Technology in Education
Outstanding Adjunct Faculty

Dr. Ran Hock has a wonderfully varied career and interests. He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Religion at Temple University and also has a Master's in Library and Information Services from the University of Maryland. He has held positions as a trainer and Regional Director for DIALOG and Knight-Ridder Information Services, was a chemistry librarian at MIT and was the first Data Services Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career as a high school chemistry teacher. Currently he has his own Internet training company, Online Strategies (http://onstrat.com).

Ran has been teaching for Lesley's Technology in Education program for more than six years, and currently teaches ECOMP 7007 - Telecommunications: Curriculum in a Global Context and ECOMP 6009 - Authoring with HTML: Weaving Worldwide Classroom Webs.

Ran travels a lot to teach in Lesley's Technology in Education off-campus program. The last two years have included a significant amount of international travel, teaching U.S. State Department personnel and other clients how to use the Internet effectively. His trips have included several to Vienna, Austria plus weeks in Budapest, Paris, Milan, and Lisbon. Tough job, but...

In 2003, in addition to workshops given for private clients and courses taught for Lesley, Ran gave presentations at:

° Computers in Libraries (Washington, DC)
° Internet Librarian (Monterey, CA)
° Internet Librarian International (Birmingham, England)
° Web Search University (Orlando, FL)
° American Society for Information Science & Technology - New England Chapter (Cambridge, MA)
° Information Today (New York, NY)
° Air Force and Navy Librarians Conference (Dayton, OH)
° Open Source Solutions (Washington, DC)

Ran's book The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines (Medford, NJ: CyberAge Books 2001, http://infotoday.com) is now in its second edition and was recently translated and published in China. A new book from the same publisher, The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook, has just hit the book store shelves. Readers of these books find updates and supplements on "The Extreme Searcher's Web Page" (http://www.extremesearcher.com). Ran also writes a monthly column on search engines in The CyberSkeptic's Guide to Internet Research. For a more complete list of his publications see http://onstrat.com/instructor.html.

Ran lives in Vienna, Virginia with his wife, Pamela (a teacher), and two children, Stephen and Elizabeth. His oldest son, Matthew, is out on his own and is the vocalist for a punk rock band, The Explosion. Ran's hobby, though he has had little time to work on it lately, is genealogy.