THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, COMMUNITY, AND VALUES
With this issue of Interface we introduce a new Contributing Editor, Leonard DuBoff, noted author, attorney, and retired Law Professor from the Northwest School of Law. In a wonderful coincidence I met Leonard and his charming wife as seatmates on a hop from San Francisco to Portland upon my return from Taiwan. We soon found that we shared a very strong interest in electronic publishing and Dr. DuBoff agreed to provide regular features related to legal issues and the Internet. See Leonard's article, "The New World of Cyberspace: Be Careful When Working the Web" , in this issue of Interface, and from there check out his web pages.
Our location at Pacific University provides us with many advantages. Chief among them is that we can draw upon not only student talents but also those of staff and faculty. In this issue of Interface we are pleased to present "Separation of Content and Design" by the Pacific University Webmaster, Ken Westin, whose pages recently won a major award. Ken, in this first part of a two-part piece, gives us a clear understanding of not only why we might explore XHTML & CSS for preparing web pages and sites, but a step-by-step outline of how to do so. Those individuals or businesses who maintain even moderately large sites should explore these applications as they minimize the pain of continually updating materials. We use a variety of them, PHP, for our work here.
Our regular feature, Tech Corner, compliments Ken's piece with Raster Image Overview by our student editor, Matt Ernst.
As promised, in this issue of Interface we continue to explore issues relating to on-line teaching. Professor Ron Smith of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and an experienced on-line teacher presents an interview with one of the major practitioners in this field, Dr. Daniel E. Atkins of the University of Michigan. Ron also joins us as a Contributing Editor and will work with Kristy Smolenski to provide regular articles dealing with best practices in on-line teaching.
Our K-12 editor Mark Szymansky is recently returned from a Berglund-supported study period in Africa. We look forward to an increased emphasis upon computing issues in education there, but meanwhile Mark provides us with the third in a four-part series discussing funding sources for bridging the digital divide in K-12 education.
In our second piece dealing with "Life Long Learning", Dr. Martha Rampton, Medieval Historian at Pacific University reviews a recent book in her field, Philippe Buc's The Dangers of Ritual. If you have an interest in historical studies, or in ritual, you will find Dr. Rampton's review interesting and informative.
In my own editorial piece, "After the Bubbles Popped," I also deal with issues affecting education in particular. I believe that those of us who deal daily with the Internet face a somewhat different future after the collapse of the .com and other bubbles and this is true above all for educators. In this editorial I make an argument for more systematic assessment of computer uses in educational environments.
In our book reviews, we deal with two important works covering the collapse of the .com economy, Anthony B. Perkins and Michael C. Perkins works, The Internet Bubble (1999 and 2001) and China Dawn, a work discussing the development of Information Technology in China.
As always, we hope that you will find this issue of Interface informative and useful.
Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface
Ronald Smith - Questions for Dr. Daniel Atkins
Leonard D. DuBoff - The New World of Cyberspace: Be Careful When Working...
Ken Westin - Separation of Content & Design Part I: Transitioning To...
Matt Ernst - Raster Image Overview
Mark Szymanski - The AOL Time Warner Foundation: Corporate Partnering
Philippe Buc's The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and...
David Sheff's China Dawn. The Story of A Technology and Business...