WAOE 2004 Annual Meeting New Officers Selected As posted by Michael Warner, Online Parliamentarian As Cyber Parliamentarian it is my pleasure to announce the results of this year's Annual Members' Meeting. The quorum of one-third of the eligible 242 Voting Members having recorded their presence at the AMM in July 2004. Vice President - Arun Tripathi Executive Secretary - Mary Dereshiwsky Membership Chair - Ramesh Sharma Ratification of the appointed Chief Information Technology Officer Maggie McVay Lynch was confirmed.

The positions of President and Treasurer will come up for vote at the 2005 Annual Member's Meeting.

I'm sure I can speak for the entire membership of WAOE in extending a warm congratulations to these very capable officers and at the same time offer our sincere appreciation to our out-going Directors Rafael Molina-Velazquez as Vice President and Jenna Seehafer as Executive Secretary. Arun Tripathi is moving from Membership Chair to Vice President.

As with any organization, especially a non-profit volunteer organization, the mettle is only as good as the efforts of its member participants. We have been extremely fortunate to have the leadership skills and attention to detail of Jenna Seehafer as the initial Treasurer and then Executive Secretary, along with acting as the Agent of Notice for this corporation. Her expertise played the crucial role in drafting the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws under which we as an organization function. As she transitions out of her demanding Director responsibilities into her very demanding academic life style, we look forward to continuing our collegial relation and value her guidance.

Update on Mentoring Project

During the AMM Nicholas Bowskill raised the issue of a wider roll-out for the mentoring initiative. He discussed the success of the pilot over the past nine months, and the good learning experiences described among the 40 or so participants.

As Nick indicated in VIEWS: "Through this pilot we did create a focus for discussion at a variety of levels and in that sense it was very much a shared learning activity. Some of the projects were less succesful than others; there are some management issues we've learned about; and we've developed resources and strategies in response. Some other issues included the relatively small size of the pool of available mentors and having to ask too few to do too much.

These things aside, as a self-help approach to addressing our professional development needs it did seem to have some potential as an experiment. In helping each other as volunteers hopefully we can also help ourselves to learn and develop."

On July 27th Nicholas Bowskill formed a small group of volunteers to begin the groundwork needed before we can do a wider roll out of this. That will include a review of the various needs and some discussion of projects that were already being suggested in September. Anyone having input to this process or ideas about what directions the mentoring project should take in the future should contact Nick directly.

Four Members Meet and Present at the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR)
Conference in Brighton, England

Steve McCarty, Mike Warner, Nick Bowskill, and Maggie McVay Lynch met each other face-to-face for the first time as they presented the WAOE experience to the AOIR conference in Brighton. The theme of the conference was "Ubiquity" and the members presented a panel of four papers that pertained to the topic "Building a Free Worldwide Community and Support Structure for Faculty Involved in Online Education." These four papers directly reflected the work of all WAOE members in our virtual organization.

Left side from front: Steve's wife, Chisato Ishikawa, Nicholas Bowskill, and Maggie McVay Lynch. Right side from front: Steve McCarty, Mike Warner, and Mike's wife, Mary Ellen.

Each presenter has made available his or her paper description and the PowerPoint presentation that was used. For those members who may be interested in hearing this entire presentation, we will be scheduling an online webconference in November. It will be recorded and archived for later viewing if you are unable to attend. Watch the VIEWS list for an announcement of the time for the conference.

Online course on Digital Literacy for Agricultural Professionals

This online course is designed for agricultural professionals in the Asia Pacific region. With a set of basic skills, some software and a computer connected to the Internet, agricultural professionals are able to inexpensively communicate with other individuals connected to the Internet. They have access to the tremendous and ever-growing body of professional and general information available on and through interlinked computers throughout the world. They are
also able to take advantage of formal and informal training offered on-line from virtually anywhere.

The course materials are available on the web, and the course is self-paced. Participants will need access to a computer, email and the Internet and basic computer skills. For more information please visit the APRTC site.

Improved Use of Online Learning in the Sultanate of Oman

(Source Google News) Under the Partners in Learning global initiative, the Ministry of Education and Microsoft South Gulf has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to bring improved ICT education to schools in the Sultanate of Oman.

