19 November 2007 ? Monday
1:40 pm here in Amman, and we have just finished a long morning session that started at 9am. Michele has done a superb job covering ?management theory history? and mixing in the practical with the theory. It is a challenge to get across to our Iraqi colleagues these ideas in such a way that they can use them in their teaching. Working with LIS faculty is very different than with practitioners, at least to me. With practitioners, one can ?teach skills? or concepts and hope people get it. With faculty, one is supplying content to the teachers ? changes the approach a bit.
What is clear is that our Iraqi colleagues appreciate our efforts. We have given them lots of material, both in paper and electronically. This is useful stuff they can convert and apply to their own teaching ? we?re trying to make that process as easy as possible.
Anyway, the spirit is good and everyone still very ?up!?
Btw, my piece on ?strategic planning? yesterday afternoon went fairly well. It is an important but not the most exciting topic to talk about. The Iraqis face incredible challenges, only one of which is actually planning for a better future. All that we do here is aimed at that time, so it can seem a bit surreal talking about an updated curriculum, technology, appropriate resources ? all in the midst of constant war/terror, hardly any electrical power per day, safety and security issues that transcend anything we?ll do here.
Shifting gears: 10 of the 11 of us went knocking about downtown Amman last night. Similar to Kuwait, Amman is a shopping mecca ? thousands of shops, and like other places the shops that sell ?like? products are clustered together. We really enjoy the company of one another ? that shows in the interpersonal interactions ? warm, attentive and fun.
This afternoon, Michele will set the Iraqis off on a ?case? ? they?ll be asked to design a model curriculum ?with no constraints.? It will be interesting to see if they can unload the current baggage and do this task. We plan to split up the group so that one person from each institution is in each group ? two groups. This is the first time that I can recall that we?ve tried this type of assignment ? will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Tonight, more shopping, no doubt. We?ve also altered our schedule ? more on that later.
In short, things going well ? Michele, Meaghan and Harvey (c?est moi) are a good team ? we are pretty darn compatible. The Iraqis are attentive and participating nicely, so language (we are teaching in English, and they deal with their colleagues when they don?t get the concept by doing Arabic with each other). So far, so good!!