Weaving

It has been really interesting in the past week to read responses to the questions I asked from family members. I have received most everyone's responses, and I am sorting through to get a better idea of what it was like for them when they were growing up. I have also found a new appreciation for some of the small things in life when I read their responses. For example, my grandma wrote about getting in their car and knowing that if they headed a certain direction, they would be getting an ice cream treat that evening. I know this didn't happen very often for their family back then, and today, it's nothing for families to go get ice cream once or even twice a week.

As I sort through the information and dates of family members, I like to compare the ages of my family to Charles' family. I'm the youngest in my family and he is the oldest. Therefore, when I'm looking at ages, it's neat to see how his family is younger than mine. I also keep adding to our family tree as more information is gathered.

As far as organizing my materials, I have done a variety of different things. I am making lists of items gathered/need to gather, things to do, etc. As I mentioned in another post, I'm creating a pedigree by hand, since I'm a visual person. I have a constant dialogue with Charles, my husband. There is hardly a night that goes by without me asking him something about his family, or how to use one of the library's databases, as he is more familiar with them. (Yesterday, I even caught him researching more information about his family, as I've seemed to get him back into gathering data since I've been working on this project.) While working on projects for my classes, I also print out the assignment for the project, so I can make notes to myself on it. You should see this project's papers! I have notes to myself written all over the pages. Most of them have to do with something I've done that I want to mention on my postings. Some of them are reminders to email someone with a question or about a response.

The two components of information for this inquiry that I wanted to gather was: a family tree for Jeffrie and Casey listing direct descendants and personal remembrances/thoughts on growing up to inform Jeffrie and Casey of who there family was and what life was like for them. After receiving my responses, I've only had a couple of questions that I needed clarification on or more information about. I have emailed my grandma with a couple of other questions. She is supposed to be getting more information to me at some point.

As far as connecting ideas....I have so many ideas it's hard to keep track! I want to connect their information and who they are with a picture of them. I'm currently gathering pictures of family members when they were young as well as a current picture. I want my boys to have a visual remembrance of family members, especially great-grandparents. Because I want my boys to feel a connection to their family members and to understand how times were different for their grandparents and such growing up, I asked several questions that my boys will be able to connect experiences to. For example, I asked family members what favorite toys they had, what they did for fun, etc. When my boys get a little older and have an understanding of this, they will be able to know who their family was and hopefully have an appreciation of their family heritage. To go along with this idea, I was reading in our "blue book" the other day the chapter by Callison on constructivism. In one section he writes about David Jonassen from Penn State University and his take on constructivism. He says: "Therefore, there are multiple perspectives on the world. ...since no two people can possibly have the same set of experiences and perceptions of those experiences, each of us constructs our own knowledge, which in turn affects the perceptions of the experiences that we have and those we share." (p. 335) I really loved this definition of constructivism. As soon as I read this, I thought about my inquiry and how I am connecting my experiences growing up with those of my family. I can see how my "growing up" days were much different than those of my parents, and even more different than those of my grandparents. And then in turn, I'm helping my boys to connect their experiences to mine and past generations in the same way. To me, this is just a process that will continue to build over the years.

Findings of merit...with my inquiry it's difficult to label something as having merit or not. I personally feel that all the "personal stuff" I'm gathering from family members has merit. To me, that's the juicy details that I love to read and learn about. However, within those responses, I'm finding some questions to mean more to me than others. For example, the last two questions I have asked family members are: What have you learned over your lifetime that you’d like to share with Jeffrie and Casey, as well as other future generations? and What would you like for your family to remember about you? Those two questions have meant more to me than all the other questions combined. I don't think there has been a single person's paper I have read without crying while reading their responses. It has really opened my eyes to how special each one of them truly is to me, and how much I love each and every one of them. That to me, is finding merit!

On the other side of things, the genealogy aspect of the project requires another form of merit in which I confirm dates, ancestors and so forth. I have to say at this point I haven't had any conflicting dates or questionable items. I'm continuing to organize information into a chart and then finally publish to a web page.