The five-year agreement will encourage school teachers, staff and students to use online technology to improve the learning process, and will support teachers in raising their level of ICT awareness. The agreement includes programs to help provide cost effective software and provide learning resources for communities throughout Oman.

His Excellency Mustafa bin Abdullatif, undersecretary of Administration & Finance said: 'This agreement is a very important step forward for education in Oman. This program will ensure that our students receive ICT teaching of the highest standard, and that our teachers are prepared and supported to educate our young people in the IT skills they need for employment in the modern workplace."

For the entire story go to Google News.

Technology Changes the Face of Education in South Africa
by Tsabeng Nthite

(Source Pretoria News) In South Africa, new models of learning that are incorporating Information Communication Technology (ICT), are changing the concept of education in the country. Such an initiative will help in creating both better job opportunities for students, as well as lead to enhancement of their technical skills. In addition, online technologies could enhance the management and administrative capacity of schools.

It is the goal of the Department of Education, that by 2013, every South African manager, teachers and students will be ICT capable. This means that they should be able to use online technology confidently and creatively to help develop skills and knowledge they need to achieve personal goals, and be full participants in the community.

Experts believe that in introducing ICT, there should be a balance in teaching and learning methods. E-learning should recognise that its value is linked to its suitability to individual learning and teaching styles and strategies.

For the entire story go to The Pretoria News

Expansion of Telemedicine
by Nithya Subramanian

In India the health care industry is venturing into Telemedicine in a big way, with the hospital groups trying to 'virtually' expand their reach. This foray is expected to be beneficial for people who are unable to afford the travel costs to access quality healthcare facilities. For instance, Apollo Hospital Group is tying up with Lahore Imaging Centre, as part of the initiative. To push the initiative further the government has set up a Standing Committee on Telemedicine to advise the government on the issue. Patients in rural India will be able to get expert advice from a specialist in a metro or even from a doctor in the UK or the US without having to move out of their environs.

For full story go to The Hindu Business Journal

Low Cost Computers for East Africa

In London, APC members ALIN-EA and Computer Aid have come together in order to extend low cost PCs to not-for-profit community development groups working in the rural dry lands across East Africa. The intention of the partnership is to be able to provide literally thousands of quality refurbished PCs at the lowest cost possible, backed up by a first class technical support service and one year guarantee.

For full story go to the APC Site

Online Educator Develoment Committee (OEDC) is Looking to Start Work on Curriculum Again There has been more and more members interested in learning about facilitation techniques in online education and instructional design. The OEDC spent about a year gathering information and reviewing lessons that were made available in WebCT. They stalled when determining a direction to take for making the lessons more accessible and finding volunteer instructors and a way to more easily make the lessons available to members in regularly scheduled courses. Anyone interested in working on a pilot course over the next year, please contact Maggie McVay Lynch. We are committed to getting some type of formal training out to our membership by Spring 2005.

4th International Conference on Technology in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
in Beijing, China, July 11-13, 2005

The event is sponsored by National- Louis University, USA and Peking University, China. Following previously
successful conferences in 2000, 2001 (Samos Island, Greece) and 2003 (Heidelberg, Germany), this forum will bring together faculty, students, staff, administrators and other interested parties involved with the organization and delivery of distance education and instructional technology. For more information about this international gathering, including the
Call for Papers, please see the conference site linked above.

Have you read a good book regarding online education recently? Send a one or two paragraph review to the newsletter editor and share the information with others. Do you have experience with particular tools that help to enhance the online learning experience? Send a couple of paragraphs for those as well. In this section we will publish those reviews. BOOKS AND ARTICLE REVIEWS

The Reach Of Reflection: Issues For Phenomenology's Second
Century", edited by Steven Crowell, Lester Embree and Samuel J. Julian
(Electron Press, 2001-2002)

Review by Arun Kumar Tripathi

The work on "The Reach Of Reflection: Issues For Phenomenology's Second Century" was organized by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. to mark the transition from the second to the third millennium, which is also
the transition from the first to the second century of the phenomenological tradition.

