My instructional design story

Education was something I always wanted to get into. I always enjoyed learning new things. I also had fantastic teachers growing up, I was lucky in that sense.

Uni

After I finished my BA, I did a Post Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) in order to teach Japanese to non native speakers and Global Politics. The Global Politics specialism would actually fall under the Humanities, so lucky for me, I was also able to teach integrated humanities, geography and history. I loved every second of my teaching practicums and I knew I loved educating others.

Right after the PGDE, I hopped on a plane to Japan on the JET Programme! This would be the best few years of my life, accomplishing something huge - living overseas! I knew I'd wanted to live overseas at least once in my life; little did I know, this would kickstart a series of stints overseas...

The Jet Programme

After my time on the Jet Programme, where I taught English, developed the ESL curriculum and led professional development seminars for fellow JETs in my prefecture, it was time to get a 'real' job. Job-hunting in Japan is a whole other kettle of fish but I managed to land a job as a classroom teacher at an international school! This was a fun and rewarding role and I still look back on this time fondly.

Teaching in Australia

After another couple of years, I headed back to Australia to complete my VIT graduate teacher project. For this project, I specialised in intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in language learning. It was a very worthwhile project and I was able to first try my hand at language learning edTech software! I became the Education Perfect go to 'lead' at my school and the kids and I fell in love with it!

Online learning technology

After a few years, my partner at the time (now husband) facilitated another move back to Japan, but this was at the worst possible time, because COVID had entered the picture. Melbourne was in full lockdown and I was teaching from home. I found it was a great way to introduce myself to more new learning technology and quickly mastered Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and gamified learning sites such as Kahoot and Quizziz! These programmes saved my life during online learning!

Master of International Education

This was probably not the best time to do so, but I decided to begin a masters degree in international education. It was so worthwhile and led to a published article in an education journal about international mindedness in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.

Creative focused international school

After the first lockdown ended, I headed back to Japan and worked at an international school that was very design and creative focused. This was wonderful because I love creating content. I've had a blog (now defunct), I love socials (although I tried not to post revealing information because I didn't want kids to find me) and I enjoyed playing around with Canva. During this role, I familiarised myself with Canva, Seesaw, Apple Pages, iMovie and Slack. I ended up creating a student centred learning project where I facilitated learning through content creation. It was an inquiry based learning endeavour called Oak TV where the kids decided to film about their most interesting learning topic, developing their depth of inquiry through diverse provocations. This was incredibly fun and both the students and parents looked forward to every new episode at the end of each unit of inquiry.

International Baccalaureate

Fast forward and after this creative school adventure, I began working at an International Baccalaureate international school in Tokyo. Even more exciting was the fact that this was a bilingual school so English and Japanese were the languages of instruction on alternating days! I refined my content creation craft at this school through personalised and delicately design journal posts based on the activities of the day.

Life happened

This was where life took a turn, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and it took me by surprise. After all, I was healthy, I'd run a marathon, I went to the gym everyday, I ate well and I minimised my exposure to harmful products. What on earth was going on?

Youtube

My world was turned upside down, but this is where I got into content creation at full speed, I documented my entire breast cancer journey on Youtube and that channel has since developed into a lifestyle vlog because every cancer channel I came across just stopped. I didn't understand this because as a breast cancer patient, I wanted to see these people surviving and thriving! It gave me anxiety not knowing what had happened. I also want to provide hope for other young breast cancer patients out there, to show that yes, we can come back stronger than ever.

This life changing event caused me to reflect on life itself and although I loved teaching, I wanted to make a difference on a larger scale, work with tech in a more meaningful way and be a part of a positive change in a variety of industries. I went back to Australia to continue treatment, and after taking time to heal, CRTing here and there, I decided to pivot into instructional design and it was the best decision I ever made! I am so inspired after undertaking professional development on Social Impact Instructional Design and I am excited to be a part of this.

Although I am confident in learning theory, education principles and I loved creating written, visual and video content, crafting instructional design modules was all new. I decided to begin the Georgetown University Certificate in Instructional Design and this has become my new passion, instructional design!

If you're a charity or boutique small business looking for instructional design or content creation, then let's chat because I am looking to give back to the world through fun, engaging and aesthetically designed learning initiatives!