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NEW EIN WEB POSTINGS FOR FEBRUARY
Under MANAGING YOUR LLI
LLI Sampler – Lifelong Learning Institute,
VA
Tuesdays at the IRP – Institute for
Retired Professionals, NY
The Illustration Arts – Berkshire
Institute for Lifetime Learning, MA
Tech Thursdays – Academy for Lifelong
Learning, MA
Friday & Saturday Lecture Series –
McGill Institute for Learning in Retirement, Montreal
Curriculum Questionnaire Results –
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, ME
The History of Learning in Retirement
– Athens, GA
Videotaping Courses – Request from
CALL, PA
Under UPCOMING CONFERENCES
Midwest Registration Form
LLI News
LLI News for February
REGIONAL CONFERENCES SAVE THE DATE REMINDERS
June 3-5, 2007 – New England/East Regional LLI
Conference – Potsdam, NY. “Soaring: Dreams to Adventures.”
For more information visit the new conference web site at www.potsdam.edu/SOAR/conference
or email hessnl@potsdam.edu.
August 19-21, 2007 – Midwest Regional LLI Conference
– Schaumburg, IL. “Learning-Leadership-Innovation.”
For more information visit www.roosevelt.edu/icl
or email icl@roosevelt.edu. The
Registration Form for this conference can now be found on the EIN web
site under LLI CONFERENCES/Upcoming Conferences/Midwest Conference.
LLI NEWLETTERS AND COURSE CATALOGS
Just a reminder to keep sending EIN your newsletters and course catalogs.
Many of you do this by email or regular mail. We read every one and
use the information to create our web postings each month on the EIN
web site. You can send them to network@elderhostel.org
or to the Elderhostel Institute Network, 11 Avenue deLafayette, Boston,
MA 02111.
SENIORS GRAND CENTRAL LAUNCHES 50+ INTERNET COMMUNITY
On February 1st, 2007, Seniors Grand Central officially
launched it’s new Seniors Internet Community web site, an online
community built specifically for Baby Boomers, Active Adults, and Seniors.
The Internet community located at SeniorsGrandCentral.com
was designed around the three core abilities all people use throughout
their lives; Connection, Learning, and Exploration. Seniors Grand Central
provides an extension to these 3 core abilities, and is built around
the Natural Language we use everyday in an effort to make its’
technology incredibly easy to use. The web site’s features &
services include Mail, Pen Pals, Video-based Learning, Chat, Dating,
Discussion Groups, Journals/Blogs, Photo Galleries, Prescription Ordering,
Games, and much more. The web site also addresses many visual accessibility
issues with such tools as an On-Screen Magnifying Glass, Talking Menu
System, and Text Enlarger. An On-screen Voice Box Reader for Mail and
Chat is also currently planned for release. Seniors Grand Central offers
a full spectrum of services with its members requirements, and requests
placed as top priority. Since the website’s unofficial launch
September 20th, 2006 it has gained a member base across 33 countries.
In their new Learning Later section, LLI members will be welcome to
participate on a regular basis with articles, photos and videos of your
programs. Stay tuned for more details about this in the future. For
more information about Seniors Grand Central visit their web site at
- www.SeniorsGrandCentral.com
or email: Information@SeniorsGrandCentral.com
INTRODUCING ‘SAVE OUR STORIES®’
This is a repeat from last month so that programs which might not have
been in session in January can be made aware of this excellent curriculum
resource. (EIN)
For 20 of their 32 years of marriage and life partnership, journalists
Lew Little, 73, and Mary Ellen Corbett, 65, have been fine-tuning a
writing project they now call Save Our Stories (SOS). They want to see
as much national emphasis placed on the gathering and preservation of
life stories as there is on rehabilitation of historic structures. They
believe the time is right for the 2007 introduction of their Save Our
Stories News Service, an ink-on-paper and online supplemental service
that can be successful only with the blessing and participation of America’s
elders -- the folks the couple identifies as “our nation’s
endangered historians.” The secret to success, Corbett and Little
say, lies in the amazing synergy that grows out of interaction linking
seniors with students and teachers. Their news service hopes to initially
recruit scores of volunteer stringers (part-time correspondents) from
all 50 states and, eventually, from throughout the world.
