About this Issue

About this Issue; Interface

This issue of the electronic journal of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies, The Journal of Education, Community, and Values: Interface on the Internet (Interface), begins our second calendar year of publication. While we take a great deal of pleasure in this fact, we also view the future with appropriate caution.

We are pleased because we feel that we have made undeniable progress. The production of Interface, while we hope it never truly becomes routine, is very much easier than when we began in the Fall of 2001. We have learned our jobs and the editorial board and the production staff work very well together. We have begun to add new editors and additional features which you will see in upcoming issues. Our content continues, we think, to be of interest to a wide audience. We believe this in part because our traffic continues to rise exponentially and we frequently hear from pleased readers and from professionals in various Internet-related fields offering ecouragement and assistance.

But we believe that caution is also appropriate; the Internet is littered with the husks of journals which began as have we, with enthusiasm and committment, but began first to miss deadlines, then to skip issues, then ceased to publish at all.

We are confident, however, that we are different. Thanks to the generous gift of Jim and Mary Berglund, we have an adequate income from endowment. We have the thoughtful leadership of our Director, Steven Boone, who continues to remind us that we must serve a wide audience, and who continually envisions new niches for the Berglund Center. We have a talented editorial and production staff, and above all we have a very dynamic and continually evolving subject to study and to report upon: the impact of the Internet itself.

In this issue we showcase a number of such reports. Elizabeth Arch, Associate Professor in the School of Education at Pacific University, discusses an attempt to integrate web-based course tools into the introductory undergraduate curriculum at Pacific. Dr. Arch, in her close analysis, gives us reasons to carefully consider such programs, points to potential weaknesses in doing so, and draws lessons for improvement in future efforts.

Berglund Fellow Dr. Mark Szymanski reports on his Berglund Project, the creation of an Internet supported problem-based learning environment or "knowledge network." Mark's project also touched upon an issue that is central to both contemporary policy issues, and to the concerns of many of our students and citizens: the management of natural resources, with all the conflict that this implies. His materials show us what a group of high school students, led by an able and enthusiastic teacher such as Mark, can accomplish with the tools provided by the Internet.

We are honored to present a third piece, by Dr. Stanley Katz of Princeton University, the former President of the American Council of Learned Society, the national humanities organization for the United States. Dr. Katz has been working with the impact of instructional technology or "IT" upon American academia almost from its beginnings, and has had occasionto study it from many perspectives. In his article, "Don't Confuse a Tool with a Goal: Making Information Technology Serve Higher Education, Rather Than the Other Way Around", he gives us the conclusions of much thought and experience. His article will be of particular interest to those many administrators in both business and academic trying to understand the budgetary and programmatic implications of the rapid expansion of the Internet.

In addition to his Berglund Project Report, Mark Szymansky, our Grants and Funding editor at Interface, gives novice K-12 grant writers an introduction to a very useful site, and to the process of writing successful grants.

Drew Harrington, our Book Reviews editor, reviews first Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, then Manuel Castells' work, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Each of these writers have been of great importance in furthering our understanding the development of the Internet. If you are not familiar with their works, these reviews will provide good introductions.

Jesse Snyder, both the Webmaster for the Berglund Center and the co-editor of our feature "Tech Corner" helps to sort out one of the critical issues facing novice (and not so novice) Internet users, the best way to get an Internet connection, in his piece, "Get Connected: Common Ways to Get Wired." With a growing number of high-speed options, this is an area which, like much else about the Internet, daily grows more complex.

In my editorial piece, "Globalism and the Internet," I try to make sense of the relationship between two of the most dynamic processes of our time, the rapid creation of a truly global economy, and the expansion of the Internet.

And our Director, Steven Boone, in "The Director's Corner" sums up his view of where we have been during our first year at the Berglund Center, and where we are going in the immediate future.

The Journal welcomes all communications. We are interested in the impact of the Internet upon society and individuals, including business and education. To inquire as to our interests in publishing particular pieces, please see our Call for Submissions. We pay for pieces published as "articles."

We are also interested in working with editors who might be responsible for regular features to be published in the Journal. to inquire as to our interests, please contact <barlowj@pacificu.edu>.

We hope that you find The Journal of Education, Community, and Values: Interface on the Internet , useful to your work and a complement to your own interests in the impact of the Internet.

Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface on the Internet