The New Curiosity Shop

Learning online isn’t natural, but it is fun. We feel that the best way to find out is to try it for yourself. For that reason, we have created a very short course called ‘How to Learn Online’ that will be your guide.

This course will also help you get back into learning ways, and it’s painless and fun. Also, if you take this course, we will give you a 10% discount on the next course you join here at the NCS Online College.

To find out more, visit the course information page: How to Learn Online

Don’t just read about it – try it! Join us on a free course about the history of Hot Air Ballooning. You too will feel you can fly, as you find out who flew the first hot air balloons, and how Edinburgh is proved yet again to be at the forefront.

The course is called “The Fire Balloon”, and you can enter by clicking on this link: The Learning Place – The Fire Balloon. When you arrive, follow the instructions to create an account, and join in. This will open in a new window, so you can return here to find out more.

It’s over 40 years since Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon.

Follow in his footsteps in the Story of Apollo

The BBC is running a competition called My Story in which the winning stories will be made into a TV series. The top five will be published in a book and most of the entries will make their way onto the BBC web site.

NCS tutor, Joanna Howard, may be able to give you some help in crafting a winning entry. Have a look at her course, Your Story – Writing a Life, which can guide you in writing your unique personal story. A few lessons with Jo and you could be writing a BBC TV episode.

More from the BBC.

Adult Learners’ Week runs from 9th to 15th May this year and NCS is doing its bit to support it. You can try some course snippets and a complete free course over at the NCS ALW page. Try a course on Archaeology, Health Care or Herbology. It’s all free for Adult Learners’ Week.

Feminist Philosophy

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s new Apollo course, the NCS is proud to announce another new course, Feminist Philosophy. Course tutor, Jenifer Booth will be leading students through the writings of women philosophers whose work reveals some key aspects of current feminist thought. Aimed at a more general learner than the philosophy specialist, Jenifer hopes that it will be an introduction to philosophy for many, as well as an introduction to feminism.

The course will introduce general feminist philosophy as well as feminist political philosophy, through the work of Genevieve Lloyd, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Maria von Herbert, Luce Irigaray and Mary Wollstonecraft. It is planned to go live in May. Find out more about NCS courses on their web site.

Cloisters 21, the latest edition of our magazine is out now. It is available as an online electronic magazine at http://issuu.com/cloisters/docs/cloisters21. You can read it there in comfort and style.

Post your comments on the new magazine here, and let us know if you have any ideas for future articles.

We are proud to announce that our NCS Open Space is now open. Here you can try out a small range of course ‘snippets,’ from Egyptian Archaeology, to astronomy. We are launching this as part of Adult Learners’ Week 2008, but NCS Open Space will remain open from now on.

The course snippets themselves will change, so it is well worth popping back from time to time to find out what has been added recently. Join our mailing list, and we’ll keep you posted of new additions to our course snippets, and our course catalogue.

Have fun

As part of our contribution to Adult Learners’ Week we are launching our NCS Open Space.

In the NCS Open Space you can try a sample of our courses – course snippets – and try a liitle light learning. Each snippet should take no more than around 15 minutes to complete.

To find out more visit our Adult Learners’ Week page

We have a blog. We’ve taken a while to get round to setting one up, but we have finally taken the plunge. What we didn’t want to do was to create a blog just for the sake of having a blog. After all, there are millions of blogs out there: what would be the point of adding another one?

The NCS team thought long and hard, and we realised that one of our main failings is alerting folks out there about what we do, and this blog is one of the ways we are working towards getting our message out.

It also solves another problem. From time to time we come across news items, websites and other bits of information that are relevant to adult learning and online distance learning in particular, and we don’t really have a place to bring them to other people’s attention. Now we do.

Lastly, it’s also a great place to mention news and information relevant to the subjects we offer. It may be a touch serendipitous, and at other times a ad random, but we’re curious folk here at NCS Towers, and we never know what might catch our interest.

Cheers

Noel

(NCS Partner)