Competency 6: Participate Actively in the Profession
Sub-competency
Identifies and participates in communities of practice within the field of Educational Technology
Narrative
Identifies and participates in communities of practice within the field of Educational Technology
Back in the late 1990's when I started as a Training Consultant, one of my college friends, who worked and still works as an Instructional Designer, suggested that I join ASTD, now ATD. She felt that as I was transitioning from my career in Outdoor Education to corporate training and Instructional Design, I would find that membership valuable. She was correct, it is a membership that I certainly valued. The materials published by the organization and the job listings as well as the conferences and local chapter meetings were incredibly valuable to me as I transitioned into my new career focus. In the mid-2000's, I had to pause my career in order to deal with some health challenges. During that time, I took a break from the office and let my ASTD membership lapse. At the same time, the friend that introduced me to ASTD had been introducing me to several of her friends/colleagues in ID. Over the last 10 years or so, I have managed to "collect" even more connections in ID building my own small network. These contacts have been incredibly supportive and encouraging as I made the decision to go back to school and finally make my career direction "official" by obtaining a degree in ID. During EDCI 660, one of the projects was investigating ID in specific arena such as higher education, K - 12 education or enterprise and business. Working in groups, we were to create a presentation that included job announcements, organizations and articles related to this aspect of Instructional Design. One of the resources my group included in our presentation was ATD. Working on this project with my partners, Harold Tinoco-Giraldo and Jason Mutzfeld reminded me of the support I received from my ASTD membership (the fact that Harold was working at ATD was also motivating). After completing this project, I renewed my ATD membership and began investigating the local chapter to make some new connections. I would like to make more local meetings. Our local chapter is very active, but in my current position, I work many evenings and frequently the evenings I work coincide with those local meetings.
The artifacts I am presenting are a photo of my most recent ATD membership card and a link to the presentation my group created for EDCI 660 (please adjust your computer sound to a minimal level to start - if we were doing this again we would work on the sound).