(from the _Preface_ of the book)
"As phenomenology enters its second century another change comes into view, one that bodes well, we think, for our tradition. About half the chapters take up more or less traditional philosophical themes or phenomenological problem areas. These include aesthetics, embodiment, ethics, hermeneutics, history, intersubjectivity, logic and mathematics,
ontology, politics, psychology, and religion, as well as "technoscience" and the "cultural disciplines," which extend the scopes of the traditional philosophies of the natural and the social or cultural sciences. Yet an almost equal number of chapters are devoted to relatively new areas, including constructive phenomenology, cognitive science, ecology,
ethnicity, gender, genetic phenomenology, horizonality, medicine, and nonhuman animal life. In addition, one chapter confronts an issue that could not have appeared at the beginning of phenomenology's first century, but will play an increasing role in its second: the relation of phenomenology to analytic philosophy."

You may order the book directly from Electron Press through an order form. If that doesn't work, go to electronpress.com and look under "Make a Purchase."

TOOLS

Online Study Tool offered by Respondus: Study Mate

Review by Maggie McVay Lynch

If you're as old as I am (in school before PCs were available and before the Internet allowed you to look up everything) you probably remember taking oodles of time writing out index cards for yourself when studying for a test. I can remember putting a history date on one side, then the event on the other to help me study. Or definitions on one side and vocabularly words on the other. I also have fond memories of several types of word games such as hangman, fil in the blank, or even competiting in a Jeopardy type challenge with a creative teacher.

Now you can easily make all of these available to online students without knowing any programming through a new product called Study Mate by Respondus. And the best news is that it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. For educational institutions it is only $79 per copy, and there are campus-wide licensing options as well.

For those of you who are familiar with using the Respondus quiz tool for exporting to WebCT or Blackboard, you are probably already accustomed to the easy-to-use interface this company provided at a very reasonable price. Now, the same company has come out with a new tool--this one for self-study. Through the same type of easy-to-use interface, which requires no knowlede of programming, you can create online flash cards or fact cards and several flash games that look "cool" like Jeopardy and will help students study with drill and practice types of exercises.

Unlike the Respondus quiz product, these study mate cards and games DO NOT generate graded answers that are exported to the gradebook. They are strictly for use to memorize facts or to literally study for an upcoming test. If you don't use WebCT or Blackboard at your institution, this tool will still work for you because it creates a flash file that can be linked within any webpage environment.

My development team was working on building open-ended flash objects to do some of these things just as this was introduced. For the price how could I pass it up? Now my team can concentrate on developing more difficult flash objects and we can easily teach faculty or teaching assistants to create these nice-looking study options for their online courses.

With this new anthology on Community in the Digital Age by Prof. Andy Feenberg and Prof. Darin Barney, I would like to share a 'Quote' related to the (dis)embodied world of Internet from "On the Internet: Thinking in Action (Routledge Press, 2001) as The Internet offered "a detached world in which everyone had an opinion about and commented on all public matters without needing any first-hand experience and without having or wanting any responsibility."

The quote by Prof. Hubert Dreyfus has a very specific meaning. I will here undertake the Kierkegaardian view to show how it is possible. “A member of the public can have an opinion about anything but won’t usually make an action for that opinion," Hubert Dreyfus said. Kierkegaard says that "no single person who belongs to the public makes a commitment.” This is the point where Kierkegaard’s principles can be applied to something as high-tech as the Internet. Dreyfus said, "The Internet doesn’t require expertise and actually undermines expertise." Kierkegaard says people have to have an infinite passion which includes an unconditional commitment to something. Professor Dreyfus further proves this by saying in a lecture, “This idea is similar to Dante’s love of Beatrice in The Divine Comedy, because Beatrice is Dante’s saviour and has an unconditional commitment to her by loving her. It is the possibilities of anonymity permitted by the use of technology that, as Kierkegaard sees it, removes communication from what he refers to as 'The Situation'." The Situation represents for Kierkegaard that characteristic of individual existence that distinguishes the "individual" from the "crowd" or "the public". In "The Situation" you and I have the possibility of having an encounter not as anonymous agents, but as people with distinctive, accessible histories. Because of this, communication within "The Situation" can become individualized - my words can become words meant for you and words that you can recognize as being from me.