The couple’s concept is a product of their extensive backgrounds.
Little was instrumental in the 1972 introduction of The Christian Science
Monitor News Service (CSMNS), and he was CSMNS national sales manager
from 2002-04. He began his career in 1952 as a sportswriter and then
as a California newspaper editor who entered the syndication field 10
years later. His best-known “discovery” for major syndicates
is the world’s most widely-distributed comic strip, Cartoonist
Jim Davis’s Garfield, launched in 1978. Corbett had her first
piece published at the ripe old age of 9. She has experience in weekly
and daily newspapers, magazines, and teaching college level journalism.
She and her husband published an award-winning Arizona weekly for five
years in the 1990s. They began their SOS project in 1986.
Be sure to read their introductory story about SOS on the EIN web site
under the MANAGING YOUR LLI section, and check out their new, under-construction
website, www.saveourstories.com.
This project would make an excellent course for all types of LLI writing
courses, especially those that deal with life stories, memoirs, etc.,
so be sure to visit their web site soon to learn how your program can
participate.
SWEDISH LEARNING CIRCLES
The keynote address given last November at the Maintaining Momentum
conference at the McGill Learning in Retirement program (MILR) in Montreal
focused on Swedish Learning Circles. “The Ins and Outs of Learning
Circles” given by Walter Duszara, an Adult Education Advisor,
told how he and about a dozen other Anglophone, adult educationists
from Montreal had toured Europe, where they had been especially impressed
by what they discovered in Scandinavia. There they found adult education
modeled on the 19th century Folk High Schools founded by Bishop Grundvig
in Denmark. These schools had spread throughout Scandinavia and he and
his group were particularly impressed by their present day manifestation
in Learning Circles in Sweden. These are non-formal, voluntary and available
to anyone over the age of 18. By comparison with MILR, they are often
residential and more concentrated in time, but share with MILR the commitment
to peer learning and student control of the curriculum. Impressively,
some 75% of Swedish people have benefited from Learning Circles.
LEARNING LATER LIVING GREATER WORKSHOP
The Brevard ElderLearning program in Cocoa, Florida is holding a day-long
workshop this month about the value of lifelong learning for older adults.
The program is open to the public at a cost of just $6 and will feature
a brown bag lunch. Their promotional piece says “Challenging our
minds is a definite way to stay younger mentally and stall the possible
onset of age related dementia problems. There are so many ways to keep
our minds alert and bright and still enjoy life. Our opening presenter,
a “professional student in his 80s,” will give an overview
of many opportunities that most people do not think of and are available
at little or no cost. After that different presenters will talk about
various programs offered at their institutions. The title of this program
is taken from a book of the same name, written by Nancy Merz Nordstrom,
our liaison from Elderhostel, (and used with her permission) on just
this topic and autographed copies for sale will be available.”
CATALOG SPONSORSHIP
Several programs utilize the support of local businesses to help offset
the costly production and mailing of course catalogs. For instance,
the ENCORE: Center for Lifelong Enrichment program at North Carolina
State University in Raleigh devotes one page of their catalog to companies
who have donated to their program. There are Platinum and Bronze sponsors,
and all get space on this page. Another program that does the same thing
is the Berkshire Institute for Lifetime Learning in Massachusetts. Half
of the back page of their catalog is devoted to the acknowledgement
of their sponsors. A great way to bring in extra funds and help promote
local businesses.
PEORIA READS
Members of the Bradley University ILR in Peoria got a head start last
month on the 2007 Peoria Reads events by discussing the 2007 choice,
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and the two runners-up,
Fahreneit 451 by Ray Bradbury; and Home Across the Road
by Nance Peacock. They also read Mockingbird, the recent biography
of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields.
A.L.L. ART GALLERY
The Academy for Lifelong Learning on Cape Cod is creating a new gallery
for displaying artwork in their common area. A hanging system has been
installed and a committee has been formed to seek artists to contribute
their work for exhibition. Any artwork for sale will donate a percentage
of the profits to A.L.L. to support future projects.
