Welcome to the world from the Redtech pen (metaphorically speaking, of course). What, pray tell, is Redtech, you may well ask? What is the meaning behind the post title? What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? (by the way, if you don’t know that last one, please move along.) Well, let me tell you a story…
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a hungry English grad assistant found herself in need of extra income to expand her unappetizing diet of ramen. Rescue appeared in the form of a data entry job in the Dean’s office. The GA soon found herself challenged by things she had never dreamed of doing: managing listservs, editing webpages, even *gasp!* teaching faculty how to do these things. Eventually, the English teacher to-be found herself caught up in a world of learning and technology and eventually became *drumroll please* an INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIST.
Flash to today, ten years later. Said GA now resides at the University of Central Florida, continuing to pursue dreams of fresh sushi and Thai noodles. But each of us, at some time, begins to ponder: Who am I? What am I doing? What is this thing called Instructional Technology? Is this my beautiful house? And so I have come to create this blog, to explore what it means to be an Instructional Technologist in a time when technology is king, education is evolving, and there is still no better way to rile up a cocktail party than by asking a group of academics to define learning.
So, back to the initial questions: what is Redtech? Well, in my search for meaning in regards to the beast known as the Instructional Technologist, I made a few amazing discoveries. First and foremost, there are nearly as many definitions of Instructional Technology as there are Instructional Technologists. Being the literary-minded gal I am, I then began to assemble my own definition, only to slowly realize that my definition of my role does not quite correspond with the institutional definition of my position. In addition, few of the folks who I would pin as ITs (a coarse abbreviation to save my fingertips and the length of these posts) carry this title, and a few who do, don’t fit into this scheme. Whu? So, I decided to go to the source- find other ITs and get THEIR ideas, definitions, descriptions and decisions, only to discover that probably 3/4ths of the blogs I was able to dig up are either stagnant or empty. Quelle horreur!
Anyhow, left to my own devices (always a risky thing to do) I decided to start my own blog to collect sources, resources, and points of view as I continue my hunt for the elusive Instructional Technologist. As an Instructional/Educational/Academic Technologist (interesting how popularity of some of these titles have waxed and waned, but I’ll save that for a later post) I foolishly wanted my blog name to somehow reflect this search. After sifting through the scads of empty or defunct blogs already in existence, and the few wildly successful ones, I found my options slightly limited. Edtech, while moderately descriptive, did not quite have the catchiness for which I was hoping. Enter: people with poor memory. How does this correlate? Well, my hair is red. Yes, it often occurs that if someone cannot remember my name, they call me “Red”, and for reasons unknown even to myself, I actually respond. *shrug* So, viola! Redtech is born.
Oh, and the post title? Well, if you haven’t noticed by now, I occasionally ramble. Expect to find things here that don’t necessarily contribute to my quest, but which I’ve stumbled across along the way.
