Officers' Reports
Report from VP for Programs, Jennifer Pullman
Report from VP for Membership, Jarek Janio
Report from VP for Communications, Gay Wiseman
Report from Secretary, Andre Elliott
Report from Listserve Manager, Theran Mugleston
Report from Treasurer, Arthur Ogden
Discussion
Report from the Vice President for Programs
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
What an exciting way to begin 2005—gathering from all over the world as PDK members and fellow educators!
We will launch our wonderful week of discussions and exchanges by sharing ways that art education is infused in our schools and experiences, with the program's focus being "Art in Our Classrooms". Students' input and exchanges of image links will be welcome—my own art students can't wait to be heard from internationally! All ideas and issues involving art education and arts learning will be dealt with, so let's hear YOUR experiences!
Don't forget: there are prizes involved!!!
*IF YOU RESPOND TO ANY E-MAIL ABOUT THE MEETING OR ADD TO THE LIVELY DISCUSSIONS, YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED TO WIN A PDK T-SHIRT AND A SECRET GIFT (VALUED AT $25) TO START YOUR NEW YEAR OFF RIGHT!!!
This is YOUR meeting. Share your thoughts and opinions about education—and art—and life—with kindred spirits!!! Use the "Arts in Education" link at left to join the program. Come back every day or two during the week to keep up with the discussion.
Jenny
Jennifer Pullman
Vice President for Programs
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
vp_programs@waldenpdk.org
Report from the Vice President for Membership
In the fall months I have experienced a steady flow of requests for information on membership. To what extend these requests actually change into memberships is not clear as the requests are processed through our International Headquarters and apparently it is difficult for that office to forward such information to us. But the members are out there, so we can only benefit by providing a friendly, professional and scholarly environment where our members feel invited and welcome.
As I wrote before, I think it is a very sad news that our Walden accounts are to expire eventually. Folks from tech support responded to my inquiry on the topic with the following: "Please feel free to email Paula Peinovich, Dean of Walden University to express your concerns. Her email address is paulap@waldenu.edu." Maybe we could coordinate our efforts and send a more official letter from our Cyber Chapter. I suspect that the problem is money, and I just wonder how much Walden tuitions would have to be raised to maintain e-mail accounts.
With regard to publishing, I think we could help our members with announcements about calls for papers, conferences, book reviews and whatever else there is that's going on in the educational community. In the process of doing research for my own dissertation, I discovered how very sketchy scholarly literature from other countries can be, for example. Since we are an international organization, maybe we could discuss the venues for publishing in the international context. Sky is the limit I suppose.
As I browse through our web site, I find a number of great online activities that took place in the past. Just check out our "Chapter Programs" tab from "Jump to" menu: http://www.waldenpdk.org/index.html. We've had guest speakers and moderated discussions on a variety of viable topics. Could the choice of such online activities be a part of our agenda for the regularly scheduled meetings? I know that we reach a number of really, really talented professors, scholars and students. Our members would definitely benefit from the online exchange among them.
Finally,this is just a friendly suggestion, but I think we could do away with the mass e-mailing options located at: http://www.waldenpdk.org/meetings.htm at the bottom of the page. I don't know about your experience, but I have experienced a huge increase in junk mail to my Walden e-mail address since I joined the PDK. I believe that the easy access to our listserve maybe the reason. [See Gay's report, following, concerning this.]
Wishing you all the best in the coming New Year.
Jarek Janio
Vice President for Membership
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
vp_membership@waldenpdk.org
Report from the Vice President for Communications
Hello all,
I have begun to re-code our website in a more current system, and since I am learning as I go, it is not going very quickly! Many apologies everyone, for the delay getting this program and business meeting underway. It is entirely my fault; the other officers were all timely with their reports and ready to go on January 2nd, but I couldn't finish my work on the necessary web pages by then. I again am appreciative of our chapter's flexibility in meeting times, though I do not like missing deadlines and disappointing anyone. At any rate, I am happy that I have finally begun the work of updating the way in which the website is coded so that it will be easier and much quicker in future to prepare pages for meetings.
For anyone who is interested, what I have been doing is converting the HTML to XHTML ("extensible" HTML), and separating all styling instructions out of each page's structural code, placing style code instead in a separate file using CSS technology ("cascading style sheets"). This system allows one style sheet to be applied to as many pages as desired on a website, and makes style changes quick and easy to accomplish in just one place, rather than in the code of every single page. This system has now been adopted widely on the internet, and nearly all types of computer operating systems and web browsers now support it, so the the time had come to make the changes on our site. It is still a work in progress--I will continue learning and tweaking. I do not intend to go back and revise all the archived pages, but will create all new material using this system henceforth.
Tuesday, back at my computer lab classroom for the first time after the winter break, I had a brief chance at lunch to take a look at the changes using the PC computers there. (When at home, I use Macs, and that's where I normally work on the site.) It was both heartening and disheartening, all at once. It is a little bit like seeing a long-loved special book in a different edition; a different cover, different illustrations, different smell and feel in the hands... but the same book--the same words. The good thing was that structurally, functionally, everything looked and worked as it should on all the systems. However, the stylistic features varied significantly on the different machines I viewed the site on. Color areas were different shapes, and the colors themselves were different--the very same shade of light blue ranged from gray to teal. Text sizes varied also. I knew there would be differences, but I was surprised that in some cases the color scheme was rendered so differently it was unappealing, and text was sometimes rendered either too large or too small to be read easily or to flow as intended. These things depended on the version of the web browser program. If you find the text size to be a problem, newer browsers will let you adjust it; the new coding I've used on the site allows this flexibility. The text size is not "hard-coded". If your browser has the capability, you can adjust the text display size by finding the setting for that in one of your menus, on a tool bar, or in your browser's "Options" or "Preferences".
