Running with Scissors

I spent last Friday in my daughters’ elementary school as a presenter for Career Day. I was representing the “instructional technologist” occupation – one that I get a lot of practice explaining since most adults don’t know what I do either.

I brought a video projector and some of our iClicker student response systems to show the kids in kindergarten and 3rd and 4th grade. Kindergartners got to vote on “What is the BEST color” (red and blue were very popular), while I had the older kids choosing a favorite between SpongeBob, Harry Potter or Jack Black (SpongeBob and Jack Black were the winners here). After a few fun questions like this I told them about how we can use the clickers to test what students understand. So, the last question I had for them was “What does an instructional technologist do?” Most of them got the answer that I taught them – “Help students and faculty use technology to make their teaching and learning better.”
I also had a good number of kids who preferred a different answer that I had as an option – “Plays video games better than anyone else” – what they wanted my job to be.

Either way, they loved it. They liked the voting and I had no problems with the technology the 11 times I went through it. And my presentation held their attention, even among the police cruisers and firetrucks that other presenters brought, so that was good too. And as a bonus, there are a group of kids in elementary school who know more about what an instructional technologist does than their parents do. :)