Going beyond the hype of the cybercrowd, Dreyfus a celebrated writer on Philosophy and Technology, asks whether the internet can really bring humanity to a new level of community and solve the problems of mass education. Ethical people might use the Internet to make up and keep track of their commitments but would be brought to the despair of meaninglessness by the ease of making and unmaking in any domain. Hubert Dreyfus's critique of hyper-learning provides much food for thought and raises the level of the discussions amongst concerned educators and technologists. Following Dreyfus, I have pointed out what 'interactive' education leaves out. This awareness should inform the planning and use of educational technology.

However, there is another aspect to interactive technologies that needs to be included in the discussion. An interactive (networked) environment allows a person to reveal some aspects of himself/herself to a large community, which could not be done as effectively in a less interactive environment. In this sense, the new information and communication technologies involve an expansion of scale and scope over which one might exercise (assert) one's humanity. That is its key appeal for me.

While doing the review of Community in the Digital Age (Feenberg and Barney), if I do not mention another book on Community, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (MIT Press, 2000), then I won’t do any justice to the Internet Community. The arguments given in the 2nd chapter Daily Life in Cyberspace: How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place (pp.25-55) and 11th chapter Rethinking Virtual Communities are quasi-parallel to the outcome of the Feenberg and Barney book. The Internet truly serves the final communities not as a focus but as a foil.

In Culture of Technology, Borgmann argues on consumption, community and celebration. The character of contemporary culture is best captured, I believe, by the term technology. It reminds us of the artefacts and procedures that distinguish our time. And, on consumption, Borgmann said ,“Consumption is the adversary of community. In a philosophical sense, consumption is the unencumbered of glamorous commodities.” Albert Borgmann provides in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life a unique way of conceiving of the inherent limitations of technology in the betterment of life by an explication of the ‘device paradigm’. According to Professor Borgmann, the promise of technology, that of improving the quality of life, has turned out to be inherently limited. Furthermore, that technology must be seen for what it really is and what it can offer whilst distinguishing it from "focal things and practices" which can provide the requirements necessary to achieve fulfilment in life. Technology is the kind of life in which enlightenment shaped by a promise of liberty and prosperity has taken on a peculiar and pervasive dominant pattern and can be explicated through the Device Paradigm.

The Feenberg and Barney Book discusses the questions:

• Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others?
• Are virtual communities "real" enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction?
• How the Net is affecting our culture and what should be the language of the Net?
• What if the Net became central in our lives? What if it becomes what Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government calls an “irresistible alternative culture?”

Neil Rudensteine, president of Harvard of University, listed the following bullets in an article about the Internet:

• The Internet can provide access to essentially unlimited sources of information not conveniently obtainable through other means.
• The Internet allows for the creation of unusually rich course materials.
• The Internet enhances the vital process of “conversational” learning.
• The Internet reinforces the conception of students as active agents in the process of learning, not as passive recipients of knowledge from teachers and authoritative texts.

Book description:

Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

List of Contributors:

Phillip E. Agre; Maria Bakardjieva; Darin Barney; Bruce Bimber; Albert Borgmann; Hubert Dreyfus; Amitai Etzioni; Andrew Feenberg; Tetsuji Iseda; Diane Johnson; Richard Kahn; Douglas Kellner; Yumiko Nara; Mark Poster; Douglas Schuler; Leslie Regan Shade; Sherry Turkle.

About The Authors:

Andrew Feenberg is professor of philosophy at San Diego State University. Darin Barney is assistant professor of communication at the University of Ottawa.

===================================================================
"Dreyfus challenges the popular view of the Internet as a global classroom in which anybody and everybody can participate in a process of so-called "hyper-learning." The Internet promotes risk-free anonymity and idle curiosity, both of which undermine responsibility and commitment." (Arun Kumar Tripathi, Review of Hubert Dreyfus' On the Internet)

A theme of the nineteenth-century rhetoric of technology was that technology would annihilate time and space. It did. And so today, "we are learning what it means to have no time and no place" (Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, University of Chicago Press, 1999)
================================================================

I have been promising to do a series of articles on learning objects for at least a year now, so here is the first one. In this newsletter we'll begin with the basics. In subsequent articles, I will share some of the standards we've incorporated at Portland State University and why we've made those decisions. I will also try to share with you information about what others are doing.

