On the question of Why.
At this point, people removed from academia, or perhaps even some of those not so removed, may be asking themselves, why? Why is there a special position called an Instructional Technologist? It’s not a bad question, and even if you aren’t asking that, it is sometimes good to think about it anyhow. Of course, in many ways this is just an expansion of the ‘What I am’ section of the first post.
Ok, for starters, my stated goals are:
1) Assist faculty with technology. For me, this is primarily technology used in the teaching of the course, and not the technology of every day computing. See the previous post on differing from a classic IT department.
2) Investigate and explore new technologies. This is why I sometimes tell people that I play with computers. To be sure, the goal isn’t to toy around with technology just for technologies sake. The goal is to keep abreast of what is current and popular, as well as what is unique and esoteric, all with an eye towards pedagogy (can it be of use to teach with). This tied very much to goal one. Goal one is not just for existing technology, but also for technology not yet implemented on campus. If a professor comes to me looking to use technology to meet an objective, I want to be able to point them in the right direction. Conversely, if I find a technology and I think it has a merited use, I will point faculty at the technology as a way to meet objectives. Case in point; next semester, it is likely that at least one English course will involve writing assignments in the form of blog posts. The objective? To get students to write for an audience, and to consider that audience, rather than just writing for a professor. To throw out some of the old yardsticks of what writing is (length, format, structure) and to bring the real world back into the ivory tower a little bit.
3) To keep my finger on the pulse of the current generation of students. This is sometimes the hardest part of the job, because I have to go outside of my own technological choices. I have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, FlickR, YouTube, 4 or 5 different IM networks, Google, Yahoo, etc., because these are the neighborhoods of the current generation. Social Networks are used as frequently as e-mail or the phone for keeping abreast of each others lives. Your ‘tribe’ is made up of those people in your online world. Even those who you are close to offline, you are also close to online, for these students. For those of us of an older generation, but early adopters, this is not so different, nor so difficult to imagine. For others, it is worlds away. I still need to explore Second Life, the world of SMS and Smartphones, and more. Once again, this ties into goal 2 (and by extension into goal 1). If I can be aware of what the students are into, I can take these tools, or others like them, and reuse them as learning tools. There are some good articles out there on using Twitter, Second Life, You Tube, and Wikipedia as tools in the classroom.
Now that there’s an understanding of the goals, we can track a little into the territory of ‘why have these goals’. In my next post, I’ll draw in some material I originally referenced elsewhere on the state of the current generation of students. It should help show the world students and instructors have to live in, and the need to have someone who is responsible for these goals. It comes down to one statment though: We live in a faster paced world with an ever expanding realm of technology, and it is too much for educators to keep up with while still fulfilling their traditional roles.
