Research, research, oh how I love to research

Those of you who know me IRL know how much I like to research random stuff and currently I am working on researching two things. The first research project I am working on is researching my great-grandmother Margaret "Maggie" Smith. This project will probably be put off until the summer though so that I will be able to go to the Big Bend National Park and do some research there. My other research project is about teaching history. I figured since that is what I am planning on teaching, I might as well get started on researching different teaching methods and philosophies about history. I will be focusing more on researching how to teach history this semester since that is honestly easier research than looking up information on my great-grandmother.

I nearly had a happy attack today when I went into ASU's library and found about 20 books on teaching history and social studies. Some of the ones I found are pretty interesting, but a lot of them were really boring and uninteresting. One that I really heavily disliked seemed like the author was talking down to the reader, but the one I liked the best seemed like he was being open and friendly with the reader (plus he wrote a lot of awesome quotes about history). I am gonna check out a few of the books that I really enjoyed and sit down with a notebook and write down all of the tips that I really like and think are useful, and I will probably list them in a later blog. *happy dance* This is gonna be so much fun!

And yes, I know I am a dork for getting all excited about researching. >>