Most people who have been involved in e-learning for a few years have heard the term "learning object" thrown out as the new buzz word. It is usually thrown into a discussion in a way that makes the listener immediately feel behind the times. Colleagues often say their reaction to this term is to perk up their ears and say "Oh, no! Is this something I should know about? Is this something I need to get my institution to implement before we fall hopelessly behind?" After listening for awhile, one usually leaves the conversation even more confused than when it started.

Why should I care?

So, why should anyone care about learning objects? Is it a passing fad or something that is really important. I personally believe that it is important. It is particularly important for those organizations that are faced with ramping up their e-learning options. If you are in an institution that has been slowly adding more and more courses or training modules, and now you have even experienced the phenomenon of copying sections of information from one module to another, or worse copying entire courses several times, then you are a prime candiate for coming onboard with learning objects and content management. If you can get the basics of these concepts you can save yourself, your instructional designers, your faculty, and your institution both time and money by effectively reusing bits and pieces of information multiple times and making sure it is updated only in one place instead of remembering all the places where it currently resides. In other words, the reason you should care about learning objects is to be able to scale your e-learning environment--help it to grow larger and faster more efficiently.

Moving to a learning object design provides several opportunities for scalability while reducing the computing storage resources required, and still allowing critical tracking of additional services. Some of these opportunities are:

• the ability to render the same content in a variety of locations both inside and outside of a learning management system (e.g., WebCT, Blackboard, etc), such as FAQs, support documents, and external non-student training;
• a means to encourage faculty to share content within departments, across campus, and eventually across institutions;
• a mechanism for easy search, sharing, and reuse of content;
• management and access control of users on multiple levels; and
• the establishment and tracking of digital rights that can be managed into the future.

These opportunities seemed to outweigh the difficulties inherent in adopting this new and innovative strategy.

What is a learning object?

Standards for computing, distributed education, object-oriented programming, and many other related areas can seem very confusing and filled with jargon. Yet, being involved in the creation, dissemination, and execution of these standards can place you on the cutting edge of technology in distributed learning.

Learning objects are small elements of learning that can be reused a number of times in different learning contexts. The concept of learning objects is grounded in the object-oriented paradigm of computer science. Additionally, learning objects are generally understood to be digital entities deliverable over the Internet, meaning that any number of people can access and use them simultaneously. Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions. The difficulty comes from the exact definition of what is "small" or what is "granular."

Unfortunately, the literature and the field of instructional design has not embraced a single definition. Some people define a learning object as a single digital entity. For example, my picture would be a learning object because it can be used in several different contexts. It can be used in this newsletter. It can be used as an example of an author or a professor. It can be used as an example of a woman with a certain color hair, or eyes, or type of nose, etc. Using this definition, things can become very granular. Those who embrace a definition of learning objects in this arena often refer to these more as "media objects." These objects might range from maps and charts to video demonstrations and interactive simulations, as well as images.

Other people define a learning object as needing to have an objective AND an assessment associated with it. To use my picture again, under this definition the picture alone is not enough to constitute a learning object. If the picture had a context-specific description (i.e., Maggie McVay Lynch, author) and then a quiz question: Who is Maggie McVay Lynch? Then, under this definition it would be a learning object. The difficulty with this definition, in my opinion, is that once a specific context is associated with a digital entity then the reuse of that object in multiple contexts becomes limited. In other words, because that picture describes me as an Author no one would elect to use that picture if they were wanting to describe me as a professor.

At Portland State University we have decided to define a learning object as "a digital resource, at its most granular level, that can be used, re-used or referenced to support learning." Furthermore, we decided that we would err on the side of maximum inclusion of content and interactions for learning objects, instead of excluding elements by making a judgment of reusability. Given this definition, we would fall more into the "media objects" or high level of granularity definition.

Defining images and media objects is the easy part of deconstructing or building a course based on the learning object paradigm. The most difficult items to evaluate were narrative text, individual assignments, quiz or exam items, and informational text outside the topic but critical to the flow of a course (such as a teacher’s file-naming conventions for students who send homework attached to email). As with most higher education institutions, almost every course has a large amount of text--either created by the professor or linked text to articles or other web pages. It was critical to determine who we would categorize these elements and store them as learning objects.

