My entry into the Digital Fellows program has reshaped not only my perspective on the use of technology in graduate education, but my perspective on how the skills I brought with me to the program can be useful in implementing new tools for graduate training as well.
I came to the Graduate Center to study philosophy and am currently enrolled in the philosophy PhD program. A great deal of my experience outside of academia has been with technology, and this prompted me to enroll in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (ITP) certificate program, in addition to my philosophical studies. I was curious to learn how technology shapes and reshapes our social practices and our epistemic intuitions, especially in academia. The ITP program furnished me with an understanding of the historical significance of technology in both research and pedagogy. It also instilled in me many new skills and a fresh perspective on how to use them to promote technology in the classroom and in my research. I am currently working on a project for the ITP program, entitled “Enlightened Educators,” that seeks to establish an online community for new educators to share content-specific teaching strategies with one another in a collaborative environment.
In addition to my studies at the Graduate Center, I had worked as an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician, troubleshooting and repairing software and hardware problems in a customer service environment. This experience gave me a perspective on computing that has helped me to be more comfortable learning new software and programming languages.
The Digital Fellowship program has sharpened my programming skills and web development skills, and has given me a new venue to employ such skills. I’m very interested in collaboration, especially in research and pedagogy. I’ve found that my work in the Digital Fellows program has been based on collaboration and building a community around technology at the Graduate Center – this is exciting! I think that scholars can benefit greatly through collaboration, both within their discipline and across disciplines. I’d like to see the Fellows working together with representatives from other programs at the Graduate Center to build an infrastructure for communication across disciplines – a ‘Digital GC’ – and I think technology plays a crucial role in realizing that goal.
