Having been in the continuing education space for some 18 months, I am relatively new to this specific industry. Not new to education though, having started my career teaching elementary students for about five years. The past 20-something years spent in media, traversing both traditional and “new” media. I was thrown into the digital space when web developers coded pages from scratch, before cascading style sheets were a thing, and before Survey Monkey was freely available. I learnt HTML, launched multiple websites, one in Chinese even, and then decided to seek refuge in traditional media, producing content for a magazine style morning show.

Walking the walk, I spent many months reading, learning, and familiarising myself with instructional design, learning design, and e-learning design. Similar in some ways, but distinctly different in others. It is an infinitely interesting journey, and one that has lead me many new people with many interesting ideas.

I see similar experiences now that I encountered being one of the relatively early adopters of the Internet, and I am confident the lessons learnt then can be applied now. Technology is certainly something that both educators and learners are grappling with to varying degrees. But technology is exciting, and it presents many new opportunities, and I for one am looking forward to the many more things to come.

Being part of the Open Networked Learning puts me in a unique position to understand challenges faced as an adult learner in a virtual learning space. I look forward to meeting new people and learning from their experiences and sharing what I have learnt in my own personal experiences. So let the learning begin!