So here I am the first time in a few years a simple participant at the NYSCATE Conference. I have been really enjoying the experience, but I have also started to reflect on what I have been doing the last few year. I am starting to need a chance to work on my own self directed learning. I have been thinking about this for at least a year or so, and trying to define in my head what it is I want to do.
The hardest part is that I enjoy my job and really appreciated the success that I have with helping teachers see ways that they can utilize technology to help move their students to a different understanding, delve into a problem that is important to them, or simply create meaningful content. These are the things that make my job exciting.
The things that I tend to dislike about my job is the actual questions that pertain to the technology itself. What would I use to do X, Y, or Z. I am not saying that this isn't part of my job it is just at times the part that I like the least. There are a million and one ways to do anything in the world of technology if it is possible at all. Yes the technology will continue to change, yes perhaps we will have a computer that can learn to recreate its own operating system in 10 years time, but to me these are just the things that allow humanity to do more with less. I was recently listening to and he mentions that film Wally at one point talking about the fact that computers in this film ended up allowing man kind to become amorphous blobs, that sucked down soda pop. He mentioned it in the sense of the critique of technology that has continued to happen whenever a new technology has changed our world.
I have started to wonder whether or not these things will ever happen? I have a feeling that they could, if we stop questioning how our morals are affected by technology and the world we live in. At the same time I think that we often times see what could happen, a computer thinking on it own, and don't wonder about why would we create this? Mankind has time and again been fairly resilient and adaptive to the environment that we live in. I don't doubt that we can become lost in our own reality and forget what has become common place for many of us. Things such as time and electricity for much of the Western world are things that we can't live without.
How would things be different if we didn't have these constraints?
Any how, I am drifting in thought. I started this to talk about my own learning and where I am and where I would like to go. During the conference this year I have finally made up my mind. I am going to begin to move in a direction to go back to school to learn. Most likely RIT for something that would look at how humankind and computers interact and what things we assume when we work with technology, but we will see.
I feel that I have to re conceptualize what it is I am doing in my role, not for others, but for myself. Again this doesn't mean I am going to change what I do, but perhaps simply change the lens I am looking through.