Addie Kinsinger: A Grand Lady of the Field

Abstract

Part of my journey in the field of educational technology began in 1999 when I attended my first AECT convention. It was held in Houston, and I was a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky at the time. Like many new doctoral students, I didn’t know many people in the field. At the Houston conference, some of the members of the Distance Learning Division, formerly the Division of Telecommunications, “adopted” me as the new AECT kid on the block. The online learning movement was in its infancy, so many of the people in that division came from the area of public television, including a leader in the field by the name of Addie Kinsinger, who worked with KAET-TV in Arizona to create the program Arizona School Services through Educational Technology (ASSET). While we didn’t meet that year, Addy and I were already members of the same division within AECT. At that conference I realized that, if I really wanted to immerse myself in the field, and I did, the best thing for me as a student was to apply for a conference internship the following year. So, I applied and was accepted as an intern for the 2000 AECT Convention in Long Beach.