Sunday, April 6, 2008

"Elevator Speech" about my Future Career Path

I am interested in educational technology. Over the years I have had a number of jobs related to teaching, whether that be English as a second language, running an afterschool program for elementary school students, or teaching college-level classes as a graduate student. As I was pursuing a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, I found that what really interested me was ways in which I could employ emerging technologies to aid the educational experience for students. This has manifested itself in a number of ways.
I am interested in online classes, yes, but that is only one component of my larger interest in educational technology. I have created wikis for graduate and undergraduate courses, built an online anatomy text book for medical students, helped to create a content management system that would serve the internal interests of administration, departments and student groups at the Medical School. I am presently part of a working group that is forging a multimedia database for the School of Medicine, with the goal of creating a web-accessible source for images, videos, lectures and other materials for greater use and re-use. This summer I will be working at North Carolina State University's main library to work on new ways of building web sites and applications that can be employed to better assist specific courses in accessing the resources available through the library.
My coursework at the School of Information and Library sciences has been guided by an interest in the ways that the creative use of information architecture, databases and web applications can be employed to find new modes for pedagogy and educational support at the university level, through the library or in the classroom. In choosing my courses, I have consistently sought to increase my technical abilities and knowledge in order to enable new avenues for using technology to enhance and improve the educational experience. Because I have a passion for this field, I would love to continue to develop my career in this direction, working at a position, either at a University library or a related job, that would allow me to find creative educational uses for emerging technologies.

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