished.

Overall, I think this project was a very valuable experience personally and professionally. I think it was a great way for me to apply everything that we were learning in class and reading about into a real situation!