narrative/storytelling :: exercise for narrative/storytelling : page 1 : page 2

Background:

In your concept map, you have depicted a story of a hunting scene. By going through the mental imagery exercise, you have derived some questions.

Storytelling is a good approach to reflect on what information you already have at hand. Some people do better speaking out loud, some may do better by writing, and some may prefer to discuss their research topic with others in order to formulate questions to adress. These methods may also reveal what information needs to be clarified and what needs to be further researched. Through this process, you may decide that you need to know more on this topic in order to validate or advance your search.

Exercise

In this exercise, assume that you were the eagle in the mental imagery exercise.

According to the questions generated from the exercise, there are many interpretations and different ways to pursue answers, if there are answers at all.

For example: A prominent theme has emerged from the questions in the mental imagery exercise. It revolves around the mechanics of the motion applied as eagles hunt.. At the same time, the escape mechanisms of rabbits also appear to be important.

Objective:

To put all you have done so far into perspective: the meaning derived from the concept map, and the questions raised during the mental imagery exercise.

Step one:

Speaking aloud, or putting your thoughts in writing (using a first person perspective).

Say the following aloud: This research starts with reports that were called in to a radio station about wildlife activity in a specific area on a certain day. These reports are merely bits and pieces of information. First of all, there is speculation that all callers were in the same location, and that they were watching the same thing. But were they? There is no further information on that. Based on this speculation, I drew a concept map, trying to relate all these reports in a meaningful way.

The map I drew conveys a story of a hunting scene where a bald eagle is flying high in the sky, circling around to look for prey to feed her young. The rabbits and foxes are trying to run from the predator, the former running towards a rabbit hole, and the latter hiding under bushes. Everything is happening during daylight hours and within a one mile diameter. Then, during the mental imagery exercise, questions of how a bald eagle hunts and how a rabbit evades predators were raised.

In order to answer the questions raised and to confirm whether the meaning derived from the concept map is accurate, I did a quick search to get some background information on bald eagle and rabbits.

StepTwo:

Do a prelimenary research on eagle hunting mechanism on the internet. Here are some websites that you can use.

For eagle facts:

+ Structure & Anatomy of Bald Eagles

+ Facts about Bald Eagles

This two sites tells you something about the mechanics of how bald eagle catch preys, and some quick facts.

For rabbit facts

+ Differences between rabbits and hares

+ Cottontail rabbits

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