Life After Wikis

 

 

 

The wiki has been put to bed and now for at least one weekend I can have a life, well sort of.  This week Emily and I were assigned a new member, Ken.  We (Emily and I) found out he thinks we're a bit over the top when it comes to texting, I quote Ken "Y'all have too much fun on here don't yall," me "as the song goes: we've only just began" Ken "Dear Lord," Emily "Hahahaha." Emily and I like him so far, he's willing to work with us, that's a huge plus. So what does that have to do with the Nashville Predators and a 5k run? We divided up the questions for the next assignment that needed to be completed, Ken said he'd be the gathering point and we could email our answers to him (YEA!). Emily and I had already started answering the questions but we were more than happy to include Ken. As my husband( Pete) and I were heading to Nashville, Emily sent a text saying she was finished, I on the other hand still needed to finish the second question I was assigned, hence, Nashville. We went to a Billy Joel concert at the Bridgestone arena on Friday, he was awesome. When I bought the tickets in January I found out the next day was a 5k run sponsored by the Predators so I signed myself and Pete up. Its only 5k and the race didn't even start until 10:30 so why not, besides we got free tickets to a Predator game for later this month, I love hockey. I have the 13.1k (I've run it 6 of the 8 years we've lived in Athens) run coming up in April and I wanted to practice where the run would take place, it was more hilly than I remembered from the last time I ran just before my first internship. The race went fine, I came in 3rd for my age group (212th out of 910 runners), the first in our group did 30:01, the second place person I can't remember and I did 30:13. Not great but not bad for someone recovering from an injury.

When Pete and I finished the run we walked back to our place up there and then the work started. You see my goal was to get my second question finished after the race but my family had other plans.  Of course we hit the Chinese restaurant for lunch and then Home Depot. I didn't know it could take that long to buy a curtain rod and hammer.  Then it was back to the house to do all the putting together, measuring, and fixing.  Yea, so much for that homework.  Finally we gather Alexis and our stuff, say good-by to our son and our hope to be daughter-in-law someday and start heading south with a plan of arriving around 20:00 (8:00pm), it didn't happen.  There was an accident on I-65 heading south, that 90 minute drive turned into an almost 5 hour trip back down.  By the time we got home the mission was to empty the truck and sleep, Sunday comes fast. Why can't I have a simple life?

So now the subject of the week.
The subject is Inquiry-Based learning, that means the students do all the work but the teacher better know something more than just basic facts.  Its the teachers job to ask questions that will help guild the students as they learn about what ever it is the unit is about.  Students can use a wide variety of tools to do the investigating and discovering answers but if the teacher doesn't know the subject well enough, then he/she won't be able to ask good guiding questions and its the students that lose out on an opportunity to learn. I like the concept, we use it sometimes at the Garden with the homeschool program we offer.  All the research I found supported the concept and with good proof as to why it was favored over traditional teaching methods.

Maybe by next week I'll have a picture of me crossing the finish line.