Mid-June through July, I researched and worked on my 20 Time (20%) Project. Initially, I had two ideas that were technology-based. But after realizing there should be an element of fun, and getting feedback from my professor, I chose a topic which was not about technology. My selected topic was: Rejuvenating a family garden, using recycled water.
Although my house came with a garden, it was in poor shape when I started this project. I call myself an aspiring gardener. I love to work in the front yard, use the electric hedge clippers, and pull weeds and stuff like that. But, I have not maintained a vegetable garden in quite some time. The more that I dug into gardening the more decisions I had to make: container garden or traditional, worm compost or regular compost, quick and expensive or do-it-yourself, and on and on. Finally, I had to do what was best for my situation. In addition to the project itself, I used technology tools to do research. Besides Google, social media like Twitter and Google Plus + helped me to connect with experienced gardeners. I used Diigo, for the first time, to keep and organize my online research. I highly recommend it for students and life-long learners. When I wanted to share what I learned I put it on Facebook, Weebly, and YouTube. Actually, getting comments from others helped guide my learning process. Finally, I played with Windows Movie Maker to show my other pictures. I even added a song to the movie. Final Conclusions: I have a tremendous respect for gardeners. It takes time and patience to successfully grow plants. This project was more time and labor intensive than I anticipated. I was glad to do something I had been neglecting and glad to be able to involve my children. The children and I had fun making YouTube videos and learning about worms together. We are looking forward to eating vegetables from our garden soon.
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AuthorGraduate student, wife, mother, and aspiring gardener. Archives
August 2015
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