Google Scholar

Using Google Scholar led me to numerous dead ends as most articles focused on scientific inquiry methods. Nevertheless, I explored a few articles and found the table in the article below quite helpful in its explanation of inquiry as an"evolutionary" process. Located in the Electronic Journal of Science Education, this article, written by Ronald J Bonstetter explored the process of moving away from teacher directed experimentation to student directed activities. He used a table to clearly identify the movement across arange of tasks/ steps.

The full text can be found at

http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/jcannon/ejse/bonnstetter.html

Google Scholar did lead me to some other papers and articles that were interesting but lengthy. I'm finding the reading of each promising article takes up so much time - even just viewing the abstracts. I can see why it takes years to complete a doctorate! Even exploring Google has uncovered some fantastic features I didn't even know about - these features are sure to interest young learners. I combed over the features of Google Squared and Google Sketch Up. These to additions to Google move beyond a linear search for information and into the more artistic and visual search and create options.

Here's what Google squared shows you.

Each square links you to related resoures in a similar fashion to Scholar but the links are visual. Some more promising articles were uncovered using this tool.

Google Sketch Up is not an information search tool but an application that can be used by students to create artefacts. In terms of my class, the students can use Sketch Up to create villages or communities within the culture they are researching. Not sure if we will have the time but once they know about it I'm sure they'll try it out at some stage.