M&M recently joined the eLearningGuild, a 63k+-member organization designed to connect and support professionals in the eLearning space. Particularly delightful about this organization (so far!) is that they seem to go out of their way to avoid pigeon-holing and/or “labeling” professionals in our field. Here at M&M, we’ve been recently discussing what defines an educator and what it really means. We just got back to Vienna after attending two US-based education conferences (CUE 2014 and NCCE 2014), both of which serve primarily the K–12 education team for their respective regions (CUE for California and NCCE for the Pacific Northwest). As a result, most of our fellow attendees were career educators, with formal public school classroom and/or administration experience. The humble would call themselves simply, “teachers.” We were often asked what district we are from and/or what software our schools used. Our response was that we’re actually not from a district/school, but that we are “in adult learning, helping organizations and businesses develop their educational and eLearning strategies.” “Ah,” we heard, “so you’re not really teachers.” Cue failure buzzer sound, then insert sad face. Wahnt-waaaah. Meh.

We’ll post a comprehensive follow-up post about what we learned at these conferences and the supremely cool awesome stuff that is going on in educational technology right now. But for today, a link to the eLearning Guild is what we offer, and an invitation to join us there for discussion, best practices, camaraderie, and learning more about our eLearning passions and what fuels them. Each eLearning specialist, informational designer, instructional designer, content curator, and staff developer is in the practice of educating. Let’s continue to engage and learn from one another as we spread better teaching and learning techniques worldwide.

Feel free to share your personal favorite online hangouts for community and informal learning!

#cue14 #ncce2014 #elearning #edchat #edtech #pln #adultlearning