About this Issue



With this issue we conclude our publishing schedule until September 2004. For a full statement of the changes in store, see "About This Issue: March 2004" found at:
http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/about.php

We hope that this issue will leave our readers looking forward to the expanded fall, 2004 posting.

In this issue, we provide a second installment of Professor Michael Charles' Berglund essay, "Where Are We Going as We Leave No Child Behind? La Technique and Postman, Papert, and Palmer—Part Two." Part One is found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/01/0104.php Part One was very well received, we heard from practicing teachers and administrators who found that the article clarified issues facing them or their districts. It is also a particularly appropriate time to post Part Two as there is currently considerable controversy over the federal government's educational policies and, it seems, increasing resistance to them.

We also provide an additional installment of Professor Kristina Smolenski-Nelson's series on distance teaching: " Determining Deadlines when Teaching Online." http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/smolenski.php Kristina's series, too, has attracted favorable comments as she demystifies the process of teaching electronically in such a way that leaves those contemplating this move more confident of success.

In his piece, "Health Information and Numerical Data," Kevin Kawamoto gives a wonderful introduction to researching data on the Internet, and then goes onto delve into health statistics in particular. See this piece at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/kawamoto.php

Our K-12 education editor, Mark Szymanski, in his feature "The Ed Action Network: Working to Maintain Funding Levels" provides teachers not only his usual guides to seeking grant funding, but discusses a grass-roots network dedicated to increasing (or in all too many cases, sadly, restoring) educational grant funding to financially challenged teachers and institutions. See the piece at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/szymanski.php

Our book reviews for this issue include two very different publications. One is a review of a serial publication, 2600. Hacker Quarterly. http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/hacker.php If you wonder about the actual world of the hacker, whether the positive "white hat" dedicated to defending privacy and security, or the gleefully intrusive "black hat," reading through an issue of 2600 will be very enlightening. If you are in any way concerned with computer or network security, this should probably be considered mandatory reading.

Our second review, related perhaps to the previous one, but in a very different vein, is of R. J. Pineiro's CyberTerror. Pineiro is a very prolific author with a considerable audience. He writes almost exclusively in an emerging genre that might be called "cyberthrillers." See the review at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/pineiro.php

In my editorial, "Surfing with Good and Evil," I discuss what seem to me to be the two faces of the Internet: Good, and Evil, and propose the adoption of a pagan god, Janus, as the official deity of the World Wide Web.

Please note that as part of our new publication schedule we are seeking to expand our editorial board (See: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/features.php ) and have also announced another round of competition for Berglund Fellowships. See: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/03/proposals.php We look forward to abundant responses to each of these two calls...

We hope that you will enjoy this issue of Interface as well as find it useful, and that you look forward to the expanded fall issue. You will also be receiving brief monthly newsletter over the summer, if you have opted to be notified of our publications. If you have not yet signed up, please do so at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/signup.php

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface.