About this Issue

The April-May issue of Interface is always a challenging one to produce.  As our offices are on the campus of Pacific University, we are directly affected by the rhythms of the academic life.   In little more than two weeks, the Senior class graduates.  We are fortunate in the Berglund Center in that we are “losing” only one senior, Heather Hawkins, but unfortunate in that she is at the center of our activities.

Not only has Heather been our lead Web designer for three years, but also she has also quietly become the coordinator of all of our activities, from assigning production tasks to supervising copy editing.

Our loss is somewhat mitigated by the knowledge that Heather will remain in the immediate area and will work as a consultant for us, cushioning the blow. Heather also is the Valedictorian for the class of 2005. Heather, thanks for everything!

This issue is a sizeable one as so many of our activities peak in the spring.  Our feature article “Community Newspapers and the Web: Using the Unknown” by Pacific professor David Cassidy.  It began as a paper presented earlier this year at the International Conference on Technology, Community and Information in Berkeley, Calif.  As David says, the underlying motivation for the study was to answer the question “How should I be preparing my students to effectively use the Internet in their roles as community journalists?”  Surely we have all noted the increasing convergence between print- and on-line journalism, and his article should be of use to anyone who uses the Internet or reads a newspaper. 
See it at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/cassady.php

Our Security Editor, Glee Cady, has produced another simultaneously humorous and disturbing piece, “Seeking the Fulcrum, Not the Tipping Point,” in which she discusses the issue of e-mail as an artifact that will live on after the author is deceased….
See it at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/cady.php

Our Funding and Education Editor, Mark Szymanski, has written “Breakthrough Collaboratives: Teaching Internships for High School and College Students” discussing one of the most serious issues affecting education today, the future of the high-potential low-income student.  As the futures of promising students are increasingly determined not by their potential to contribute to our society but by their ability to pay for an education, a private program, the Breakthrough Collaborative, is trying to do something about the problem with high school internships. As we face the summer, this article reminds us of how important those summer jobs often are to our futures.

As we face the summer, many of us smile ruefully at the many super market publications promising us “Beach Ready Bodies in Ten Days.” Our Health Editor, Kevin Kawamoto, in “Healthy Behavior Changes Often Take Time” reminds us that we can improve ourselves, if over a longer time frame than that promised at the checkout counter, and that the Internet can be a useful tool in doing so. 
See it at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/kawamoto.php

As students face the long summer without classes, many will spend much of that time in massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games such as the emerging giant, World of Warcraft.  We have in this issue a piece from, we hope, a gamer who is at least approaching the deep end; otherwise the virtual world is beginning to intrude upon our own.  See “The Tales of Azeroth” by “IProfess, an Elvin Druid of Azeroth, as manifested on the server Zulíjin.”
http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/iprofess.php We have had several communications with the acerbic but anonymous IProfess, most of which end with him (or her) threatening to whack us with something called a “Frostbane Staff.”

We hope that IProfess, whoever or whatever he or she may be, will read our regular gaming editor Chris Pruett’s piece, “The Trouble with Reality” found at: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/pruett.php  As Chris says, “Creating a realistic game world is a double-edged sword: if done well, realistic worlds can serve to heighten the player's belief in the game experience, but at the same time each innovation in realism brings the player a little closer to his or her everyday life, and provides less and less of an escape.”

In my editorial, “Sharing Classrooms Across the Pacific via the Internet” http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/edit.php I report at length on a means for conducting interactive classrooms at widely separated sites, in this case, between Oregon and China, using off-the shelf freeware and the Internet.

Our book reviews include two works which discuss the impact of the Internet in an overtly political context.  The first of these is Chris Hables Gray’s recent attempt to make sense of the impact of the events of 9/11 on the Internet, Peace, War, and Computers, http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/gray.php. The second is Indrajit Bannerjee’s Rhetoric and Reality. The Internet Challenge for Democracy in Asia.  http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/banerjee.php

Our last issue of Interface until September will be posted in early June.  Until then, we hope that you find this issue both informative and entertaining.

Jeffrey Barlow
Director, Berglund Center for Internet Studies
Pacific University