Breaking the Ice

Hello! My name is Suzy Leonard. I'm currently working as an administrative assistant in the Computer Science Department at IUPUI. It's been pretty weird on campus this week with very few students milling around! I live just a few miles south of campus. 

My working life has all been in the field of education, mostly in nontraditional roles. I have been an outdoor education facilitator, environmental education instructor, challenge course facilitator, classroom teacher, gymnastics coach, paraprofessional, and administrative assistant. It's been a few years, but still one of my favorite places to be is up in the trees sending people down a zip line. 

I'm enrolled as a Graduate Certificate student for IST. I'm taking it slow--only one class a semester. Once I take the GRE, I'll be able to switch over to the Masters program. I started this particular program because a B.S. in Education and an A.A.S in Visual Communication are not quite the right backgrounds to be an instructional designer. Ideally, I'd like to work in the visual design realm of developing instructional materials. 

My free time is often spent outdoors--mountain biking, hiking, backyard fires, and just working in my yard. I live with my very fluffy cat Chaco, who has recently discovered indoor cricket hunting. I also enjoy serving at my church, Southside RPC.  

This photo is on campus along the White River. You can just make out Lucas Oil off in the distance. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Seven

  “The history of organized education and training can be viewed as a long struggle to extend opportunities to more people and to devise means of helping those people learn better than through the events of everyday life” (Molenda, 2008, 5). I earned my B.S. in Education in 2003 and though I’ve not spent many years in the classroom since then I’ve been under the education umbrella enough to see the pendulum swing right and left a few times. There will always be a next best thing. A next best end all be all that turns out to just be another swing of the pendulum. Always things to be learned but there will never be a ‘one size fits most’ solution. Even the solutions that leave lots of space for independence and not pigeonholing will never fully fit the bill. I am frustrated with the premise of Deepak Prem Subramony’s research—that IT scholars neglect cultural diversity. Although I cannot relate personally to the level of instructional technologists, I can as a graphic designer. I wor
Read more

Week Three

 As I look back through my notes and highlights from this week’s readings, the theme is pretty simple—a process is helpful for instructional designers but must not be held so high to lose the purposes behind the process. The variables associated with student learning are infinite and thus there is no perfect step by step process that can accommodate for all those variables. There are a few big picture variables that caught my attention. Instruction vs learning. In Chapter 1 of Designing effective instruction, Morrison describes some of the benefits of instructional design to P-12 education, “there are numerous occasions in which the need for teacher-developed materials—drill-and-practice exercises, remedial lessons, problem-based lessons, or even full-fledged instructional units—arises” (p 4). I have previously referenced my experiences as an outdoor/experiential education facilitator and other atypical roles in education. I was also a classroom teacher for a couple years for m
Read more

Week Ten - Strategic Direction

Thoughts on Strategic Direction Convincing consumers they need something can be a slippery slope. Some consumers who will buy on a whim and others will never be convinced. When you instill an appreciation for a company beyond the product itself consumers are more likely to purchase because they have a deeper appreciation beyond a single product. I think this is a similar phenomenon to employers/employees. It’s why in recent years so much more care, concern, and effort has been put into hiring employees who may not have the perfect skillset but do fit the culture and who embrace the mission and vision of the company. Skills can be taught and learned. Culture, mission, and vision don’t come quite so easily. “Watkins, Triner, and Kaufman (1996) suggest that strategic plans frequently fail to guide decision making by focusing on processes instead of results. When strategic plans focus on process, describing what employees should do rather than what results should be accomplished, they lose
Read more