Frontmatter
This is the CMALT Portfolio for me, Derek Moore. It is my attempt to capture an emerging “post-digital” journey. The work that I have submitted below is an an honest and fair account of my experience and reflections as a educational technologist and instructional designer. The resources are licensed under CC BY, unless noted otherwise.
Please note: this portfolio has not yet been submitted for accreditation by ALT and my capabilities and experience have not been certified (yet).
My Profile(s)
Hello, Derek here. Welcome to my CMALT portfolio. I offer e-expertise to those educators, librarians, academics, researchers or state officials. Although, in this introduction, I will speak a lot about myself. This portfolio isn’t about me. It’s about what I know (and don’t know). And the layers of messiness / coherence you will notice in between.
Who are you?
I call myself an “ed-techie” and “learning designer”. I am pragmatic, independent and critical. I work for myself, my office is in the shed, at the back of the garden. My credentials, career and previous employers are fractured, and multiple and my thoughts are semi-visible, scattered across many screens, a work in progress, a grey zone where I hope to learn with others, reflect on my (and others) practices and slowly come to know. My work is as visible and open as I can be.
What have you done?
My main roles that I’ve occupied are not neatly arranged in a laundry list. There’s not a column of bullet point roles, that suggest a neat career trajectory. I’d prefer to invite you to see this amalgamated social self and curated collection of my knowledge skills and abilities, arranged in this portfolio.
My shed door is usually ajar, and you’re welcome to take a look in, respond to what you can see of my thoughts, work and practices. Where I am moving forwards (sideways and backwards). Or just failing miserably (sigh). Teaching online is HARD. Learning remotely can be lonely. You’ll see the visible and discrete details that make up my “pointillistic profile”. A conglomeration of dots, that combine in a semantic web to form objects.
Is this pointillistic profile performatitive?
Self is not a fixed concept and as I put together this portfolio, I’m faced with a choice of being the “meformer” – where I talk about myself. Or an “informer” – where I focus on what I do, what I think, what is emerging.
I don’t think that this is a performative portfolio. There’s no audit. Nor are there performance indicators that I am addressing for promotion. I am a “me former”. Yes, sometimes the self is buried, to me and others. My hope is, that by being open, by making my collegial relationships, lines of accountability and points of reference clearer, by reading into my social media exchanges, the grounded “essence” of Derek will surface. That this “ed techie” and “learning designer”, who is stressed, anxious, excitable and personable, might speak, in an authentic voice.
Deep! So what now?
You are invited you to connect with the “open” me on Twitter (not there much), LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Mastodon, and dip in and out the on-life stream of self. Welcome to my third space (Whitchurch), where I am always constructing, renewing and narrating my current personal and professional identity. Trust that I am not too self indulgent or narcissistic. If I am, feel free to trout me.
What do you do?
Keeping to this metaphor of dots and objects, you will soon see that I run an independent ed tech / learning design consultancy entitled “Weblearning”. I offer clients my “e-expertise”. Sometimes I do wiz-bang stuff, where in ideal conditions, I show users how they can learn with, through and about technologies. We connect to each other, to information and to the world. Work, at other times, is more prosaic. I’m behind the screen, frustrated by slow connection speeds, forgotten passwords or vulnerable and/or disorientated users.
Daily, on devices, we enter new spaces and cross boundaries. We can be curious, listen, connect to others, ask more questions, explore the how and whys, explain how things fit (or don’t fit) together. There’s an explosion of possibilities, an “AHA” moment that hold in our hands and that carries us forward. Or we can get enclosed, get frustrated, blocked and stuck. Become programmed instead of being programmers. Loose our agency.
“Ed-techies” and “learning designers” can elicit curiosity with our connected devices or our reflective personalities and marshal resources to enact further wonder. We prepare spaces that can be accessed by champions and their beneficiaries in a range of settings. Be it classroom, bedroom, boardroom, cubicle, library, train or taxi. We look for patterns that work.
What are you hoping for?
My work swings through the hopes and hype of digital in education. Employed as a schoolteacher, IT facilitator, Head of ICT (curriculum), consultant, ed-tech lecturer, head of content services and lead educational developer, I’ve been an advocate for the use of ICT in education and a critic of its misuse. I’ve been included in digital initiatives by colleagues, students, teachers, academics, librarians, activists and administrators.
The implicit belief by many is the ability of technology to enable / enhance education is both exciting and frightening. Wonderful, because of the hope that change is possible. Worrying, because these hopes have become hype and lead to massive (and I think unnecessary) expenditure and cynicism. And distorted, because its always preferable to avoid facing your failures in public. IE you don’t speak up when things fail.
Why are you submitting a portfolio?
The main reason for submitting my portfolio is to take stock of this self. I began my digital journey with a digital portfolio for my Masters in Computer Assisted Education two decades ago. Ten years ago, I set tasks for my pre-service teachers and taught them how to create their own portfolios. After 20 years in the ed tech field, I think that its time to revisit my work, to reflect on my trajectory, join the dots together and share this with others. Join my flux and wonder about what I have done, what I have learned, what is emerging and what I am becoming.
Please use each of the links below to access each section of my submission.
Table of Contents
Core Area 1: Operational Issues
- Constraints and Benefits Writing flat text a weekly commitment:FolioFriday
- Technical Knowledge: Story Telling, My CSS Designs
- Leadership and Management: Mentorship (Open Seeds, OE4BW)
Core Area 2: Learning, Teaching and Assessment
- Teaching, Learning and Assessment Processes: E-tivities, Workflows
- Student Centred Courses :
- Supporting Deployment: The open umbrella – Hybrid Field Guide
Core Area 3: The Wider Context
- Legislation, Policies and Standards: Open Access, Creative Commons, Wikipedia
- Intuitional Policy: Open Education
Core Area 4: Communication – Working with others
- Communication: Personal Learning Networks
- Collaboration: Communities of Practice
Specialist option(s)
- mLiteracy: Mobiles for Public Good
- Cartography
Future Plans
- Capacity Development: Convergence, Boundaries, Identity and Agency
Please note:
The evidence associated within each section is distributed over the web and “linkrot” may affect the availability of certain artefacts. Your assistance in reporting broken links – via comments below – would be appreciated.