Learning Blog 1 - Watch for wiggling leaves

I’m amazed at how many websites are available to do genealogy.  This week had a lot to do with deciding which website I will use for the most part.  I spent a lot of time talking to different people I know that do family research.  For the most part all of them recommended ancestry.com, so I found myself deciding to go this route. 

The decision process made me think about the importance of choosing a correct medium when learning.  There are so many options at my job of how we can teach a subject but we always have the discussion of what will be best for the learner.  I had to decide what would work best for me. 

My co-worker Jim loves family history and was a strong proponent for ancestry.com.  He warned me about the "wiggling leaves".  At first I didn't get what he was talking about but he went on to explain that when you sign in and start putting names hints, otherwise called wiggling leaves, begin to shake! They are possible links from other family trees found on ancestry.com.  What a great idea! Jim warned me that they can become addicting.  At one point he got up to 4000 wiggling leaves and finally had to tell himself that he could not stay up to search through bags of leaves. 

I must admit that I have succumbed to the wiggling addiction only within a week of starting out.  It's hard not to get distracted! My mom did give some good advice though.  She said you can't trust all of the leaves because some people out there just don't know what they are doing ha ha ha. 

The leaves have made me think about behaviorism.  Whoever designed the programming must have studied up on operant conditioning.  The leaf wiggles and I'm surprised I don't salivate he he he. I click on that thing and what am I reinforced with?  Results, Possibilities! Talk about positive reinforcement.  Now although there's some serious positive reinforcement happening here I would have to say that I'm very intrinsically motivated. If the leave didn't wiggle I was still click on it just out of plain interest.

Right now everything in front of me still seems very daunting.  I'm hoping that I will start being able to incorporate some chunking so that I can get family names straight.  I'm also hoping that automaticity will come in to play.  I'm still trying to figure out where I click to get what I want.  I started out with my line because I knew most of the work has been done.  The idea was that I could get used to the program and then work on Marlon's line.  It's a little depressing when there are no leaves on his side but that was to be expected. I finally found the names of his grandparents on both sides but I'm hoping to try and find some documents that I can link up to their names this week.  Wish me happy hunting :)