Distance learning - online education

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, July-Sept, 2003 by John B. McGovern

An experienced Distance Learner, you participate and learn through distributive learning. You are doing so now. There are many places to go to learn, to study, and to build your knowledge base for enriching your personal and professional lives.

Do you remember reading The United States Constitution? Have you read it lately?

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It is all there on the Internet at http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html.> Each of you has a classic that you remember reading, perhaps in school. When was the last time you read it?

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: 'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!' (You can find it at http://www.onlineliterature.com/stevenson/treasureisland/1/.)

You can enhance your professional education as well through distance learning. Have you read this in Sun Tzu's work?

Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are a most important element in water, because on them depends an army's ability to move. (See http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html for more.)

When was the last time you went to one of your own books and looked something up? You just wanted to confirm what you already knew or you wanted to refresh your memory. Nice features of digital libraries are the links you find, the ability to catch up on the latest changes in your areas of interest, the capability of refreshing yourself on past training, and the capability to see what your training future contains.

The U.S. Army is capitalizing on the wealth of knowledge already available and building more to hone the skills, knowledge, and abilities of the force. Identifying the progress of the individual distance learner is high on the list of things we are doing to aid the learner. Learning management systems are evolving to do this.

When you visit the Military Intelligence Distance Learning site, you will encounter the current learning management system. If you have your password, you are in. If you do not have your user identification and password, you can request an account at http://www.intel.army.mil/. As you explore the wealth of knowledge available, you may find some of the material is not fully up on the latest Learning Management System. Use what you can. One of the other niceties is that your mind is free to explore new vistas and revisit those that feed your knowledge base.

As a Military Intelligence professional, you are invited to participate in another part of your distributive learning process. You will even find some of your career basics that you can experience again.

John McGovern is the Senior Training Specialist as well as the Program Manager for the Broadband Intelligence Training System (BITS), Training Development Integration Division, Training Development and Support Directorate, at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca. Readers may contact him via E-mail at john.b.mcgovern@us.army.mil. Robert Lane (robert.l.lane@us.army.mil) is the individual responsible for the requests coming in through the Learning Management System on the website.