I think that most people generally use the same computer setup to access websites, or maybe use one at work and one at home, often of the same general type. So most people are probably not aware of how differently each of the types of computers, and each of the software programs for web browsing, displays the same websites. A site can work perfectly and appear beautifully on a Windows XP system using Internet Explorer version 6.2; but have overlapping text and misshapen images on a Macintosh using the Netscape 4.0 browser. A particular bit of code for a function like submitting a form, or posting a discussion comment might work smoothly on a PC with the newest Windows operating system, but crash a machine running on the Windows 98 operating system. There is nothing"cast in stone" about designing for the internet! You have to adopt a fluid design structure that can cope with a high level of variation in implementation and still hava bottom-line effectiveness. As if this isn't difficult enough, website designers are now being stretched in a new way to accomodate the increasing prevalence of small internet devices that folks now use to access sites, such as palm pilots and internet capable phones. Now we have to try to design for the experience those users will have with our sites. And of course we should design sites in such a way that people with sensory or motor disabilities can access them also, which mandates another whole set of requirements to consider and incorporate.
It's all a daunting task, and the knowledge and skills required have an evolution rate such as the world may have never seen before! Constant learning of new technologies is vital; and here I am, just a middle-aged teacher with somewhat geeky tendencies, trying to do this in spare time... I'm definitely not a web programming or design expert. But I am determined to try to keep this chapter growing in communication capabilities and potential, given the limited resources we have. I hope that any of you who have developed talents or skills in web programming will come forward with ideas that might help--but more than ideas, it will be offers of your TIME to develop some of those ideas into tangible communication tools and techniques for our chapter that will make a difference.
Communications. "It's all going to be about communications," I remember hearing in early discussions (mid 80s?) about the future of personal computing. That sounded so dry and uninteresting to me. But this was pre-internet; pre-"cyberspace chapter" of Phi Delta Kappa. Now I understand. Now I agree. Our computers are increasingly serving as our primary means of communications with some of our "communities of interest". I will continue to try to facilitate our chapter's communications. We are going to be making changes to our email system as well as the website, as you will see in Theran's report. I hope these changes will make our communications easier and better for our members and site visitors.
Gay
Gay Wiseman
Vice President for Communications
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
vp_communications@waldenpdk.org
Report from the Secretary
My primary responsibilities are to assist the chapter with reports that are required by the international office, keep minutes of chapter meetings, and assist other officers such as the treasurer, historian, membership VP and president with their critical tasks. I share my responsibilities with all of you to ensure that you contact me regarding the aforementioned.
I regret to inform you that the minutes of previous meetings have been lost in cyberspace. Recently, Walden University closed the email account that I had been using¬Ýsince my days as a student. This email account¬Ýwill be greatly missed because the origin of our chapter is attached to it. Truly, we lost a smorgosboard of data with the termination of my Walden¬Ýemail account. To be fair to Walden, the email changes are impacting everyone.
Cyberspace has grown up and matured since we started our chapter. Therefore, I look forward to our next great phase as the only PDK chapter in cyberspace.
Andre R. Elliott, Ph.D.
Andre R. Elliott, Ph.D.
Secretary
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
secretary@waldenpdk.org
Report from the Listserve Manager
We have decided to create and provide waldenpdk.org email addresses to all of our members. We will then phase out the pdk@waldenu.edu mailing list, which has become problematic to update and maintain. Watch for more information to come in your mail in the next few months as I work on this project.
Theran
Theran Mugleston, Ph.D.
Listserve Manager
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
listserve_mgr@waldenpdk.org
Report from the Treasurer
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Since we all have been through quite a year what with Ivan and other misfortunes, I thought I would present an overview of our balance, receipts, and expenses since June 2004.
| BEGINNING BALANCE | $3,764.71 | |
| TOTAL DEPOSITS THROUGH DEC. 31 | $1,160.00 | |
| CHECKS PAID THROUGH DEC. 31 | $1,329.21 | |
| Gay Wiseman -- Nat'l Convention bal. of expenses, plus Gus's programming work | 353.24 | |
| Marion Carpenter -- program gifts, last 4 years | 694.89 | |
| PDK National -- Memorabilia for new members | 281.05 | |
| BALANCE FORWARD JANUARY 1, 2005 | $3,595.50 | |
I trust all is well with each of you. I am now writing a weekly column on education in the Demopolis Times (www.demopolistimes.com) and invite you to go to the Times website (above) and critique me and my pedagogical meanderings.
AND let me thank each of you who have contacted me to express concern over what we lived through with Ivan and the birth of our new son, Nathan.
God's Blessing to you all.
Arthur G. Ogden, Ph.D.
Arthur G. Ogden, Ph.D.
Treasurer
Walden Cyberspace Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa
treasurer@waldenpdk.org
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