• 10Dec
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Educational Technology Comments Off on “So, what do you do?”

    10 Dec 2008

    For some reason, I always seem to have a hard time answering the question, “So, what do you do?”

    When I’m in England, I’m a Learning Technologist. When I’m in the US, I’m an Instructional Designer. When I’m in Italy, I’m an Online Tutor or – even more vaguely – an eModerator. Sometimes, when I rub someone the wrong way, I’m the ‘Technician’ (put in my place, I suppose!). At other times, I’m the Teacher, the Inspirer, the Face on the Wall that’s Being Beamed In from Across the Ocean, or the Super Fast Typer with All the Answers.

    In the end though, I’m just somebody who sees how much good technology could do/can do/will do/has done in the world of education and I want to share the wealth with others. All I want to do is create ways for learners and teachers (who are often my most important learners) to derive benefit from the great, cool, awe-inspiring, fast changing and ever challenging thing that IS technology!

    Anyway, so because I have difficulty answering the question of ‘what I do’, I sometimes wonder if it’s me who’s having an identity crisis and wasting my life away doing a job that has no name, or whether it’s that I got into a field that has yet to be defined. Going to conferences and having those fabulous impromptu chats with other ‘No Names’ (let’s call me that for the moment) is great because at least I know I’m not alone in my confusion!

    I know that there is a definition and a title for what I do out there, still floating around in space just waiting to be pulled down to Earth. Maybe it’s just a case of congregating with others like me to have a sense of community, because the very ‘remote and digital’ nature of my work definitely allows for a lot of working at home in your jammies. On the other hand, that independence and autonomy is the MOST PHENOMENAL thing about doing what I do. That, and being able to play with mind blowing applications of technology that make the way we live life, and the way we communicate with one another and the way we connect and consume and grow totally beyond the abilities we had even just a decade ago.

    Technology enables those who want to learn about it with the chance to participate on a gloriously evolving process of the discovery of our potential.

    We can do more the more we know.
    We get to know more the more we learn.
    Learning is an internal process.
    There are people who will come and go in each and every one of our lives who will be there for the purpose of assisting us in our learning, but, in the end, we have to do the work for ourselves.

    So…at this moment…if I were to answer the question “What do you do?”, I would say that I’m someone who can help you do more than you think you can…as long as you’re willing to do the work.

    From: Virtually Scholastic