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Cloisters

The Magazine of The New Curiosity Shop - March 2006

Welcome to the fifth edition of Cloisters. There are exciting developments in the New Curiosity Shop this month. We are now associated with Newbattle Abbey College and have a new office address there. Also we are beginning to put in place a virtual open week to coincide with Adult Learners' Week between the 20th and 26th of May.

Entries are coming in for our current Paul's Puzzle. Remember to get your entry to us before the 15th of April to have a chance of winning a free course. And even if you don't win, have a look at our new courses and see if there is something there for you to discover and take part in online learning with the personal touch.

- Mark Toner, March 2006

Cloisters Contents

Newbattle News

Open Week

Being An Online Learner

Paul's Puzzle

Newbattle News

Spring is poking its head above the snowline, and we are looking forward to a fascinating time ahead.
It’s taken a while (that’s an example of British understatement) to get off the ground, but at last we have a formal agreement with a Scottish college to form what we describe as an ‘association.’
The college in question is Newbattle Abbey College, based in Dalkeith just south of Edinburgh. It’s website is at: http://www.newbattleabbeycollege.co.uk,
We are delighted to be able to make this association with this particular college. Its aims and philosophy are much the same as  ours, and the people at the college are a pleasure to work with, from the Principal down.

So what does this mean for us at The New Curiosity Shop?

1. Through Newbattle we will have access to the resources that are available to all Further Education Colleges in Scotland and the UK. Essentially this means access to resources through the UK Academic network, JANET. This is great news for course writers. It means you can tap into resources such as Athens (http://www.athens.ac.uk). Take a look at the list of resources available there at:
http://www.athensams.net/allresources.php
We can’t guarantee full access to it all: each provider has its own peculiarities and peccadilloes, but there’s a great wealth that would otherwise be denied to us as a purely private organisation, unless we paid a small fortune for each provider.
 Take a look at SCRAN (http://www.scran.ac.uk) , for example. This is a great repository of materials that we will be able to access, and use in our courses. There is also the material developed under the National Learning Network, at http://www.nln.ac.uk/
We will keep you informed of exactly how we get access, and to what, as soon as we know ourselves.
2. Reciprocity. Both partners will put links to each others’ websites, and other publicity materials, and refer to each others’ offerings as appropriate.
3. Accreditation. Exactly how this will work is to be confirmed (and we need to decide whether we want to!), but Newbattle Abbey College is an SQA (http://www.sqa.org.uk) Validation centre. More on this in time.
4. Change of address. We will be changing our business from my home address to: Newbattle Abbey College: a lot more credible to potential students than my home address.
5. Office/meeting space. We have been given a room at  Newbattle Abbey College as a base. For most of you this won’t make any difference, but for any tutors based within commuting distance of Edinburgh it might be something worth thinking about for holding seminars. For us (well me especially), it means we can arrange meetings that don’t involve clearing away the kids toys first! However, both Arthur and I will continue to work mostly from our respective homes.
This agreement is just for the remainder of the academic year, but there is every intention of renewing it beyond July 2006.
The benefits to  Newbattle Abbey College? We’re going to set up and maintain a Moodle server for the college, and train their teaching staff to use it.
It’s a smashing arrangement as both parties benefit, and no money changes hands. It is going to be interesting to see how this develops.

Contents

Open Week

We are planning our first virtual open week between the 20th and 26th May which will coincide with Adult Learners' Week. There will be various learning experiences that you can try out on the New Curiosity Shop web site as well as opportunities to talk with our tutors.

Expect a full timetable of events in the April Cloisters.

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