Editor's Note - January-February 2003

Karen Heise
M.A. student, University of Northern Colorado
E-mail: kheise2000@yahoo.com

The beginning of every year brings with it a sense of hope. There is a pervasive and decidedly practical tone to our thoughts. We want to somehow mitigate the mistakes and missteps we made in the previous year by ratcheting our thoughts, intents, and actions up a notch. In short, we are determined to make our lives more practical and relevant. If there are two words I'd chose to describe this combined issue of AEE, "practical" and "relevant" would handily fill the bill.

If you've resolved this year to dive into the cyber-market of distance education, Ken Haley's second installment of three, "Making Contact With Students in Online Learning," helps demystify the process of putting together captivating materials. He walks even the totally uninitiated through course design, equipment evaluation and selection, and multimedia production. Since online education is growing by leaps and bounds every year, this article couldn't be more relevant. (Part 1 of this series appeared in the December 2002 issue.) Part 3 of this series will conclude next month.

What better way to put education to practical use than through service learning? Drs. Dexter Woods and Pete Banfe highlight an exciting and highly successful service learning venture, the Global Village Café, a full-blown high-end restaurant conceived and run by students enrolled in a small business course at their university. I think you'll find this in-depth blend of service learning theory and hands-on experience stimulating and inspiring.

Elizabeth Haller addresses the practicality and relevance of peer review in the classroom in "The Option of Collaboration." Using essays by Richard C. Raymond and Leanne B. Warshauer, Haller re-thinks and re-forms her peer-review class times into a fruitful experience for student and teacher alike.

The same can be said for Lynne K. Fukuda's experience with ADHD children in her regular column, "The View From Here." Hers insight into how these children tick is born from her personal, first-hand experience with ADHD--an experience that is still teaching her many things. Often, the most practical way to address students comes from inside the heart rather than inside a textbook.

Finally, we introduce a new feature this month, "Grist for the Mill: Questions for You." This space does just what it intimates--asks questions of our readers though thought-provoking topics. We seek responses in the form of papers, essays, well-grounded opinion pieces, fiction, and poetry. All college and university students and instructors, K-12 teachers, and education administrators are encouraged to reply. The reasoning for this column is--you guessed it--to make education more practical and relevant for everyone. I encourage you to print, post, and otherwise widely disseminate this page--especially to students, who often feel they have nothing "important" or relevant to say. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Given the demands of our times, the educator's mandate and mantra ought to be practicality and relevance for 2003. It's a tall order, but the year has just begun.

Cheers,
Karen Heise, Editor-in-Chief

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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