The Magazine of The New Curiosity Shop - November 2005

Welcome to the first issue of ‘Cloisters,’ the online magazine of the New Curiosity Shop. With this monthly publication, we hope to keep you informed of the latest developments in online learning with the personal touch.

As you can see from this issue, we will be highlighting individual courses and their tutors. In future issues, you will meet students who have taken New Curiosity Shop courses and learn about their experiences with us.

Each month, Noel Chidwick will be helping you make the most of our courses with his regular articles on ‘Being an Online Learner’ and Arthur Chapman will keep you up to date with our new courses.

If there is anything in particular that you would like to see in ‘Cloisters,’ drop us a line for the attention of the editor, Mark Toner (to editor at newcurioshop.com). We hope you enjoy this monthly read. Look out for a Christmas gift with our next issue and keep learning.

- Mark Toner, November 2005.

Cloisters Contents

Online Learning Parties

Course of the Month: Before We Go To Paradise

Being An Online Learner

Teaching Online: an interview with tutor Sarah Pouezevara

New Courses

Online Learning Parties

Way back at the very start of the 'Astronomy for Beginners' course a group of doctors from Edinburgh all signed up together. However, only one of these students seemed to be accessing the course and the tutor was starting to worry that technical difficulties had struck.

It wasn't until the first live tutorial that the group revealed that they were sharing a computer, all gathering at one house for a few beers and an enjoyable evening learning astronomy. Everyone else, including the tutor, was jealous.

In the spirit of this sociable approach to learning, the New Curiosity Shop offers a group discount: If you sign up as a group of four or more, you'll get 10% off. Visit Learning with Friends to register.

Contents

November - Course of the Month

Each month we will highlight one of our courses that we think is a little bit more special than usual. This month it is the turn of 'Before we go to paradise: the Development of the Garden Cemetery'.

“All Souls Cemetery Kensal Green, why would I be interested in an old overgrown cemetery in London?” You might well ask. However, these great cemeteries tell us much about the Victorians and their attitude to death. Far from shutting it away both literally and psychologically, as we tend to do, the Victorians celebrated our final journey with mixture of formality and sentimentality. More ...

Contents

Being an Online Learner

Being an Online Learner is a series of articles for Cloisters that will explore what it is to be an adult learner here in the 21st Century, in the Age of the Internet. We’ll look at what online learning is - and isn’t; we’ll find out where online learning has come from and all the benefits of life as an online learner. In this series we’ll also investigate some deft strategies to help you make the most of an online course. As the months go by we may stray off the beaten track as we spot something interesting in the undergrowth - but that’s half the fun isn’t it? More ...

Contents

Teaching Online

We have a team of very special people who put together our courses and guide our students through them. This month we talk to Sarah Pouezevara, who is the tutor on our 'HIV/AIDS and Society' course. More...

Contents

November – New Courses

It’s exciting times at the New Curiosity Shop with a number of new courses ready to roll. More ...

Contents

News

World AIDS Day 2005

The 1st December is World AIDS Day. HIV is one of the biggest social, economic and health challenges in the world. It is a global emergency claiming over 8,000 lives every day. In fact 5 people die of AIDS every minute.

Wear a red ribbon to show your support for those living with HIV and find out more at the official website www.worldaidsday.org. If AIDS is something that affects you in some way, or if you want to find out the real story of how HIV/AIDS affects society, you should enrol on our course: HIV/Aids and Society.

The Open University Moodles Up

'Moodle' is the name of the online learning environment at the heart of the New Curiosity Shop, and we think it is just wonderful: it makes online learning straightforward for our learners, and makes it more fun.

From 2006 the The Open University will be following in our footsteps and adopting Moodle as its online learning environment. This is good news for learners at the New Curiosity Shop. We think our courses are a good beginning for returning adult learners who want to tread the learning path before moving on to more formal learning - and that includes the OU. Now that the OU is taking on Moodle, that means that our learners can bring their Moodle experience to bear straightaway if they decide to study at the OU. It's one less barrier to overcome.

Adult Education in the News

Adult education is under the scrutiny of government again, in England and Wales. Sir Andrew Foster, former chief executive of the Audit Commission has called for failing colleges to be closed or handed over to other institutions or private companies, as reported by BBC News today.

This follows an anouncement last month by the minister for further and higher education, Bill Rammell, that colleges would be getting better resources. However, this appears to be coming from higher fees to students. See the Education Guardian for more.