NCS News

November 2007

In my part of the world, the autumn colours are in full flow, the air is a little crisp and the sun is shining. The background of a deep blue sky with orange and gold trees to the fore is a photographer's wonderland. For those of you unlucky enough to be stuck in a grey city, there is always the consolation that autumn is the start of the learning season and we have a lot of great courses for you to try.

If you found that my little paragraph raised some interest in seeing the south west of Scotland in autumn, can you think of something that you are passionate about that you could raise interest in through your writing? Have a look at our call to writers this month and maybe you could make something exciting to go in our new Cloisters magazine.

This month our Treasure Hunt is over. Unfortunately we didn't attract the usual high calibre of entrants this time and, sadly, the prize goes to a cat named Socks from Blue Peter.

There is some news for our family history students this month. Those of you interested in Family History Begins at Home, It's a Long Way From Tipperary: Life in the Trenches (1914-1918), Before we go to Paradise: the Development of the Garden Cemetery or Scotland in the 13th Century might also find the BBC's new magazine 'Who Do You Think You Are?' to be useful, too.

Mark Toner

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Call To Writers

Cloisters is a quarterly magazine with the goal of encouraging people to return to learning and education. It will cover themes related to subjects in the NCS course catalogue, but it will also explore other ideas. We aim to provoke curiosity and raise as many questions as are answered. We want to point our readers into the areas where new answers are being sought and encourage an active involvement in learning rather than providing a spoon-fed consumerist version of knowledge.

Initially, each issue will contain features, articles and reviews of books, websites and other media. We intend Cloisters to build up into a resource for our students, guiding them to useful sources to help them on their way through their studies. We hope to entice readers into becoming learners, either at the New Curiosity Shop Online College, or elsewhere.

We will be paying for the feature articles and there will usually be three: a longer, 2000-word article and two shorter, 1000-word pieces. As a guide to the style of English, we have decided to go to the experts and adopt the BBC's News StyleGuide. This is a valuable resource anyway, even if you aren't planning on writing for Cloisters!

In addition to the text, good quality graphics and illustrations will also accompany each article and suggestions from the writer are welcome as to how the piece should be illustrated.

The book reviews are generally invited, with an expert in the field being given a copy of the book in payment. This may also apply to reviews of other media.

Exploring the Web

We are keen to see thoughtful and detailed reviews of websites that deserve our attention. The web is beginning to grow up, and there are many substantial sites out there that should be examined and reviewed with the same vigour as would be applied to a book or a film. We are looking for site reviews of a minimum of 300 words.

The editorial line follows NCS philosophy. We aim to encourage learning for its own sake and, although a computer is required to access one of our courses, we focus the learning experience on the real world beyond the computer screen. The Internet is our medium, not our reason for being. For this reason, we are less likely to publish articles about using computers and would only consider such a thing if it was in some way encouraging the reader to look beyond the normal use of such technology.

So, if you think you can provide what we are looking for, get in touch. Tell us your idea and give us a taster. You can contact the editor by email at cloisters@newcurioshop.com.