During the process of exploring Italy through these sites, an idea began to form related to the focus of my final project. After watching a brief video on marble quarrying in Italy, I began to imagine a parallel life in Italy. The marble quarrying reminded me of my own hometown's industry of limestone quarrying. I feel that by "investigating" Italy by tying it to my life in a small town in the US, I can authenticate the project and the endeavor will be much more meaningful to me. My focus will be to "move" through Italy in much the same manner that I have moved through my life here in the States. This will enable me to focus on many aspects of Italian life instead of just the popular tourist attractions.
This process of inquiry closely resembles to Daniel Callison's model of information inquiry found in our text, The Blue Book. The process I have experienced so far has been a continuous cycle of raising questions, finding information that raises new and/or additional questions, and assimilating (and sometimes re-assimilating) information into new facets of inquiry. This experience is best illustrated by the figure found in The Blue Book on page 6, Callison's Cycle and Interaction of Information Inquiry Elements.
My new focus with explore Italy like I had imagined, but also make the information meaningful to me. I may need to raise new questions and do additional searching to satisfy my quest for knowledge based on this focus.
More Webbing is required as I have narrowed my focus and now need some additional information covering some areas that I had not previously considered. I want to organized my thoughts with an online tool (still looking into resources beyond Delicious bookmarking). I also will visit the local library tomorrow for some print resources. I also remembered reading in the newspaper an article about a local group of women who traveled to Italy last spring. I located the article online and will contact one of the ladies to get a first-person account of her impressions of Italy!
ReplyDeleteCarol,
ReplyDeleteI love reading books by expats who are living in Italy. Under the Tuscan Sun is a good one. I also like The Reluctant Tuscan. It's fun to hear about the different struggles. Never getting anything done because of red tape or people who are shocked to be asked to do their jobs are common themes in these books!