Planting my Tree: Positioning myself in my career

As part of a continuing assignment in EME5054, we are supposed to begin evaluating the career options and choices available to us as Educational Technologists. I find it simultaneously invigorating and daunting to know that with a degree in this field, we can do almost anything we want. From a limited perspective, its like Educational Technology is the Swiss Army knife that can be used to assist, repair, or improve any of field of study.

My main goal since joining the Ed Tech programs was to become a Technology Administrator for K-12 or Higher Education. After perusing jobs in Monster.com, district school websites, and more, I think this job posting from Chronicle.Com is right up my alley. The position is for a Director of Academic Technologies, which lists some job duties including:

"Develop programs to support the faculty in the use of technology in teaching; and through continual research, apprise the academic leadership of new software and hardware products relevant to the College's educational mission."

For me, I'd need to develop some of my existing skills more:

• Improve my researching ability
• Develop/improve scholarly writing and publishing abilities
• Improve Teaching ability

Some of my existing skills sets could be most useful in this kind of job setting:

• I LOVE Technology
• Comfortable learning/trying out new technologies
• Have cross-platform experience (Windows primarily, but increasing experience with MAC & Linux)
• Have experience creating documentation to aid others in the learning new technology and applications
• Strong troubleshooting background can help when trying to implement new systems
• Able to examine the finer details and present important points and issues in normal speech, avoiding techno-jargon which easily confuses new/inexperienced users.
• Developed the necessary people skills and communication to help users become comfortable with change

While I still have much to learn before I could enter a career like this Director of Academic Technologies, I believe that this gives me an over-arching goal I can follow as I seek to drill down my career even further.

Finding your tree in the forest of careers

If there's anything that my time as a student at the University of Florida has taught me, it's that your career of choice is almost never on the first path you choose on the road to wisdom. For me, I started on the path towards computer science, only to find that path might be too scientific for my approach. I then took the fork in the road that presented itself in the form of my love for television, which lead to the completion of my Bachelor's degree in Telecommunication Production. While that deviation from the path certainly provided me with some lovely visual stimuli and stories, it left me alone in the middle of the forest. After spinning some time mentally tracing my steps, I realized why I had failed in finding my career...I never truly thought about what I wanted in one!

I imagine that last comment perhaps borders on stupidity...but I also imagine I'm not alone in that general thought process. Everyone is always encouraging you to look at this, it'd be perfect for you! And usually on some basic level, they're right. But for me, I never found that niche, until a principal of an elementary school, and a family friend, helped point me down the right path. She'd observed me on the rare occasion I'd drop by the school to visit my mom (who also worked there), and offered to help with various technical difficulties. She thanked me for my help, for their school didn't have a technologist available, and they relied on the district to get help. She casually mentioned I should think about dropping off my resume to the district office when I was done with my undergraduate degree, because they could use a person like me to help out schools. Ironically, even though my part-time job at UF enlisted me doing some of the same things I helped with at her school, I hadn't considered it a career choice...nor did I know there was a career option for it.

Thanks to the principal, I sought out what little information I knew to look for at UF, and ultimately found the Educational Technology Masters Program. And for once, I don't find myself lost in the forest of careers. In fact, I've actually started to plant a tree of my own.

Where does the elevator go?

I've been reviewing my notes from last week, and I remembered briefly touching on the notion of an elevator speech. This speech is based off the idea that you should be able to tell someone exactly what you do in your profession, within a time-frame of 30 seconds or less.

Needless to say, my elevator speech needs some work. I have often found it most difficult to explain what my degree program is about. Whenever someone asks what graduate program I'm part of, and I present them with Educational Technology, many are surprised that I'm taking this major in the College of Education. After the initial shock and puzzlement look, the next question is almost unalterably, "What do you do there?"

I've tried numerous variations on a theme, but the normal brief banter I provide goes something like this:

"I'm the computer geek who helps ensure teachers have access and knowledge on how to use technology in the classroom, and I also work on providing new technologies to make teaching more engaging, and more fun for both the educator and the learner."

The initial response borders on something like, "Oh wow, that sounds very cool, you'll be great at that!" And while I appreciate that response, I often wonder...does my description of what I do actually match the goals that IDT (Educational Technology) represents? Does anyone else have any thoughts on this matter, or experience the same general sense of what is it that I actually do?