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Net Nerds
Get Smart by Susan Ives, Alamo PC |
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Net Nerds
Get Smart by Susan Ives, Alamo PC |
| Some friends and
I recently read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The book
is about how change happens and in it he describes three types of change
agents. Connectors are people with fat address books. Salesmen sell ideas.
Mavens are people who know stuff. Lots of stuff. Off the wall stuff. All
heads spun to stare at me. I’m a maven.
It must have been something in the drinking water when I was growing up, because my brother is exactly the same way. We are both compulsive learners and the effect of the two of us in the same room is staggering. It should come as no surprise that I’ve been intrigued by the capability of the Internet to teach me stuff. There are many formats of online learning. Some are free, some charge. Some are for joy, others for credit. Some have set start and end times, others have “rolling admission,” meaning you begin and end at your convenience. Before you whip out your credit card, I recommend signing up for a free class to see whether this style of learning suits you. Barnes and Noble University has a clear and clever marketing strategy: they use their courses to sell books. Every class has a required text, which you can conveniently buy online. I signed up for Our Western Heritage: From 1500 to Today, which is based on Jacques Barzun’s book, From Dawn to Decadence. The bookstore isn’t making any money off of me: I bought the book and had it autographed by the author, now a San Antonio resident, when he spoke at Trinity last year. The B&NU has eight campuses:
Each class has an instructor; mine is an historian from Washington, D.C. I get eight lessons. The seventh is, “In the first half of the twentieth century, Western Civilization turned on itself in an unprecedented fury of destruction.” Can’t wait! Class length ranges from a one-time seminar to six weeks. You can take as many classes as you want, and it’s free. I signed up to get a reminder every time the instructor posts a new lesson, which I read, online. I can participate in a discussion board where I can ask the instructor questions or interact with other students. The student body includes people from all over the world. I also have access to a calendar, where I can schedule my studies, and a student notebook, an online journal used to organize notes. The Third Age Learning Center has a similar structure but the content is lighter. It is designed for Baby Boomers, so classes include looking great, how to meet people online, smart Web shopping, fitness workout (I signed up for this one) and finding travel bargains. They also have qualified instructors and online discussions and the ability to e-mail the instructor for assistance. The first lesson in my fitness class had three assignments. First, I took a fun quiz to test my knowledge about the benefits of exercise. Then, after reading an article about exercise, I learned to calculate my body mass index (BMI) and set realistic goals. Total time, about 1/2 hour. Now I just wait for the next lesson. I also enrolled in a 10-week walking program sponsored by About.com. The Walk of Life newsletter arrives in my mailbox every day. It reminds me to walk, with a new goal or hint every day, plus gives me a daily fitness and nutrition tip and a healthy recipe. My friend and fellow Alamo PC member Jim Collier recently took a class from Writer’s Village. Their setup is different: membership is $59/year, and you can take as many of their 130+ courses as you can handle. Jim took The Writers' Way to Creativity, a 12-week course dealing with creative blocks and enjoyed it immensely. Another for-fee model is Learn2. They offer hundreds of short courses, most of them costing $19.95 each. When you’re ready for prime time, many college courses are offered online, for a fee and for credit. The Alamo Community College District’s Multiversity for Cyber Learning offers dozens of classes, sponsored by all four San Antonio campuses, that you can take at home at your own pace. You access lessons and lectures from home via the World Wide Web and e-mail. Internet courses are the same as traditional classes in the terms of academic quality, credit hours, transferability, and cost. Regular faculty are assigned to guide and instruct you throughout the semester. You’ll need to read the catalog to grasp the registration policies and fees, but San Antonio residents can roughly expect to spend $277 for tuition and fees for up to 6 hours (two courses) a semester. Senior citizens age 65 and older can audit courses for free or take them for credit by paying the student fees ($80/semester.) St. Philip’s offered about 25 Internet-based courses during its summer
term, including American history, medical terminology and Microsoft networking
essentials. For most classes you have to attend a one-shot orientation
session and you may have to take a final exam in person.
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