I really enjoyed the conversations last night with the former Ed Tech students. Cheers to them for offering us their time and wisdom. I also found it very encouraging that there is, indeed, a job market for instructional design.
Like most of us, I entered the Ed Tech program through the side door. No, make that an unlocked window. I have never taken an education course before. Both of my parents are teachers and it never really occurred to me to go into the education field, except maybe as a professor at some tiny liberal arts college in my mind.
While working on my undergrad degree in Film and Media Studies I worked in various fine dining establishments and played in a band called Edward the Bear. After graduating, I was going to be a musician. We toured, started our own label, and eventually collapsed in disappointed frustration. In the mean time I had gotten pretty good at cooking and thought I might go into the food service industry. Nope, restauranteurship is just too hard. On to video production.
I started a video production company called High Noon Productions with a couple of friends from school and had a two-year course in trying to learn the inner workings of a field AND try and build a small business from the ground up. Then last December my fiance gave me an ultimatum: stop working 80 hour weeks and start helping out with the bills or find a new place to live. I chose to stick my neck out into the Gainesville job market. After a month of shaving, tidying, and bowing I found a job designing training media for the UF HSC Information Security program. At the time I was like "information security...that's like locking your laptop to your desk, right?" I've learned a bit since then.
I knew I wanted to go back to school. But for what? I looked in the Documentary Institute, the Digital Media program, Film Studies (again), the FSU Film Production program, and kept coming up empty. Until one of my supervisors (a doc student in Ed Admin) said "why don't you look into Ed Tech, that's what you do here anyway."
It was like a bolt of lightning once I met Professor Ferdig.
And now -- get this, mom -- I can actually get a job making decent money and helping people get better at whatever it is they do.
Grinning,
Ben
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6 comments:
A wise choice going to blogger. If you haven't done so, now might be a good time to make sure you're running firefox and that you've got performancing on it.
Either that, or any of the other extentions that offers a nifty post api type thing. If you're not an html type of guy, StumbleUpon isn't bad as it's got some neat context functions that generates image html code. It makes it a lot easier if you want to do something like this or this.
I am running firefox, but when I am doing webwork I leave room for Opera, IE, Safari, etc. I just added performancing and it seems pretty slick. This blog is (as you likely already guessed) is for a course in the UF Ed Tech grad program called Foundations of Educational Technology.
I really appreciate your pointers regarding blogging practices. I believe I originally came across your site while researching Drupal as a web portal alternative for a site I manage. You seem to do a really good job implementing Drupal on your blog. If you don't mind, how familiar were you with PHP before getting in to Drupal? I would really like to start fooling around in open source CMS's, but even my (x)html coding is below average.
Oh, by the way, how did you find my link to your site anyway?
Thank you much,
Ben_Campbell
Firefox with performancing rules. Diigo and Bibirmer are both also hella useful for your blogging needs.
The best thing about Drupal is that you can basically do anything you want. There's no "we can't do that" when it comes to the package. The worst thing about it is that you will have to do some wrestling with it to make it work perfectly if your needs are a bit more complex.
Worth a note: A year ago when I started with Drupal it was slow, clunky, and user support was a bit slow. Today it's a completely different world with new modules and themes coming out almost every day.
Drupal on your blog. If you don't mind, how familiar were you with PHP before getting in to Drupal? I would really like to start fooling around in open source CMS's, but even my (x)html coding is below average.
Very little. Don't get me wrong, I'm no computer moron. One of my two undergrad degrees is in MIS, but my practical knowledge of most things code related was very low (as I don't work in the field). I had the capability to learn it though.
If you ever decide to set up drupal though, do let me know. I'm more then happy to offer some beginner aid.
As to how I came across you, I read my awstats sometimes for giggles. Seeing as I've managed to piss off 3/4th's of the internet, I like to read my own press. It can be extremely amusing.
Thus far this week I've been called an "Evil right wing bastard" and a "queer loving bleeding heart liberal". I'll win the internet someday.
Hi Ben. Are you still working in the HSC IT dept. for SPICE? My office in the library is on the 3rd floor of the communicore building so we're neighbors :-)
Mary
Mary, I actually got to take my workstation home with me the day before the semester started. I still work there, but I'm only in the office a few hours a week. When I am there, I also work on the 3rd floor in C3-19 where the copier and coffee maker are. I used to sit on a big blue ball, but now I sit on my ball at home.
Ah, another musician. Excellent! You're band sounds really good, and I like your taste in music.
We should talk offline.
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