We decided that the breakdown of text elements would be no less than a paragraph. A single paragraph of narrative text was determined to be sufficient for a learning object if it could stand alone without the other paragraphs. For example, if I were teaching statistics and wrote three paragraphs defining the different measurements of central tendency—one on mode, one on median, and one on mean, then it is likely that each paragraph could stand alone as a single narrative text object (e.g., definition of mode). However, if the three paragraphs emphasized the relationship of one measurement to another with intertwined examples, then all three paragraphs of narrative text would constitute a single object. Though there is some subjectivity, this process has proven effective in dividing text elements into logical categories for storage and retrieval.

Taxonomy and Learning Objects

Once you have a definition, it is likely that you will find thousands of learning objects already exist within your courses. As you determine how to capture these, identify them, and store them the next important decision will also be how to categorize them. After all, a primary purpose of defining and finding learning objects is to make them easily retrievable and then used in other contexts. A major tenet of search is to define a taxonomy--categorization scheme. Defining a taxonomy will also move you one step closer to standards and to content management, which will be discussed in a future article.

Anytime one defines a taxonomy you are bound to run into trouble with definitions, categories that were left out or very diverse items needing to fit into a single category. It is wise to take this step with input from all parties who will be searching for these learning objects. After about three months of discussions, Portland State finally created a two-dimensional scheme. The primary categorization is by department (e.g., History, Physics, Education, etc.), which also includes non-degree departments by concept (e.g., WebCT is a category by itself). Within each department scheme is a categorization of types of learning objects. This was broken into twenty-two items, each with a definition (e.g., figure, article, exam, narrative text, etc.). A full listing of the twenty-two item types are depicted in the screen display below..

Hive ™Content Management System Showing
Departmental Categories and Learning Object Type Categories

In the next article I'll talk about how accepting a definition of learning objects and deciding to incorporate that into the design process impacts instructional design for e-learning, and how the entire field of instructional design needs to consider what is a good pedagogical model for instructional design that incorporates learning objects. We often hear from vendors of systems that help create or store learning objects that they are "pedagogically neutral." This is fine for a simple storage solution, but it is not acceptable for the instructional designer.

The key to learning object use and subsequent course design using those objects is sequencing. How does sequency effect design pedagogy? Or conversely, how should pedagogy impact sequencing?

In the last newsletter, Dr. DeWindt offered an extensive article about this alliance. For this newsletter she offers the following update.

It is my pleasure to provide this short update of the activities of the Digital Literacy Alliance, Inc.

NEW BUSINESS:

You will notice a new look to the subject line of future DLA messages. This change in notification will allow for each member to receive messages that are specific to their interests. I hope this will help to clarify the messages many of you get from me and other committee members on a weekly basis

BOARD OF DIRECTORS/EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:

There was a Board and Executive Committee Meeting held in Buffalo, New York in August. Issues discussed included the 2005 Conference in Ghana, the Yaa Nyarkoa Library Book Drive, the Yaa Nyarkoa Library womens and girls
education project, as well as grant and fund raising issues.

Volunteers are still needed for the executive committee and the organization at large. Please urge those you know who would lend a hand to contact me.

BOOK DRIVE:

With the number of donations expected to reach nearly 25,000 by the end of this year, we are still in need of the funds to launch the shipping container. We now have more than 15,000 books, therefore we have had to move to a larger storage space.

Book and monetary donations will continue to be collected through the rest of the year to furnish the Yaa Nyarkoa Library and serve the 20,000 people of two towns, Agona Duakwa and Agona Nsaba.

Please send your book and financial donations to:

Mr. Rasul Murray
Library Fund Coordinator
P.O. Box 05042, 4 Pratt Station
Brooklyn, NY 11205
e-mail: rasul@dorsai.org

Your tax deductible donation will help support our campaign to increase the access to literature and improve the literacy skills of all those who are eager to learn.

If you or someone you know lives in the NYC area and can assist Rasul Murray with packing and loading the containe for shipment, please contact him. A small monetary compensation will be given to those who work for us
with Mr. Murray.

FUNDRAISING:

An African fashions sale was held to raise funds for the library. We were able to donate $300.00 to the cause. In addition, a board member donated $500.00 to bring our total to $800.00 for the month of July.

Our thanks go to Mrs. Crystal Barton, Mrs. Barbara Jones and Mrs. Leona Blackburn for their generous financial donations. Their generous contribution to education will ensure that the dream of book accessibility in these two villages becomes a reality.

