Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
Learn in Your Pajamas
- Accredited Degree Programs
- Online Certificate Programs
- Online Doctoral Programs
- Online Degree Programs
- Online Masters Degree
Isn’t technology great? In the last 15 years, the Internet has taken the world by storm. This technology allows you to research a topic, find directions, book a flight, buy products, and even talk to people on the other side of the world. You name it; you can find it on the Internet. One great advantage that is finally starting to mature is online education. Instead of having to get up, get dressed, and drive to your local college campus, all you have to do is log in and complete your participation and assignments. How convenient is that?
Online education is growing by the day. More and more colleges are setting up online programs for their most popular degree programs. Some colleges are set up strictly for online degree programs. Most of the schools are set up in a similar manner. Classes are kept small, usually no larger than 15 people. To begin your school day, you will log in with your user name and password. You will then go to a web page that is set up like a bulletin board, with messages from students and instructors at the forefront, followed by the replies to those messages. This is where the instructor posts assignments. This setup is obviously different from a traditional classroom in that there is no direct contact with the instructor or other students. To accommodate for this, instructors post discussion questions that all students are required to respond to. Students are also required to participate regularly. They participate by responding to the questions of others, which spawns relevant conversations about the discussion topics. This is very effective since students can use their own experiences to answer the questions, can ask questions of other students and the instructor, and can learn from everybody in the class. This is one of the reasons why online classes are very popular with working adults. In addition to discussion questions, students have either an individual assignment (usually a paper to write), or a team assignment. The team assignments require students to interact through the website, email, and even telephone with other team members to complete the work. The team is graded on how well the assignment is done, and on what other team members rate as their participation.
Online degree programs do have their limits. Some types of classes cannot be done over the Internet. Any course requiring a lab is very hard to simulate through a computer. Medical school and engineering courses do not translate very well to a computer environment, and still have to be done through actually attending class. Many of the purely academic programs are available. The basic degree programs, such as business, management, education, IT, accounting, and law are available through most schools. Many schools offer associate, bachelor, and master level degree programs. Some even offer doctorate programs.
If you want to get your degree, but don’t want to have to go to a traditional campus, online school is for you. The Internet has made it possible for you to improve yourself and further your education without ever having to change out of your pajamas.
Genealogy as a Career
A genealogist can have many different career titles. Some of these include: historians, authors, biographers, journalists and archivists. Although there are many different titles, all people that do genealogical work perform very similar tasks. They research and compile data relating to the histories of families, people and where they live.
Genealogy consists of many different types of research and projects. There are many ways to do amateur genealogy work for yourself or your family. There are publications on the subject such as “Genealogy for Dummies” that can get a person started doing research on their own family history. There are also software packages available online and for purchase that can help a person explore and accumulate information on their own family. There are even free workshops and classes offered at most local libraries and universities. However, if you want to pursue genealogy as a career, there are certain steps that must be taken and information that you must know.
First, a college degree is required in this field. Some potential employers will only require a general liberal arts degree from a major university. Other employers will require some experience with genealogy meaning that it will be hard to get a job with just a degree in liberal arts and no emphasis in genealogy. There are several institutes and universities that offer specific courses in genealogy to help someone gain experience if they are new to the field. Sometimes, these can be accompanied with a university placed internship in the field. These internships are crucial because jobs in the field of genealogy are rare and highly competitive. If a person has completed an internship, it will help to secure a job after degree completion.
There are certain personality traits and interests that someone should have to pursue a career in genealogy and be successful. A potential person entering this field should be extremely patient as some projects can take years to complete. In between finds there could be months of research that yield little results. A genealogist also needs to be inquisitive and have good research and organizational skills. Knowing some history of a region or family is also essential in doing research. It is important to be interested in constantly studying your environment and it’s past. It is also good to have good basic math skills to help with figuring dates and timelines. Some accounting knowledge is a must for tallying hours and expenses since most projects are paid for on a grant basis and require constant reporting.
When entering the field there are 2 major categories of work a person can do. One is working in an archive or library with genealogical records. Another is to work as a professional researcher. Professional researchers are often self-employed, but can sometimes work for Internet based companies as an employee.
Currently, the median average income for a genealogist is $25 per hour or $52,000 per year – although, don’t expect to start there. The starting salary for a degreed genealogist is probably around $30,000 per year depending on your experience level.