To be honest I could care less about your job title – a rose by any other name and all that. However, I find myself more in agreement with Ian Gardner rather than most of the other commentators.

I'm not sure that it's possible, or desirable, to “make yourself redundant” in the way you describe. I'll offer two brief reasons below but will happily expand if anyone cares enough to ask. I'll base both on your Sherpa analogy. Everest was first conquered (probably) in 1953 So clearly Sherpas are no longer necessary… stuff and nonsense of course. Sherpas are clearly still valued and necessary for all sorts of reasons, for example, new climbers will want to access their experience and experienced climbers will want to explore new routes with them.

I think these two reasons transfer directly to your situation. New teachers (and learners) will benefit from your experience. First, you've been there before and can help them avoid pitfalls as well as helping to bail them out when difficulties arise. Second, the only universal constant is change. There are always new tools, new ideas, new approaches to be evaluated and discarded or adopted as appropriate. Even an experienced learning community will benefit from someone like yourself who will work with them and help them separate the wheat from the chaff.

So will you be doing the same job in three years time? Probably not. But will you be redundant (as in unnecessary)? I doubt it!

I once thought I would be redundant from my learning technology (lt) post in 2 years, including rewriting my job description into a temporary one, some reasons I am not (and why the description was not accepted):

- Institutional changes.
(No matter how much you may have a vision) budgets, institutional objectives, etc. will impact on the outcomes you can achieve.
- Success.
If you become valued and you are a success at embedding new ways of thinking there will always be a role in supporting new technologies, new ways of thinking, etc.
- You remain the 'expert'
Even if people are trained or confident using Frog, etc. there will be a role for central support. If new staff are hired without consideration for LT skills then central support remains important for getting new staff 'up to speed'.

Probably other, better, reasons too that I cant think of at the mo.

The 'e-learning' part would hopefully be lost though as you embed 'e' into being standard.

I once thought I would be redundant from my learning technology (lt) post in 2 years, including rewriting my job description into a temporary one, some reasons I am not (and why the description was not accepted):

- Institutional changes.
(No matter how much you may have a vision) budgets, institutional objectives, etc. will impact on the outcomes you can achieve.
- Success.
If you become valued and you are a success at embedding new ways of thinking there will always be a role in supporting new technologies, new ways of thinking, etc.
- You remain the 'expert'
Even if people are trained or confident using Frog, etc. there will be a role for central support. If new staff are hired without consideration for LT skills then central support remains important for getting new staff 'up to speed'.

Probably other, better, reasons too that I cant think of at the mo.

The 'e-learning' part would hopefully be lost though as you embed 'e' into being standard.

It will involve set targets, planning development and growth, dealing with the variances that arise due to the successes and failures, making the decisions and then reporting back to the boss and other stakeholders.

Erm … actually, not too different to a board director then who has been given a specific area of authority.

Personally I don't like the part of the title that say 'eLearning', but accept that this is a step change in many schools to ensure that the use of technology in learning needs a heck of a lot of change and training for staff and students and how they learn and work. I am also interested in the overlap of roles at the school with that of Director of T&L and Director of Operations …

As for where you go on from here … 3 years as Director of eLearning, then 2 as Director of Innovation and you have reached year 5 of the Academy Dev Plan. And remember that it all has to fit around the Academy Development Plan …

Just drop the “Director” title…!

Best of luck

I'm certainly not saying that after 3 years it's 'sayonara' to NCEA, just
that I've got a 3-year plan after which hopefully my job will be done.

Seriously, the fact that you aim to stay for the longer term and lead the change will mean a lot to all your new colleagues.

After that, who knows? However much we like to predict the future, the fact is that we have no clue what it will bring. In the meantime, I'll wish you good luck for in 3 years time!