Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Transitions

When I took the job as the coordinator for correspondence studies at my uni back in 2000, the dean pulled me aside and said, “Chris, we are currently in a period of transition....” He then paused, looked up at the ceiling and continued: “Actually, we are ALWAYS in a period of transition.”

I thought that was a curious statement at the time only to realize he was absolutely correct. Six years later, I have seen and experienced so many changes in technology and attitudes that accompany distance teaching and learning, mostly in a positive direction.
Yesterday, I happened across Ben Werdmuller’s post that got me thinking about the affect of technology on education. Ben writes

the most important people are the students and teachers who don't participate [my emphasis]. In terms of changing things, the most important people are the ones who make the decisions. The rest of us are just commentators and people with ideas trying to push the envelope. What we tend to do in the weblog sphere is chat amongst ourselves, when we ought to be wise to the fact that most people don't read weblogs; most people, although they might be online in a nominal sense, don't really participate. The important discussions and interactions still need to happen in the real world, and although it's nice to be cutting edge, the real importance is to bring the added value that online spaces have the potential of providing - and to have these conversations with people on the outside.

Working as a full-time educational technology advisor and enabler, Ben’s comments struck a chord. It’s one thing to work with educators who do teach and learn with technology, but what about those educators who do not? I am not suggesting that social software is the magic bullet that will make everything better. Yet it has been my experience that educators who do employ a variety of instructional technologies into their practice are forced to re-think and re-examine what they do. This I believe is one of the hidden benefits of educational technology – the opportunity to critically reflect and readjust one’s practice. This retooling involves risk; it involves possible failure. But most of all it involves learning.

David Warlick regularly talks about telling a new story regarding teaching and learning. I believe technologies like blogs, wikis, and rss aggregation can begin to shift learning back into the learners’ hands. This transition has been slowly coming for many years and I think we will soon see more and more teachers talking to one another about how their practice has changed as a result of social software and Web 2.0 affordances.

So, given the winds of change that permeate the edublogosphere, I must report that today is my last day as director of distance learning for my uni’s office of distance, continuing, and executive education. As much as I would like to take a hiatus, I have accepted a position in the college of education where I can focus my energies on developing distance teaching and learning programs for educators across the globe. The degrees, courses, and certificate programs I will be working with aim at extending the conversation to those on the outside, to educators looking to gain new knowledge, new skills, and share them with their students. I am quite excited and am looking forward to getting started.

So despite the innumerable confusions associated with transitions, I don’t think I would have it any other way. As Nietzsche once said, “[o]ne must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”