About this Issue

The first issue of the Journal of Education, Community, and Values: Interface on the Internet (Interface) was published in October 2001. With this issue, then, we begin our third year of publication. At the current rate of access, we will serve more than one-half million visitors during this third year. We have moved from far down on the list of the major search engines to the front page of listings for "Internet Studies" or "Internet Studies Center" ---the Berglund Center now comes just behind the centers at the University of Minnesota, and our fellow Pacific Northwest center, that at the University of Washington. This is incredible growth given the brief time we have been publishing. We credit this success to the leadership of Steven Boone, our Director, and to the energies and enthusiasms of our student staff from Pacific University.

With this issue we follow a theme our students have long suggested we explore, that of video gaming. We know that a varied audience such as we have may have many members who are skeptical that this topic is worth exploring. We hope that you will bear with us and give us a chance to show why it is an important one that relates quite directly to our primary mission, to explore the impact of the Internet.

The first sign that video gaming is worth exploring is the face that so many of our feature editors were able to provide their usual interesting fare within the overarching topic of video gaming. Explore, for example, Mark Szymanski, our education grants and funding editor's column, "Biology and Games" at <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/szymanski.php> or our medical columnists, Kevin Kawamoto's piece "Healthy Learning Can Be Fun: Digital Media and Health Education" <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/kawamoto.php>. Articles come from others with an interest in gaming. Chris Pruett, one of our former student webmasters now working as a full-time game developer, contributes "The Evolution of Video Games", found at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/pruett.php> I hold Chris responsible for my own exploration of video games, a decline from the grace of pure intellect I explore in my own editorial, "Upon the Importance (And Dangers) of Playing Video Games" found at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/edit.php>. We also finish out Mary E. Chalmers' two part article on the scavenger hunt, an educational game for teaching good web searches at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/chalmers.php>.

Because even on the Internet all play and no work would make us dull persons, we also present a piece by Anne Clemens, Traci Moore and Brian Nelson on teaching students math with interactive white boards, "Math Intervention "SMART" Project (Student Mathematical Analysis and Reasoning with Technology" located at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/smartproject.php>

For our book reviews, we present Steven Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games, so as to enable our audience to put gaming into a historical perspective, <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/kent.php> and the chilling Anyone You Want Me to Be. A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet by John Douglas and Stephen Singular, about less pleasant games unfortunately sometimes played in cyberspace. <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/07/douglas.php>

We hope that you will find this gaming issue fun, provocative, and interesting.

Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface.