I had a wonderful dream last night...

even with all the family stuff I'm dealing with these holidays (my son had to go the emergency room last night, my daughter's girlfriend is staying with us for a month, etc.), I had a wonderful and inspiring dream last night. It was about falling in love. I awoke practically singing the praises of falling in love, and essentially, the dream was saying it's all about the journey, not the destination. (This may seem ho-hum to you more self-knowledgeable types, but to me, it's like finding a lost item that you had years ago in your wallet!) I have long pined for endings that eluded me, with a why-me attitude to figure out I have had the lack of long-lived stable, emotionally fulfilling relationships in my life. This morning, after the dream, I told myself that maybe it (the cause of some of my pain) was that I was concentrating on the 'wrong' things to desire from relationships in my life (like the 1000% unrequited love feeling I get when I think of M). Maybe, instead of wallowing in the self-pity, or in the introspective why game thing I can also get tangled up in, I need to concentrate on the journey part; the fun of deciding on where to go, getting a ticket, the hysterically reverent and funny laughter of taking the ride together, the intense feeling of being so tied and close to someone that it takes your breath away; those kind of feelings! Instead of concentrating on the destination (and in my case, the oftentimes disastrous destination), enjoy, reflect on, remember, relish the journey instead! The connectedness, the intimacy, the adventure! All that juicy good stuff that I usually forget when I can't seem to achieve the exact cessation of my desire to become one with someone else forever (ha!) - so let that go, March! Just let the concentration and focus on the desination stuff go! Keep yourself open to the possibilities of wholesome, natural, fun, and the closeness with someone else for the journey. Concentrate on the journey! I was also thinking that now it's the time in my life to concentrate on the jour again...with pleasure!

End of it or begining of it?

Today was supposed to be the 'end of the world', or at least, the end of the Mayan long count calendar, which some folks have read to signify the end of the world.

Well, I'm still here and so is my reality.

I'm much more intrigued by the philosophy behind all this Mayan ancient wisdom stuff...If I put myself in that long ago time, living a life that was based on nature and related processes and procedures, like growing food, etc. and in my spare time I was keeping time, making calendars, marking days to make sense of what I was doing during my time, having rituals that tied me and my family and my offspring to the time-keeping and rhythms of our lives, then I can feel how important this point is time was to them. Think how staggering it must have been to think and plan out all those natural time points to the w-a-y furthest out point that you could imagine! I can totally see how it would look like and even feel like the end-of-days.

When Dad was talking about this day coming, he never really specifically said that the world would end. He always mentioned somewhat vague sentences about how people would ascend, or there would be some sort of dumbstruck enlightenment that would happen to the aware ones among us. That we would be transformed.

The site where this photo is from says similar stuff; that this is the 'time in-between' (When I read many of these similar sites, I can't help but think that this in-between time is like the Buddhist idea of the bardo).

My point in writing this post today is to acknowledge that time is the key element here and how the passing of time can and does effect our consciousness, besides the time of nature, and the external sense of time that is not a part of us. Either as an external force or an internal force, time is change, and if looked at and thought about in a positive way, that can be transforming.

Here's a wish to all humankind to use their time, our time, this time, to be transformed in a positive manner.

In memory of Dr. David Jonassen - the ET giant of constructivism

Wow. So very sorry to hear about the passing of Dr. David Jonassen yesterday, from lung cancer, via the ITForum listserv. I think he was at U of Missouri now; here's a fairly recent pic of him in his office...

Some of the long time and in my mind most revered members of the forum, like Dr. Dan Surry and Dr. Thomas Reeves, wrote quite lovely things in his memory, and Reeves said he was 'a giant in the field'. That is so true!

I even posted a brief paragraph to the list in thankful memory. I'm still at a loss for words to explain the profound impact that the work of Jonassen had on my intellectual development. I studied him when I was in my masters program at East Carolina and it must have been in either my instructional design class with Connie or in my multimedia class with Lee. In any case, the theory of constructivism totally coincided with the curriculum development work that I was writing when I was at Martin CC. As I may not have mentioned before, my introduction to instructional design was after the fact that I 'knew' it and was using the principles of it in my work. It totally made sense and gave me the theoretical background and underlying philosophy that was so missing from what I was already doing. I strongly believe that my ability to think in those terms more naturally came from my Symbas background - what with the Summerhill and Freire overtones of the school's philosophy, coupled with the autonomy and self-responsibility for ones own knowledge building, it was the educational per-curser to mind-tools and self motivated learning. I already knew that stuff, and that's not meant to sound or be boasting; I say that to express how much at home I felt upon learning about the philosophy of what I was already doing - and of course for the incredible expansion into the heights and depths of the theory and everyone else's practices. 
Once I learned about the formal roots and branches of constructivism there was no looking back, as I'm sure it directly effected some of the products that came out of my adult learning theories class at NC State, as well as all the way into my work with Irene, Forrest, and Antoinette on our distance learning instructional design model.

After all this pondering and remembering I felt sad, and not just sad for the passing of a legend in the learning psychology area. I felt sad because remembering David Jonassen made me remember how much I love instructional design, learning theory, and writing meaningful teaching and training curriculum. Today felt like me suddenly thinking about a past lover, a sweet and intense love affair in what seems like the long ago, that somehow, somewhere, only due to the passing of time and the import of other non-related life events, made you forget about that love, that passion, that once was the candle in your life, one of the pillars in the foundation of your soul. Ah, such bitter sweetness. As I tried to explain what constructivism was to Tim I was so dismayed to barely be able to recall some of the central tenets of the philosophy! Yikes! Had it been that long since I'd even thought about these shining glories in intellectual life?! How could something I once was so passionate about and so fully understood have fallen from my immediate grasp?

In memory of Dr. Jonassen I want to put together a mind map of sorts on constructivism, and I'll try and upload that this week sometime.

But for now; thanks Dr. Jonassen - for your vision, your passion, your crowning intellectual achievements.  Your work will always be in my heart and soul.