Marie Jasinski
To speak of the professional life of Marie is to do so in the light of a person with great integrity, a brilliant mind and a spirit of giving and inspiring.
Marie’s work has been applauded world-wide and especially in the vocational education and training sector of Australia.
Marie’s first association with TAFE NSW was in 1998 when, as the Manager of the then, MindMedia at Douglas Mawson Institute of TAFE, Adelaide, Marie and the NSW TAFE Professional Development Network, submitted a joint tender application. They won the bid to conduct of a national professional development project in the area of elearning. Marie’s experience in elearning, was at the forefront. MindMedia was already a nationally recognized and well established centre for learning innovation for teachers at Douglas Mawson Institute. It was at this Centre that Marie and her team established the LearnScope Virtual Learning Community which supported and complimented the national LearnScope projects. She had incredible foresight. An idea would blossom into something practical and useful. Hence Australia’s first online learning community began where people from the vocational education sector gleaned the benefits of learning in an online environment through games, workshops, guest speakers and open forums. International guests were soon logging on to see what was happening in this community.
Marie had an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Her horizon for learning was huge and to expand her field of work she reduced her TAFE hours and started her own business called Design Planet. She would say: ‘I like to sniff out people on the web and pursue them and their work to gain insights and ideas, to think and to play and then come up with something new’. She also worked on research and professional development projects throughout Australia and was a highly entertaining and knowledgeable speaker at conferences with invitations to give keynote addresses in Australia, America and Asia.
Marie continued to work with the TAFE NSW Professional Development Network throughout the development of the Facilitating and Managing E-Learning Certificate and more recently in the research project Life Based Learning: A strength based approach to capability development. Within this research Marie’s amazing ability to write from the heart and to make the most complex theories and ideas simple and practical are evident.
Over the years, Marie established a wonderful partnership with the Thiagi Group (an American-based group). Marie brought Thiagi to Australia and together their wit, skill and fun using game-based activities had teachers thinking differently about education. Many staff in TAFE NSW welcomed the opportunity to learn more about game-based learning and attended sessions conducted by Marie and Thiagi.
The work Marie relentlessly contributed to education, technology-based learning and innovation and change reaps with accolades from Australia’s vocational and school system, government agencies and corporate businesses. She willingly shared her knowledge on major national and local committees, on planning groups for conferences that drew crowds of over 2000 participants. Her humour and creative ideas at workshops had people laughing out loud and leaving inspired.
A research Marie completed just prior to her illness was on Innovation and Change. This investigated how innovative practices in organizations can be embedded and integrated into work practices. The research outcomes have resulted in hundreds of people attending workshops in 2007.
And this is just the past 10 years. Marie had a Bachelor of Education. She was a teacher in or around St Helens in Tasmania. She had a Grad. Dip in Applied Psychology and a Grad Dip in Clincial Hypnosis. Marie worked as a counsellor for a number of years and remained a registered psychologist. In 2006 she gained her Masters of Arts in Complexity, Chaos and Creativity.
Marie’s achievements are honoured in what others say as tributes stream in newsletters from Nancy White of Full Circle and Thiagi’s newsletter, and from Blogs Janine Bowes and wiki space Flexible Learning Leaders Tributes. All the messages convey some similarity to the following:
(Maret Staron NSW TAFE)
‘Marie touched both my heart and my mind. She helped me understand how I could live some of my values at work. We often talked about the importance of congruence between our work, values and spirituality. One of the things I admired most about Marie was that she was fearless, as well as so brave, happy, strong and generous. She always said how it was. She had so much courage and always inspired me. The times the three of us spent together researching were some of the happiest times in my working life’
(Tasmania Flexible Learning Leaders)
‘Energetic educator
Strategic thinker and mentor
Visionary e-learning innovator
Joyful gamer
Your influence continues…’
And from Stephen Downes from Canada who Marie held in high esteem, the author of a daily open learning newsletter (Monday 21 January 2008):
I don't know if you ever saw it, but there was once two or three years
back where Marie Jasinski wrote about letting go and committing herself wholeheartedly to being open and sharing online. She then proved it by
posting an MP3 of her singing. It was probably the worst singing I had
ever heard. But I'm sure she knew it was bad, and posted it anyways.
People who do stuff like that are an inspiration to me. Not that I will
ever post my own singing. But you know I know about just letting go and
becoming the thing that you're doing, whatever it is. Marie has always
symbolized that to me. I didn't tell her that her singing was bad, but I
made sure to tell her the rest of it.
Thanks Marie. You will be missed.
Marie’s legacy will live on in the many people she has inspired, in the research she has undertaken and most of all in the spirit in which she lived and worked.