Next new thing – teaching 2.0

If you’re considering a move to teaching, you’re wise to know about the latest trends, including one we hear about from Sue Gubing, an education consultant in Smithtown, -- that’s online teaching. Colleges and universities already offer online courses, and lower grades, too, are seeing the possibilities for virtual classrooms. Gubing teaches a class on online teaching. Where? Online, of course, for SUNY Oswego.

Here are resources she suggests where you can learn more:

http://www.school2-0.org/

http://www.stevehargadon.com/2007/03/susan-patrick-on-online-learning-school.html

From corporate to classroom

In researching this weekend’s article on business types making transitions into classroom teaching, I asked Lisa Strahs-Lorenc at the Long Island Works Coalition to send a request to her list serve asking for examples from people who have done it. Posted here and below are three of their stories:

……………………………………

Passion over glamour

Abby Archdeacon
Guidance counselor
Westbury High School

Former job:
“Affiliate relations manager for a top regional sports network.  I met the NY Yankees, NY Mets, NY Knicks and I was even able to golf with the NY Rangers -- the perks were fabulous.”

Downside:
“What wasn’t fabulous was taking a train to Manhattan everyday (that is when I wasn’t traveling upstate on a prop plane praying for my life to visit an affiliate).  I didn’t mind the commute so much as I was actually really bored at work.  Sounds strange, but I was not challenged.”

Decided to make a move:
November of 2001

Corporate to classroom: “I always wanted to be a teacher”

Kathy Williams
Business teacher
Southold Junior/Senior High School

Early career goal:
“I wanted to be an English teacher when an accounting teacher from college said, "You will never get a teaching job," the market is flooded. He told me I would be putting ketchup on burgers. Well anyway I followed his advice and went on to get my degree in finance with a minor in economics from C.W. Post.”

First job:
After I graduated, I began working for Merrill Lynch.... [In] about a year Merrill decided they wanted to sponsor me to become a broker. I studied and studied and studied and took the hardest test of my life. The series 7. Well I passed and I was officially a certified stock broker.

Corporate to classroom: “A light bulb went off”

Mary Pat Grafstein
Work experience coordinator
Smithtown Central School District

Profession 11 years ago:
Sales and marketing, covering Long Island, New York City and Westchester territory

Decided to move:
“Once I had my children I did not want to go back into this field due to the traveling and the distance my job would take me from my family. Being one to two hours from home if there was an emergency was frightening to me.”

Finding a new direction:
“I looked into several different jobs that would afford me the opportunity to stay closer to home. At the same time, I had become involved in my children’s school activities and was in and out of the schools in our district. This is when a light bulb went off in my head…..I really enjoyed being in an educational setting. I should get a job in the school system!”

For professionals: Blogging 101

The idea for this week-end’s article on professionals who blog came about because at two recent speaking engagements, I heard a couple of audience members dismiss ALL blogs as rants or hyper-personal minutia written by the self-absorbed.

Admittedly most may well be, but I have found that a certain segment rises like cream to the top and among them are select blogs written by professionals about their fields.

So, for those with an itch to report and write on issues in their own industries, here are some thoughts on how to get started.

Besides seeking out and commenting on blogs that cover your profession, do a Google search of “blogging 101” to find resources to help, says Elisa Camahort, president of BlogHer.org, which is running a conference in July  with sessions on blogging fundamentals.

Check to see if your professional association is planning a workshop on this and if not, volunteer to help set one up. Some associations are even launching group blogs written by members. And industry-specific resources are popping up, such as LexBlog, a service for lawyers who blog.

A couple of basics:

Professionals would never want to be cavalier with facts or attribution of sources. “My name is on that blog. If I get it wrong it’s myself and my career that will suffer,” says Troy Rosasco, an attorney who blogs on disabled worker issues.

On the other hand, you do want to write in the first person and show some personality, otherwise your posts will come across like school research papers, says Steve Levy, who blogs on recruiting issues.  Remember, he says, that “A blog without soul is just an advertisement.”

“Trading wing-tips for motorcycle boots”

As mentioned in the post below, I interviewed David Gross, a former Long Islander, whose career path has taken him from financial journalist to Wall Street attorney to creative director of a motorcycle company based in Bologna, Italy.

If you want to learn more about him and his experiences you can look into his new book, “Fast Company – A Memoir of Life, Love, and Motorcycles  in Italy.” (See what my colleague wrote about it last month.)

In it he tells of his early years:

“We did not have bikers in my North Shore neighborhood. We did not discuss cars, let alone superbikes, while I was growing up. My parents did not know about torque ratios or tire widths, nor did they wait with bated breath for the latest model with more horsepower and a slipper clutch.”

His dissatisfaction with that hot-shot law firm:

“The firm was raking in ‘the big bucks’ from the merger of drug companies. I needed Zoloft….I pressed my face flat against the corporate glass, looking out over a midtown deserted on a Saturday. ‘God, get me out of here.’”

His decision to move:

“And without thinking much more, I signed up for six months in Bologna, trading wing-tips for motorcycle boots. I departed not knowing much about the place, except that it was a left-leaning university town that had invented the luncheon meat that Americans refer to as ‘baloney’ but was actually called mortadella.”

Italy times 2

Just in case anyone’s been thinking that Newsday has been lax in coverage of Italy lately, I can report that I had occasion to mention that country in two stories in the Sunday paper.

Once in a Q&A with a guy who grew up in Northport – and then went on to become creative director for Ducati Motorcycles in Bologna. This to complement a story on how so many students these days are studying and interning abroad.

Also in a travel essay on my experiences last fall in a cooking program in Tuscany, where I met three bright young American women:

--Julia Simmons, an entertainment marketing executive, who wrote of that cooking adventure in the late October/early November posts to her travel blog.

--Nicole Johnson, who I just found out has relocated to Dallas from Dublin where she had been working at the time.

--Jessica Altieri, who’s just graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism.

And did I mention? Jess happened to be a study abroad student, who has stayed in touch with me and we are now noodling around ideas for her new venture, which will involve food, video and, eventually, Italy.