Audio Conferencing opportunities.

In my last post I meant to mention that there is one outfit offering audio conferencing opportunities for genealogists. May I suggest you visit Ancestral Manor http://ancestralmanor.com/dnn/ and look at their offerings
Sharon Sergeant, Lady of the Manor, so to speak, offers an interesting array of audio conferences or teleconferences including a lot of unusual topics. Check out this site, and say hello from me. If you join one of her teleconferences, please come back to us and share your impressions.

Audio conferencing. Can you hear me, now?

Recently I was contacted by the Education Institute a project of a consortium of Canadian library associations to do a second lecture for them on a topic pertaining to genealogical librarianship. I did my first lecture for them in November, a lecture called”Romancing the Genealogist” and found it a pleasant and interesting educational experience.

What’s an audio conference?

What are you reading?

You caught me at an awkward moment. I’m working my way through five books, some faster than others.

1. Terry Pratchett, Going postal: A Discworld Novel (London: Doubleday, 2004)
2. David Hey, How Our Ancestors Lived: A history of Life a Hundred Years Ago (Kew, Surrey,UK: The National Archives, 2002)
3. Sarah White, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Marketing Basics (New york: alpha Books,1997)
4. Douglas Gray, How to Start & Run a Consulting Business (North Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 2002)
5. Geri McArdle, Developing Instructional Design: A Step-by-Step Guide to Success ( Menlo Park: Crisp Publications, 1991)

As you can see, its sort of a wierd list. So your challenge is to figure out what’s going through my mind.

And what are you reading?

Curriculum Change

I’d like to blame Dean Hunter, Past president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies for planting the doubts that led to changes in my thinking, but to be honest, the doubt was perculating on the back burners of my mind for some time.It was at the National Genealogical Society conference in Milwaukee in 2002. Dean and I shared a room. One evening he told me about a converstation with his friend David Rencher, about what they were taught in their beginning genealogy classes. “What was I taught?” he asked.

Handouts and Syllabus Material

The other day I was working on a new lecture idea, “Sharpening the Saw: Distance Learning for the Genealogist” and doing what I usually do, construct the outline first. The outline also serves as the core of my handout or syllabus material. A colleague, another genealogy lecturer, raised the question, “Isn’t it a bit risky to give away your outline? Some unscrupulous person could pirate your talk.”