Sunday, January 24, 2010

A historic look at my career and future predictions

This LIS568 course is my final course before receiving my MLS degree. This will be my second masters degree with my first masters being an inter-disciplinary degree in education and communication design. For the past decade I have been an instructional designer for the University at Buffalo. The first half of my employment I worked with the technology division of the professional schools (Law, Social Work, Education, and Library & Information Studies. About 5 years ago I moved to the division that supports the entire university. A little more than two years ago my center transformed from a center with the main mission of assisting faculty to effectively utilize instructional technologies to a combined mission that also includes assisting faculty to gain expertise in general teaching effectiveness.

My expertise certainly encompasses the varied uses of instructional technologies for teaching. Using instructional technology has always involved knowledge about effective pedagogy. However, I feel out of my realm providing advice to faculty about how to improve their teaching. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to be a continual lifelong learner. I would like to improve my knowledge about how to guide faculty to improved teaching practices. The only way to do that is to continue to research what is being said in the field and by reading more about educational theories.

I also need to stay abreast about new instructional technologies. The rapid developments are very difficult to keep up with. This blog is a good example. I often recommend to faculty to use blogs in their classes to get students to communicate about what they are learning. But as I mentioned in my initial post, this is the first time I am writing in a reflective fashion for a public audience.

I've also never used Diigo. I used Delicious for a while but soon afterwards I reverted to using traditional bookmarks again. Reverting back to using bookmarks resulted from inadequacies I found in Delicious and by the discovery of the Xmarks tool. Xmarks is not a social bookmarking tool, but instead a tool to synchronize my bookmarks among a number of computers in a more organized manor. In this class we are asked to create a shared library in Diigo. I hope to again discover a new technology tool that improves upon my current methods. This is just one more example of needing to practice and implement what I preach. There are just so many tools out there, having the time to experiment with them all is unrealistic.

So, how does my upcoming MLS degree help my future career? I do not expect to leave UB at least before I can officially retire. Although I have only worked at UB for a little more than 10 years, I have secured a permanent position and a slew of built up vacation and sick time. It would be very difficult to locate an alternative position that would allow me to do as well as I am. I enjoy my job. This last sentence is the heart of it.

I can see myself moving to alternative positions in the UB Libraries with similar instructional responsibilities. I can also picture my days after retirement taking advantage of my MLS degree and becoming a part of a local library or school district. I'm finding it odd to talk out loud (or type out loud as I often like to say) about my retirement. Although I am still quite young, I now need to consider the next phase of my life.

Having requirements to use new tools and read current literature about effective teaching practices is very good for my career.

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