It’s been an eventful “rookie season” for me here at Vida Health Communications. I came on board in early October to orchestrate the development of an interactive courseware platform and to oversee the integration of e-learning technologies with Vida’s curricular materials. The primary focus of these efforts so far has been construction of the “Vida Course Player”: a lightweight, scalable web application that delivers a variety of engaging, media-rich learning opportunities to our clients and customers. We have founded our work on the premise that the internet is an increasingly necessary medium for teaching and learning in the 21st century. For this reason, we have invested a considerable amount of time and effort to ensure that Vida’s digital course offerings take advantage of the medium’s many affordances and are thus delivered in an accessible, responsive format. This is, of course, no small feat. So I have spent the better part of the last three months hunkered down in my new “corner office” (though some might call it “an office in a corner”) wearing out the keys on my beloved Macbook Pro to bring this exciting vision to life.

Before arriving at Vida, I devoted most of my professional life to the study and practice of education. Upon graduating from Williams College in the spring of 2000, I accepted a position in the Massachusetts public schools and spent the following seven years teaching science and coaching football at a suburban high school. It was during this time that I first discovered an interest in software development as I began creating small applications to support student learning in my classroom. Inspired by the success of these endeavors, I left the public schools in the fall of 2007 to pursue my masters degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education [HGSE]. I enrolled in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program wherein I enjoyed many wonderful opportunities to extend my programming skills and understanding of educational technology.  After graduation, I co-founded a small educational media company that services the e-learning industry in various parts of the country. While my work at Vida and elsewhere keeps me rather busy, I still manage to find time once a week to revisit the classroom. I currently serve as teaching fellow and lab instructor for two courses at HGSE: Educational Software Design and Universal Design for Learning.

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