<< previous article | table of contents | next article >>
Monolog: Stephanie Eskins Gleason
In the standing "Monolog" column, The Sophist asks an individual to share his or her point of view on issues pertinent to those involved with nonprofits and other socially focused organizations. In this issue, Stephanie Eskins Gleason from the National Wildlife Federation shares her thoughts.
Name: Stephanie Eskins Gleason
Title: Director of distance learning and learning communities
Organization: National Wildlife Federation (http://www.nwf.org/)
Least Favorite Buzzword: Right now my least favorite buzzword is "learning analytics." It is used to describe activities an organization can use to better train customers and employees. I’m all for collecting data and measuring results; they’re integral to any organizational development initiative. I just don’t like the buzzword.
Favorite Web Site: For people working in the nonprofit sector, I recommend techsoup.org. I find a lot of useful information there, and I like the community atmosphere.
Favorite Quotation: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” --Aristotle
Recommended Reading: I am always reading something. I just recently started re-reading one of my favorite books--Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning by Jack Mezirow. It is a fascinating book that combines information from various fields. I like to think that by applying the information in this book I can continue to grow as a person and as a member of society.
Prediction for the Sector: I think distance learning techniques are going to continue to blend with face to face learning opportunities to create active learning communities. I am fascinated with the idea of using distance learning to bring people to people so that they can work together to make positive impacts on their local communities around the world. I see this happening now, and I think it will happen even more in the future. The work that I’m doing with Wildlife University is based on this idea, and I am really excited about it.
Hedgehog or Fox?* I’m a fox. Just look in my eyes and you can tell!
* This alludes to Isaiah Berlin's 1953 essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," in which he uses a line from the Greek poet Archilochus ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.") as the basis for dividing writers and thinkers into one of two categories: the hedgehogs "who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel--a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance" and the foxes "who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause…seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision." Berlin says Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust are hedgehogs; Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzak, and Joyce are foxes.
<< previous article | table of contents | next article >>
© 2004 Isoph | sophist@isoph.com | subscribe to The Sophist