It all looks great Don, especially the part on hints for participants coming in on taking close ups, etc. Also, I liked the part about what our VFEs are not (or trying not to be)- tours. However, this is very hard and being a newbie myself, I struggle with really trying to create inquiry experiences and just putting it up there- it is so easy to do the less experience you have with inquiry. Inquiry is one of those “slippery” kind of things that means different things to different people and is often hard to define. What should we do about “helping” participants in this area? What if their approach isn’t inquiry related? What if they have different ideas about what they would like to create? What is our role here and how much do we push the inquiry angle?

However, it all looks great!

Oh, you’re asking the good, hard questions.

Here’s perhaps an oversimplified answer to one of them (from a source that helps manage the simplification):

Five Essential Feature of Inquiry (NRC, 2000)
(http://books.nap.edu/html/inquiry_addendum/index.html)
1. Learner engages in scientifically oriented questions
2. Learner gives priority to evidence in responding to questions
3. Learner formulates explanations from evidence
4. Learner connects explanations to scientific knowledge
5. Learner communicates and justifies explanations to others