by Rachel Bruce
I am a member of a book club. We meet monthly and each month we read a different book and then at our meeting we discuss it. It’s an evening I always really look forward to, and I have read a lot of books that I otherwise would have left on the shelf because they weren’t really my cup of tea.
At the moment I am reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It’s is a story about life on Guernsey during and right after World War II. It also covers life in London during this time. One of the chapters I’ve just finished included a description of how the protagonist dealt with The Blitz. When she had finished, I was left feeling like I wanted to find out more. I immediately turned to the Internet.
Within the space of a couple of minutes I was able to:
- Track down more information about the book I was reading, including some interesting questions to pose to reading groups which I printed off
- Find out the facts about The Blitz, including dates, along with descriptions and photographs
- Find some personal accounts of how people lived during The Blitz
Within a really short space of time I had satisfied my curiosity, learnt a lot and was able to go back to my book and continue reading.
This really reinforced to me (yet again!) about how much we all rely on the Internet as a way of adding to our knowledge and finding out new information, and how this information can come in a variety of forms. For me, I was vaguely interested in the facts and dates, but what I really wanted to look at were the personal accounts of how people lived during that time.
Like learners are able to do with one of our courses, I was able to find out more in a way that suited me; i.e. by reading case studies. It’s just another reminder to me of how important it is that we continue providing learners with the ability to choose their own route through the learning that we provide online, as everyone likes to find out more in a different way. Our courses have always done this, and thank goodness. How annoyed I would have been had I been trying to find out information on The Blitz only to be forced to read through all the facts and figures first before I could continue onto some of the more colourful and interesting case studies.
The book is great by the way.
by Jacqui Nelson
by Andrew Turner