What a great class we just had, “New Strategies for Brick Wall Busting.”  Before I forget, the speaker was Kim Richardsaon, Genealogy Brick Wall Solution | Brick Wall Buster Cards.

One of the first things Kim talked about was that this strategy was what she uses and can be modified to work for you. The most important idea was that it was about getting physically involved with the research rather than just clicking keys on the computer. It was about a way to use more of your brain to move the information you are finding into your thinking so that you can manipulate it and remember it.

She recommended using sticky notes on a wall or board to be able to see the thinking process you were using.  For example: 3 same named people. Put their names on sticky notes on a board and look for birth, marriage death, military experience, census locations, occupations, kids, spouse, parents, etc in columns. Under each, put sticky notes with the facts that you find. One fact per note. Pretty soon you will be able to see the gaps, duplicates, errors in thinking like dates that don’t seem right. You will be able to move things around to fit better scenarios and you will see what additional research you should do to answer your research question figuring out which of the same named people might belong on your tree or in what order.

It is amazing what we can see when we get more body parts involved with the critical thinking that we are doing. It is why teachers had us role play concepts or make up songs/poems to remember things like the alphabet, notes on the lines of music, etc. It may have been acting or writing or singing or dancing. We taught my daughter about football so that she would enjoy it when we watched by setting up her rock collection into different teams on the floor and moving them like the players. Silly, yes. Did it work, yes.

We have actually done it in the library when helping people with their issues. Making a grid or a web on the white board, putting all the facts down, and looking at it from a different perspective.

This makes me excited. It is a reminder of my education roots and problem solving strategies from the classroom. When we get physically involved with the research new discoveries may happen. -----Breakthroughs in our brick walls.

I highly recommend going to her website and checking out her strategies. It is well worth the time. It also reminds us that this stuff can get lost so easily if we don’t have a strategy for organizing our thinking, especially if this isn’t all we do in life. Kim works for the State of Mississippi in a totally unrelated field but does this because it makes her happy and you could tell.

Along the same lines, our next speaker wrote the book, The Occassional Genealogist, and I can’t wait to apply her teachings. She is a clogger who also does genealogy.

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com