Wiggling

Dr. Lamb tells us “Wiggling is often the toughest phase for students. They're often uncertain about what they've found and where they're going with a project. According to Webster's dictionary, wiggling involves moving to and fro.”

(http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/wiggling.htm.)

Wiggling equates to evaluation of what information or resources we’ve managed to find thus far. Violet Harada tells us that “…determining the relevance of information is a crucial part of the problem-solving process” (Stripling & Hughes-Hassell 2003, 48).

For my particular project, I’ve engaged in a lot of online searching, and I also have a number of print sources I think may be relevant to my project. I’m not sure, at this point, which of these websites are most relevant, or most trustworthy, and while I can look at the date of publication, author, and publisher for the print sources, these are items that I need to read through in order to assess their bearing to my original topic.

Evaluation Criteria

I order to better evaluate the websites I’ve found, I need to have some criteria to decide whether they are quality sites or not. While there are a number of authorities that have created criteria lists to do just that, including Cornell University (http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/webcrit.html) and the one offered by the University of Idaho (http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/instruction/webcriteria.htm), I like the evaluation suggestions offered by the UC Berkeley Library found here: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html.

This is more than just a list of items to evaluate, like authority, currency, etc. Rather, the UC Berkeley Library site discusses the reasons that various aspects of each website are important to consider, and it does so in every day language. (I do note, with some sense of irony, that I am evaluating the evaluation tools.)

Skimming and Scanning

Dr. Lamb tells us: “Skimming is particularly difficult when using online resources. Students seem drawn to information that looks familiar rather than concentrating on questions that need to be answered.”

(http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/wiggling.htm.)

Oh, how true this is! I have already struggled with this as I searched for information, and kept finding myself pulled further and further into the web as I explored each cool link or bit of information I found. I found myself looking at websites on Indian hairstyles (which, while nifty, had no Miami hairstyles, and I’m not even sure how I got there.), on Indian cooking (again, not Miami), and lists of Indian names, again, not necessarily Miami, and not necessarily something relevant to this project.

Relevance

Mary Ann Fitzgeral and Chad Galloway tell us in Teacher Librarian:

“Students… spent much energy determining if articles were relevant or not. The data in this study support three statements about relevance-seeking. First, relevance-seeking usually occurred independently of evaluating the quality of the information. Second, although the processes were usually independent, they often occurred almost concurrently. In other words, the participant seemed to jump back and forth between considering relevance and considering quality” (Fitzgerald and Galloway, 2002).

Relevance is as important to my project as quality of resources. I could broaden this topic until I am covering all the Native American tribes, and in doing so, I would have lost sight of what I originally set out to do. What I set out to do was to investigate the Miami Indians in relation to my subdivision, Derbyshire. I think I would like to also investigate, in relation to this topic, the history of the Miamis in Indiana. However, I do not wish general Miami history to be the focus of my project. I need to consider this to determine relevance of the materials I’ve located thus far.

I start back through all of the sites I’ve bookmarked, and I start scanning them, evaluating them for both quality and relevance.

Final Wiggling Thoughts

After assessing the resources I have gathered, I have determined that there are some key elements that I am missing. For one, I am still awaiting a reply from the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library History Department concerning some clarification on the name “Indian Suck” and if they can verify, through the historian Carl Leiter, that Derbyshire was where this settlement was located. All indications from my research so far indicate that the facts, as presented by the Richard Ferguson newspaper article, are at least very close to the truth. Some additional verification would be nice to have, however.

Also, I have failed to find any Miami Indian photo or drawing archives. I realize that the date that the Miamis lived in this area—the early 1800s—is early for photography. Yet, a number of artists worked to record people or places from history during that time. Also, I would be satisfied with Miami photographs from later in the 1800s. I find the lack of painting or picture archives to be very surprising, for many museums and libraries are now creating digital archives of their collections. I thought, perhaps, to find something through the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project. No luck as of yet. I really think that, for me, this project won’t be complete until I find some photos/artwork to link to my final project.

Beyond that, I will need to carefully consider how best to organize my project so it makes sense, and is useful to both myself and to anyone else who cares to visit. That will take us to the next step, Weaving.

Citations

Lamb, Annette. Inquiry: The 8Ws: Wiggling

http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/wiggling.htm.

Fitzgeral, Mary Ann, and Chad Galloway. "Helping Students Use Virtual Libraries Effectively." Teacher Librarian, Volume 29, Number 1, October 2002.

http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/tlmag/v_29/v_29_1_feature.html.

Stripling, Barbara K., and Sandra Hughes-Hassell. Curriculum Connections. Westport, CT; Libraries Unlimited, 2003.

The UC Berkeley Library Website Evaluation Criteria.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html.