{"id":2459,"date":"2019-05-23T22:27:39","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T03:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:03:46","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:03:46","slug":"role-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/role-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Role Models"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As happens, I was doing one thing on the internet and ended up somewhere else – a very happy somewhere else. What started as a quick Twitter reply to George Veletsianos on a project of interest<\/a>, landed me on his blog to read more about the project<\/a>. To my excitement, I saw a familiar name. George is co-editing an Issues in Distance Education open access book series with Dr. Terry Anderson. Seeing Dr. Anderson’s name was a blast from my past and sent me on a trip down memory lane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it’s fair to say that Dr. Anderson’s work has influenced me more than just about any educator that wasn’t one of my professors. Not only did I base my dissertation on his early Community of Inquiry work, but his name is peppered throughout my blog across the years. For example, I stalked him at AERA in 2008<\/a>, wrote a class paper on Athabasca<\/a>, and posted on my Blogger (!) account on Friday, December 09, 2005<\/a> about his Online End of Class Party that he wrote about on his Virtual Canuk blog<\/a>. If you have ANY interest in the possibilities\/challenges of facilitating online learning, READ HIS POST ABOUT THE PARTY! To this day, it brings me chills. I remember reading it like it was this morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December of 2005, I was living in Manhattan and antsy in my career as an insurance underwriter. I was enrolled in my third continuing ed courses at NYU. That summer, I had started taking evening courses after work in both instructional design and e-commerce to test the waters on a new career path. I still have all of my files from those courses on my current laptop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I knew I wanted to do something “e” (e.g., e-commerce, e-learning, etc.) but hadn’t quite figure out what. Given I had a BBA in Finance and an MBA, e-commerce seemed to make the most sense, so I created my first website from scratch at “createsimply.com” (a domain I’ve long since retired) thinking I’d sell crafts made by crafty people. Little did I know Etsy was launching their website at that very same time<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I did make an attempt to sell a few knit hats I’d made, I quickly realized e-commerce wasn’t in the cards. Instead, I fell in LOVE with my instructional design courses. Both were taught online by Joanne Tzanis<\/a>. We’ve long lost touch, but we did meet in person when I worked on a project for her at Baruch College. There is zero doubt that Joanne is the reason I’m doing what I do today. I didn’t know instructional design existed as a “thing” before I saw her course in the NYU catalog. I didn’t know what online learning was until Joanne modeled what an online learning experience should be, including blogging as a class activity that we did in her course<\/a>. She opened my eyes to a whole new world and for that, I’m eternally grateful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why – at the end of December 2005 – I was thrilled to read Terry Anderson’s blog post. Again, read it. While it’s just after-class musings by a professor tossed out into the ether, for me, it represents everything online education can and should be – caring, exploration, wonderment, sharing, and the joy of coming together to learn! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reminded this week that it’s important to stop and tell our teachers what they mean to us. Therefore, I thank Joanne Tzanis, Terry Anderson, and the countless other educators who have been amazing role models!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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As happens, I was doing one thing on the internet and ended up somewhere else – a very happy somewhere else. What started as a quick Twitter reply to George Veletsianos on a project of interest, landed me on his blog to read more about the project. To my excitement, I saw a familiar name….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,270],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2877,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions\/2877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}