If a small stack of books on a shelf or table represent a decade of one's professional life as an educator, I'm just about to start work on my fifth (gulp!) book! Though my interested in educational technology started long before I entered university, I began my professional teaching experience in Foreign Languages (now World Languages) as an assistant instructor of Spanish in the Fall of 1983 at Illinois State University in Normal, IL, where I joyfully geeked out working in the language lab as a language lab assistant while working on my M.A.
A career was born!
Since then, I loosely and conveniently and arbitrarily funnel–think funnel cloud, or tornado–my professional experience into four distinct decades of experience, though they are united by my passion for the use of technology to support educators and learners in and beyond academia:
- Decade 1: World languages teaching (focused always on analog media-driven language instruction)
- Decade 2: Interactive digital Ed Tech product design and development
- Decade 3: Technology-focused training, documentation, learning systems; instructional design
- Decade 4: More instructional design; elearning systems development, training, support, and teacher community management
- Decade 5: Just now in the making... What will the future hold?
My challenge in the fifth decade of my life as an educator/educational technologist is gracefully funnel (again, think tornado or twister)–maybe synthesize–the best, most applicable lessons learned against the vast and sweeping terrain in an orderly fashion.
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