BOARD MEMBERS:
Dr. Kojo Arthur - Culture and Curriculum (arthur@marshall.edu)
Dr. Gregory Yawson - Research/Development (gregoryeyawson@hotmail.com)
Dr. Pharra DeWindt - Executive Director/President (pharra@pharra.com)
Mr. Rasul Murray - Yaa Nyarkoa Library (rasul@dorsai.org)
Mr. Eric Vosbergh - Technology (edv2@buffalo.edu)
Mr. Kojo Yankah - Finance (kyankah@africaonline.com.gh)
Ms. Fai Walker - Administration (Keenie10@aol.com)
Mr. Detrick DeBurr - Fundraising (detrick@digitalflow.com)
Ms. Sherrie Byrnes - Grants (tgstwuro@localnet.com)

Executive Committee Leaders:
Ms. Stephanie Gadlin - Marketing and Advertising
Ms. Pittershawn Palmer - DLA-DVTI web design
Mr. Bernie Poole - Curriculum/Distance Learning
Mr. Antoine Rukebesha - Grants
Ms. Julia White-James - Fundraising
Mrs. Crystal Boling-Barton - Administration

Executive Committee Members:
Ms. Martina Scimeca - News Releases
Dr. Charles Payne - Grants
Ms. Yvonne Singer - Web Design
Mr. Joel Predmore - Technology
Ms. Regina Shujaa - Librarian
Mr. Gregory D. Barber - Media

Executive Committee leaders are still needed in the areas of finance, technology, and research and development. Please contact me or the Board member in charge of that area to volunteer.

Thank you for your continued support!

Pharra DeWindt, Ph.D
Executive Director
Digital Literacy Alliance
http://www.pharra.com
pharra@pharra.com
dla@pharra.com

So offline contact enhances the online experience just as the online world has enhanced the offline experience. Hybrid courses are probably more effective than wholly online courses provided people have the luxury of meeting in real time in person. In articles this year I have tried to counter stereotypes by showing how the online world has enhanced my social life as well as that of my 12-year-old and 15-year-old sons in Japan. WAOE's blog Intercultural Literacy has links to those articles and more, so please check it out at: http://waoe.blogspot.com/

Collegially, Steve McCarty, Professor, Osaka Jogakuin College
World Association for Online Education: http://waoe.org/president/
Online library: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/epublist.html
E-mail: waoe@waoe.org

Be sure to review Steve's new article out in September: A Picture of Online Education Archive of CRN Home Page Topics for Discussion, 10 September 2004)

Troubleshooting the WAOE Website, Discussion Boards, and List-Servs Because WAOE is a virtual organization, members are dependent on using their computer to see information and participate in all aspects of this organization. In this section the Webmaster will answer questions about the WAOE site or discuss common problems that members may experience. With the large variety of software and hardware used today, most often the problem is resolved with a configuration change. Send your questions to Maggie Lynch. She will try to answer you within two days to immediately resolve your problem. If your question is a common one, she may then use your question (anonymously) in this column so that other members can benefit as well.

Q. What's going on with the WAOE site and membership processing?

A. There has been a long delay in membership processing over the past four to five months due to a lack of personnel and time. Fortunately, during the annual member's meeting and subsequent board meeting it was approved to provide some minimal funding for us to hire student labor for processing membership. I hope to be caught up with the membership processing by Christmas.

This assistance will also then free up some of my time to help design a more automated approach to membership management, password management, and to work on the membership database to make it accessible for partner searching. I anticipate this process will take three to six months.

Q. I've been watching the WAOE site and I don't see anything that talks about design basics for online courses or techniques. This is why I joined the organization. Do you have anything on that topic?

A. WAOE has an ongoing committee working to create free online instructional design courses for members. However, as with many projects committee members get busy, and the decision-making process is extended. However, I have linked here a design basics page that we give out to faculty to just get them started. It has quick points to consider. If you are new to the field, you might also consider taking a course from one of many institutions that offer courses in online instructional strategies or instructional design. If you want specific recommendations, feel free to contact me by email.

Finally, keep checking back for an announcement of course availability to WAOE members in 2005. I believe by then we may have at least a pilot course to begin offering members.