Editor's Note, April 2007

Elizabeth Haller
PhD Candidate and English Instructor, Kent State University
E-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com

We invite your continued perusal and encourage you to submit articles, poetry, and fiction for consideration in future issues of AEE.  Please review our Call for Papers on this site for more details on submission requirements.  If you are unsure whether your contribution would be suitable under the terms of our Call for Papers, please send along an inquiry, and I will be happy to respond forthwith.  As always, do not forget to check out Grist for the Mill for possible submission ideas.

Columnist Lynne Fukuda returns with a column article titled “Writing Romance Novels:  Life Lessons in Romance.”  Fukuda provides the following synopsis for her column: 
            I have many roles in academia—student, teacher, advisor, and distance learning             specialist.  I have also worked in a halfway house for young kids, as a biological             researcher, a lab assistant, an ecologist, a primatologist, a part-time mother, and many             other things. Yet, I must confess that my true calling is to write romance novels.  I live in             obscurity, and sometimes in poverty, in order to support my writing.  Yet nothing gives me             so much joy, so much satisfaction as writing romances.  I struggle with lack of confidence             and hesitate in attempting to publish my novels.  “They are too strange, too out of touch,” I             say to myself each the thought of publishing enters my mind. Perhaps someday I will             e-publish. Until then, I will continue to learn through life lessons how to become a better             observer of human nature and build better characters.

Columnist Susan Jones returns as well with her column article titled “Ten Great Online Journals for Reading over Spring Break.”  In her article, Jones provides a compilation of her favorite online distance learning journals.

Dan Lukiv starts off AEE’s feature articles with the continuation of his Haiku series in “Chapter Nine”.  As stated previously, familiarize yourself with this series by referring to the March 2006 issue for both the “Introduction” and the “Forward” to this collection as well as the April 2006 through December 2006 issues for chapters one through eight.

The second feature of this issue,“Integrating Information and Communication Technology into the School  Curriculum: A Case for Professional Development Models”, comes to us from Anthony N. Ezeife and Helda A. Francis.  According to Ezeife and Francis:
            With the myriad of changes and challenges brought about by technological advancement in             modern society, today’s teacher feels an immense pressure not only to cope with the             status quo on a day-to-day basis but also to adequately prepare students to fit into, and             function effectively in, a technologically oriented society when they leave school. This             article argues that adequate teacher preparation with a strong focus on Information and             Communication Technology (ICT) is the approach teacher training institutions should             adopt to meet the needs of today’s teacher. Such an approach should be embraced not             just by the teachers themselves but also by school administrators and teacher educators             whose unalloyed support would prepare teachers to actualize the integration of ICT into             the school curriculum.

The final feature of this issue is titled “Social Interactions in the Online Classroom.”  Author Salome C. Nnoromele states that her article “draws from personal experience teaching both graduate and undergraduate literature courses online as well as research to examine social communication in the online classroom. It looks at the challenges of facilitating social communication in the online classroom and examines current practices aimed at alleviating those challenges.”

The first of this month’s Poet’s Corner contributions come to us from Noel Sloboda, who states: “Promoting tolerance is essential to the mission of colleges.  But sometimes, we’re so impassioned about getting this message out that we muddle it.  I wrote ‘A Message from the Council for Acceptance’ to explore how the strident rhetoric of political correctness can make murky the ideals it celebrates.”  Regarding the second of Sloboda’s contributions to this issue:  “Most literary theorists love literature.  But literary theory often becomes an end in itself rather than a means of heightening our appreciation of literature.  ‘Orientalism’ was composed while I was reading people who drew on Edward Said without considering where his ideas came from imaginatively.”

S. Purcell Woodard provides the final contribution to this issues Poet’s Corner titled “Mine. Yours. Ours.”  According to Woodard, this poem, along with another set to appear in the combined June-July 2007 issue of AEE, “written/spoken at separate times, represent my interpretation of the playful and instructive sides of university life.  In both cases, I was speaking to a room full of undergraduates and their parents, encouraging them to join our community of scholars.”

READ, ENJOY, AND CONTRIBUTE!

You are invited to join AE Extra staff!
Send your ideas and/or writing sample to the Editor-in-chief:
Elizabeth Haller
Kent State University (e-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com)

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