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Special Items

Appointment of WAOE Officers

President Steve McCarty is pleased to announce that, at the Directors' Meeting which commenced online on February 23 and is still proceeding, the following new WAOE Director and Committee Chairs have been appointed:

For Executive Secretary: Alan Rea
Alan Rea is an Assistant Professor of Business Information Systems at the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University.  In addition to serving as the college's Webmaster and Listowner, he has worked extensively developing web-based pedagogy and delivery for the Electronic Portfolio Project.  He has implemented web-based delivery of many courses, such as "End-User Computing." He also regularly teaches "Business Web Design" at the HCoB.  His research interests and publishing focus on web-based pedagogy and developing delivery systems and user interfaces.  Currently, he is working on a number of projects involving computer systems and cultural implications, as well as implementing electronic portfolios in various environments.  He also researches information and business systems issues, such as E-Commerce and Network Security.

For Online Educator Development Committee Chair: Sholom Gold
Sholom Gold holds a Doctor of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in education, technology, and politics (1999).  He currently is a consultant for Ernst and Young's Global Learning Solutions designing web-based training for corporate environments.  His experience includes developing curricula and instructional designs for various content within networked learning environments. He has knowledge of instructional design, online pedagogies, adult education, and facilitation.  Sholom developed an online training program for faculty to begin teaching and customizing curricula in an online setting.  He also consults for institutions of higher education on the issues of faculty development and online pedagogy.

For Online Conferences Committee Chair: Keiko Schneider
Keiko Schneider has a BEd from Shiga University, Shiga, Japan, and an MA in Teaching from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.  She taught Japanese for eight years at SIT and the University of New Mexico until she established her own business, Saboten Web Design.  She does Web designing, Web hosting, consulting on technology application in the field of Japanese-language teaching and presents at educational conferences frequently.  She is well-known through her portal site for Japanese teachers and learners called, "Keiko Schneider's Bookmarks" and the Manager of SenseiOnline listserv, which is for Japanese teachers to help network.  She is also a frequent poster on many Japanese/foreign language education related listservs.  She is the Webmaster of the University of Oregon Center for Applied Japanese Language Studies (CAJLS), Center for Asian and Pacific Center (CAPS) at University of Oregon, Association of Arizona Teachers of Japanese (AATJ), Japan America Society of New Mexico (JASNM) ) and some Japan-related businesses.  She is also a contractor with the Association of Teachers of Japanese (ATJ) and is involved with many projects with educational grants.  She is working on an Online Teaching certificate from UCLA Extension and actively educating herself in computer languages and CALL issues, and hopes to return to teaching through on-line instruction.

Many thanks to predecessors who remain on the WAOE Coordinating Ring as Committee Members: Brian Donohue-Lynch, and Nick Bowskill.  Thanks also to Kinshuk, who previously chaired the Online Educator Development Committee, but has now left the Ring.
For WAOE's organizational structure, newly updated, see: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/WAOE-founding.html

Mike Warner, a key Coordinating Ring member who enjoys the illustrious title - and demanding role - of "Cyber-Parliamentarian,"  manages the Association's Bulletin Board.  This Board is an important component of WAOE's communication and decision-making system.  We use it regularly for meetings - in fact, a meeting of the Directors is proceeding there (or has only recently concluded) as you read this item.  It is also, for the moment, the central networking and correspondence location for the various sub-groups we have begun to get going - eg the Online Educator Development Committee, the Educational Standards OCREW, the Industry and  Academia OCREW.  And it offers a convenient and very user-friendly venue for  taking up and exploring in greater depth issues and concerns that may be only briefly aired via the WAOE-Views listserve, or merely introduced in WEB.

Some recently joined members have been asking how to access the Bulletin Board, and others have encountered difficulties in doing so - perhaps because they've forgotten their password, or the login system Mike devised, or else they've changed their email address and thus dropped out of the access arrangements Mike has set up.  So here's the gist of a recent message from Mike to the Ring, which reminds everyone about the login/password procedure, and explains how to get into the archives of meetings and discussions held on the Bulletin Board over the past year and more:

All members listed on the 11/4/99 file sent by David are registered at the http://www2.ec.erau.edu:8080/~waoe WebBoard site with the first portion of the email address they used to register with WAOE (before the ampere sign) as their username and "waoe" (without the quotes) as their password. ...

If you've a mind to visit the WebBoard you'll notice that much of the posted content is no longer available (directly) but has been
auto-archived.  I am in the process of making the archives available off my web site  and will make an announcement to that affect on the waoe-views listserve.  In the meantime, with the exception of just a few newer postings on community building, most of the folders appear empty. I will give a link to each folder's archive as I am able to transcribe the postings to html.

Mike's message to the Ring closes with a plea which we would like to echo loud and clear:

Traffic at the the WebBoard site has dropped to almost zero over the last few months and any ideas as to how to reinvigorate return visits as well as postings would be welcomed.