Looks like it's time for someone to speak up. I can certainly identify with Betty Collis' concerns regarding the amount of techno-info whirling around us and the frustrations one encounters when trying to get a handle on any of it, never mind just grasping the portion relegated as telecommunications. The root cause of my becoming a graduate student after spending 15 years away from learning institutions is because I can feel the wind sweeping past me from that swirling hotbed of activity broadly called technology and I want to get closer, if not exactly in the midst of the mayhem.
But to cut to the chase and give my quickest, if not exactly best thought out, response to the question of the paper (i.e., How should we design the curriculum of faculties involved with educational/instructional technology to include applications of telecommunications for learning and instruction?) especially taking into account the variety of directions that endeavor can take, as Betty pointed out in her paper.
In the words of a former employer when I was going through a phase where I thought I would like to be a radio salesperson: "Even a blind squirrel will dig up a nut eventually." (Actually, the blind squirrel surely does better at digging up nuts than I did at selling radio advertising!)
But more realistically, I like the philosophy I feel my graduate program fosters (and I DO hope I don't misrepresent the school here!) which is to give us solid fundamentals, theories, and histories of technological areas and then to introduce us through research to those people or groups of people in the various fields that are bringing about new knowledge and changes. To be perfectly honest, we have lots of the amenities, including a wonderful new technology lab in the educational department that is a great improvement and has lots of promise for future development. I would be remiss not to mention it, as well as how proud I am of the facility and pleased to be able to use it. But I can't take all that hardware and software with me when I leave the nest! The next place I go won't be at all like it! But, I feel I'm getting the background knowledge, problem-solving skills, and research capabilities I'll need to succeed at the next great break-through technology, whatever it will be. And, that's what I went back to school to get.
As far as defining the professional in educational telecommunications, let me just say this: the professional is the one in pursuit of the knowledge and actively engaged in using the knowledge. Which means the professional in educational technology has a lot in common with just about all other professionals because right now many of us are pursuing the same kinds of knowledge, which is technology. I guess it must be enough that we are trying to dig up those "nuts" even though it doesn't quite fit in with the paradigm of our profession (whatever it may be. I came from the communications field and find there are many bleeding edges between that field and education).
Sounds more and more like Peter Drucker, philosopher and futurist, has some meat in that message of his (sorry, no reference--I've only read a newspaper article by him, carried in the now defunct Houston Post). He says it will be the knowledge worker that controls the society of the future; the one that can retrieve, organize and disseminate the knowledge. Sounds like a rallying cry for the field of education to me!