The End.

I think that this project is now as the point for sharing and turning in for grading. While the instructions say a project cannot be submitted on the blog, for closure and process I am sharing the link. Here is the project website link:

http://militaria.yolasite.com/

The hardest part of my personal approach to inquiry was finding a topic, as there are so many ones that are interesting to me, and being able to pick any topic felt overwhelming at first in its freedom. I liked the structure of the W's Model, but it was much more qualitative than my background in history research. I am very much used to reading articles and sources, taking notes, producing scholarly writing, and creating a project. I had little training in the process to deciding on a question, though the concurrent KSP course I am taking has helped provide more framework for this. I realized that I needed to note my personal feelings throughout the inquiry process--something I had not every done before. This felt a little odd at first to apply how I feel to a classroom project, but it also increased my self-awareness on the spectrum of emotions that challenges and success can bring to someone, whether a teacher or student, who is engaged in such a process.

I selected a very broad topic and realized that I needed to narrow it down--I initially began looking at preservation methods, but I realized just how objective and variable this topic was, so I focused on preventative conservation and the process to identify and protect against hazards to a militaria collection. I realized anyone with enough trial/error and practice can become an authority on a specific area of preventative conservation, and that the best way to learn is to observe and ask questions. This really brought the concept of inquiry full circle, and the broad frontiers of the subject are exciting to continue pursuing throughout my life.

There seems to be a lot of latitude in the inquiry process for narrowing, exploring, and presenting topics. I enjoyed this. It did not feel constricting, but the framework provided meaningful support and guidance from beginning to end. I added a couple (hopefully excusable) W's to the process--Wavering and Wrangling--that addressed a couple areas that I wanted to add to the process. I wavered on my topic and direction greatly in the first steps; there was also not a step where citations and sources were compiled. Thus the need for Wrangling, where I posted citations to help keep myself organized and practice my learning of APA (previously using Turabian for writing history through my undergrad). I did not think when I started that I would develop an experiment for recording and charting the temperature and relative humidity in my apartment, and make meaningful comparisons with the results. I also enjoyed setting up my blog to include a list of classmates' blogs, though the variety of hosts severely limited my ability to post on them as a guest. It was constructive and educational to read about others' passions and inquiry processes. The 100 cups of coffee it took to finish this project (conservative estimate...I had five just writing this post) makes me hope Jill opens that coffee shop!