ICL MEMBERS RECRUITED
Members of the Institute for Continuing Learning at Young Harris College
in Georgia are being recruited for health communication research. The
aim of this research is to learn more about the role of narrative and
caregiver, care receiver and physician interaction in illness experience.
Participants will have the opportunity to talk about their acute, terminal
or catastrophic illness experiences in multiple times frames. Stories
will be included in a reader that will be geared to medical students,
medical sociologists, and communication scholars.
SCHOLARSHIP FUND FRIVE
Members of the Lifetime Learning Institute at Northern Virginia Community
College in Annandale, recently received a letter requesting a donation
to the LLI 2007 Student Awards Program. The program awards scholarships
to deserving students whose education will enable them to become valuable
contributors to society. A program like this goes a long way toward
proving the value of an LLI to its’ host college.
OLLI SENIOR PLAYERS IN DEMAND
In October the OLLI Senior Players at the University of Southern Maine
in Portland entertained members with several pieces from familiar and
some less familiar plays. They also performed in the Biddeford City
Theater in November by giving a performance designed to entice seniors
from the area to become more involved in theater by showing how much
fun it is and how easy it is for seniors to perform.
AN ART GALLERY FOR A.L.L.
The Academy for Lifelong Learning on Cape Cod will soon have its own
art gallery in their lovely new quarters. The gallery will feature the
work of A.L.L. members on a circulating basis, and possibly the work
of other artists as well. Many of these works will be for sale, with
a portion of the profits going to A.L.L. to support future projects.
NEW BOOKS FOR LLI COURSES
Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey.
During his 24 years as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
Harry Blackmun wrote many landmark opinions on an array of controversial
issues. Although probably best known as the author of the majority opinion
in Roe v. Wade in 1973, his legacy also includes notable opinions on
sex discrimination, bankruptcy and the death penalty. Pulitzer Prize-winning
New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse traces the
extraordinary life and career of this influential associate justice
in considerable detail in her consistently engaging, enlightening, and
very readable book.
The Last Voyage of Columbus, by Martin Dugard. In this book
we find a figure who, while familiar, is more human and thus more interesting
than the Christopher Columbus we know from history textbooks. Columbus
is, in many ways, one of the most complex and enigmatic figures in human
history. While certainly a man of vision, he was also stubborn to the
point of absurdity; he was also a superb navigator and sailor who often
had trouble with the sailors he led. As Dugard shows us in this remarkable
book, while Columbus may have thought himself a failure, and while he
remained virtually unremembered for a couple of centuries thereafter
(Amerigo Vespucci was mistakenly credited with the discovery), the truth
finally resurfaced. And amazingly, the wrecked ship in Panama tells
us that Columbus may have come within 38 miles of seeing his goal, the
Pacific Ocean.
USEFUL WEB SITES FOR LLI COURSES
Thanks to the January 2007 issue of “Signposts,” sent
by the U3A International Group UK and U3AOnline Australia, for the following
web sites.
Research: Worldcat - http://www.worldcat.org
- is the world's largest network of library content and services, enabling
you to search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands
more around the world.
History groups will find many interesting articles
and plenty of speculation at http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/
- among them, a pithy explanation of how the Celtic festival of Samhain
has been hijacked and turned into the consumer-driven charade known
as 'Halloween'.
Current events: For an alternative view of current
news click on this web site - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
You may even add your own comments on the contents for others to read.
European Studies/Current Affairs: A full news service
is available from the website of the Council of Europe - http://www.coe.int/
- including Activities, full texts of legislation, Campaigns, Projects,
Newsletters, and Press Releases.
That’s all for this month.
Nancy Merz Nordstrom, M.Ed.
Elderhostel Institute Network
Nancy.merz-nordstrom@elderhostel.org
www.elderhostel.org/ein/intro.asp
617-457-5564
“Properly, we should read for power. Man
reading should be man intensely alive.
The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
…Ezra Pound
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July 20, 2008
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