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Advice for Digital Immigrants: Connecting to the World

Advice for Digital Immigrants

by Doug Bowen-Bailey
webmaster@cit-asl.org

Critical LInk International

Connecting to the World

The CIT supported my attending the Critical Link International conference where I delivered a paper on a framework for creating online resources. Thanks to all of the CIT members who attended. It was really nice to have friendly faces in the audience for my presentation.
In addition to presenting, I shared a blog of my experience – which I am continuing to build because I am still reflecting on my experience. I have posted reports on the sessions that I attended – which turned out to be appreciated by CIT members as well as a much larger audience. I had one Critical Link International conference attendee approach me on a break and share that my blog was spreading in Norway for all of the interpreters and educators who wanted to attend, but were not able to. To me, it was really an example of how technology, when used effectively, can bring people together and magnify the impact of our efforts.
That was certainly a theme at the Critical Link conference: that technology is truly a force we need to acknowledge and be preapred to guide. Whether we like it or not as interpreter educators, the digital revolution is fully upon us. Facing up to this reality will be an important determining factor in how effective we are as profession in ensuring that technology serves our profession rather than interpreters ending up serving technology.
In looking at these issues, we are certainly not alone. One of the speakers who was a highlight for me was Katharine Allen, who is a co-president of InterpretAmerica, which is a national forum of interpreting that was launched in 2010. They have sponsored a series of North American Summits on Interpreting. The focus is on both spoken and signed langauge interpreting.
At the latest summit, CIT member Stephanie Jo Kent was part of an Interpret-ED Talks series in which she shared her thoughts on the Real Value of Interpreting, which is shared on the blog for the International Association of Conference Interpreting whose acronym (AIIC) comes from its French name, Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence
Here are the slides from her presentation and here is a link to the transcript of her talk.

Other Connections

Forums like blogs offer a myriad of ways to connect, but there are an increasing number of ways to connect to research. In addition to journals like CIT’s International Journal of Interpreter Education, more academic scholarship is being hosted online. Daniel Greene’s article shares some examples of graduate scholarship from students at Western Oregon University’s graduate program.
Additionally, RID’s Journal of Interpretation has now moved online. For some people, the change from print to online publishing may be a significant loss. For many digital immigrants, not being able to read a book or journal in a paper format is a barrier to accessing the information.
In that transition, I would suggest that people who are lamenting the loss of the paper journals given consideration to using a tablet, such as an iPad, Kindle, or Nexus. Reading on a computer is markedly different from reading on a tablet – something that you can hold much more in a way like a book, and which can be taken with you in the same way. In fact, I find that it is much easier for me to organize and hold a variety of journal articles if I have them on my iPad, as opposed into the chaos of my desk or messenger bag.
So, if you are looking for some more summer reading of the professional variety in addition to the IJIE, why not consider catching up on RID’s Journal of Interpretation. Here’s the contents for the 2012 edition.

If you are tablet user, download the PDFs of these articles and carry them with you. If you haven’t discovered the possibilities of tablets yet, consider it. It is one step in making sure that the technology serves you, rather than the other way around.