It was 2005, my late husband and I had just closed up shop on our web design business and I was in need of a job. My background had been in corporate and broadcast video, but in Adelaide – the small city in South Australia I still call home – there were no jobs going.
My background included broadcast video, copywriting, print journalism and corporate video. Writing and project managing website and multimedia development was a smooth transition. But in a small city with limited clients and no capital reserves, our business wasn’t working for us.
I got a temp gig at an educational technology and research government-owned organisation with a mandate to boldly go forth and explore innovations in elearning. After a few months cataloguing whitepapers, I heard that they were looking for someone to set up and produce a national e-learning podcast. I stuck my hand up and got a full time role.
My time at education.au (sadly decommissioned since) drew me into a love of online education I still have today. I got to travel around the country and train and learn from educators in primary, secondary and tertiary education. I fell in love with the potential of virtual worlds for scenario-based, immersive learning and designed learning experiences there. I moved on to elearning design for an RTO and then a university.
Along the way I’ve picked up interests in Universal Design for Learning, Web Content Accessibility, Project Management and a focus on ensuring learning activities in online courses are constructively aligned and designed with the student’s educational goals in mind.
As I write this, the world is still reeling from the impacts of a global pandemic that was made worse by a lack of information literacy, digital literacy and the encroaching darkness of an entrenched cognitive bias of polarisation, brought on by the algorithms of platforms that promised to bring us together and to democratise information. I hope we as a species can help each other through this and be smarter, kinder and wiser as we build a better future. And we can only do that if we keep on learning.
Neotenous Tech 