Webbing into Wiggling into Weaving

I think I'm getting near the end of my information gathering and have been working on consuming the information I've found. I’m now seeing that knowing specific genetic information is a little daunting and not necessary to get my message across about redhead extinction. I think I’m going off focus if I want to try to show people how a redhead gene is formed. I may just mention that it is a recessive trait and discuss some larger concepts like genetic evolution or population migration.

I was getting discouraged by searching the academic databases for articles from scholarly journals because they were way over my head. I searched out books, but found that they weren’t able to provide the most recent information and none covered the subject of extinction of redheads. So, I’ve actually found that university web sites, such as those on University of Edinburgh and University of Queensland (where the prominent redhead researchers are from) actually have the most accurate and up to date information. These are also valid and authoritative sources, for my evaluative checklist. I extracted the researchers' names from broader news articles and Googled those in combination with 'red hair' and 'redhead'.

The interviewing process of my information gathering is very exciting. I love sharing ideas and enlightening people of the subject of redheads. I get the feeling that many people, even redheads, don't give much thought to their hair color. It just IS. I’m already getting responses from my redheaded survey. The responses are very enthusiastic and prideful of being redhead. I also remembered a choir friend who is a genetic counselor. I will contact her via email and see if she will agree to an interview on the subject. I found a radio program from Radio Netherlands, which was a wonderful component that I might link to. There was an interview with a geneticist, live, so this may help in my "ask and expert" quest, if my choir friends doesn't work out.

I really feel that I'm making advances in my organizational abilities. Before, I would always have tons of articles and books around me in a big, messy pile. Currently, I'm organizing my notes from sources in an Excel spreadsheet, as McKenzie's Research Cycle suggested. Here are examples of my source spreadsheet and my notes spreadsheet.

As suggested by Sandy Guild in Curriculum Connections Through the Library, "the novice researcher, fearful of losing his or her momentum, may be unwilling to 'go back' to an earlier stage of the process. . . " I would consider myself a novice researcher before this inquiry exercise, but now I'm ready to look back - scary as it may seem. Looking at my original questions on Identity/History, Genetics, and Action in relation to redhead extinction, I think that my Identity/History questions are right on. As stated earlier, I feel that my Genetics questions were too specific at first, and I now want to focus on the broader concepts, rather than the exact science. Action is where I'm finding the least information, maybe partially because some of the only ways to guarantee continuation of the redhead existence is by making sure that people with the redhead gene mate. And then there's genetic altering, which is viewed as very unethical. I may be jumping ahead, but I already see a focus for my final product - a hypothetical non-profit organization called "Save the Redheads." The driving force behind this organization could be (1) making a case for the unique identity and history of redheads and (2)explaining how they got to be so rare.

I now realize that my initial model for questions fits nicely with Stripling's REACTS Model in the Analyzing stage of "breaking a subject into its component parts (causes, effects, problems, solutions)." This might be a good way to organize as I'm Weaving a little later on.