It took a while (no thanks to Lulu's dreadful low-cost shipping options), but I finally got my copy of Clive Shepherd's The New Learning Architect. Sadly, it's taken me until now to be able to read more than one page of the damn thing (sick child, workloads, yadda, yadda).
So I'm going to keep this blog entry (started Feb 20) as my own mechanism for reviewing the book and making my own observations and comments along the way. I also learned today, after setting up my new personal Twitter identity, that there's an online "book club" chat happening as of March 7. If I'm lucky, I'll be more than 20 pages through the book by then (although at this rate, I wouldn't put money on it). Mark Britz is acting as the facilitator/guide for the chat and I'm really looking forward to it.
I had some initial thoughts as I forge into the first chapter.
I will preface my comments by saying that I may be taking more of an academic view of the book out of habit. One of the things I tend to look for is a list of references from which the book is drawn - unless the book's content and approach is more fact based and where the approaches are not necessarily subjects of extensive research. So, Clive, that's the lens at which I initially looked at this book.
At first glance, the book reads like an Op-Ed piece, because there's nary a citation to be found until page 18! While there's nothing wrong with that kind of approach for a beginner, I was gettinc concerned that the book was going to be too superficial for my needs when I finally saw some footnotes and then some of the User Profiles. I breathed a small sigh of relief and if my little guy wasn't in need of TLC I could have forged ahead with renewed interest. Fear not, however, I'm reading and making notes as I go along.
If nothing else, Clive has given me significant food for thought as I re-examine my career path and options down the road.
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