January 14, 2008

Unity, Not Conformity

Learning Is Universal
And Participatory.

Greetings, Interns, and welcome to the Multicultural Issues website, designed especially for you and student learning. It belongs to a larger cyberweb, Planet Gnosis, which is part the galactic system known as CornDancer, a developmental website for the mind and spirit.

Unlike course management systems such as WebCT and Blackboard, Planet Gnosis is a transparent website — that is, readers can access the site without a password. The CornDancer cyber community believes that knowledge should be shared and that learning is universal and participatory.

Our class web is moderated by yours truly.
Your submissions and posts come to me via e-mail through my UARK address or my CornDancer address. I edit your work and upload it to Planet Gnosis and, bada bing, you become part of the CornDancer cyber community. You are a published writer and your information is accessible as long as CornDancer and the Internet exist! I invite you to explore the many planets and cybersites in the CornDancer orbit. You might find another web ruled by someone you know!

Your Point of Contact

The Multicultural Issues homepage provides a point of contact for us during the semester. I'll post new information and updates there on a regular basis. To access other class pages, click the appropriate link on the left sidebar: Syllabus, Calendar, Student Pages, Learning Resources, ABC Who Is Me?, and Archive.

Each of you will have a page in the Student Pages section, which will display your reflections about the course material. You may also add other information related to the course or to diversity pedagogy.

Learning Resources will feature articles, informed links to professional organization websites, other weblinks, and educational information that might be helpful to your success as a classroom teacher. The Multicultural Issues Archive stores postings from the homepage after they are retired during our progress through the spring semester.

I encourage you to send me information that you think will help your fellow interns become more finely attuned to the wonderful diversity around us.

Your First Assignment
And a Bonus Opportunity

Your first assignment will be posted on the ABC Who Is Me? page. Take a look now for a brief preview of the assignment.

To begin, here's an opportunity to be creative and add a personal touch to your student homepage. I've designed a BONUS POINTS project to allow you to express your self image. I encourage each of you to create a visual that represents you in relation to multicultural education (MCE). The visual will become your personal web logo for your student page.

The logo appears at the top left of the page. For example, the Multicultural Issues homepage features a cube, a symbol of unity in diversity. Check out the other logos on the website to help you decide what's appropriate for you.

You can draw your logo, scan a piece of artwork, provide a photo or an illustration for our webmaster to scan, create a computer graphic, or let us choose if you are pressed for time.

I will award you ten bonus points if your logo reflects the principals of MCE and you include a brief summary of why you chose your logo and how it relates to multicultural issues. I will award you five bonus points if you submit an image without any summary. If you don't have the time or the inclination, that's fine — but no bonus points will be awarded.

Multicultural Issues is a course for everyone. As we begin, ponder this thought as our watchwords for the semester: Unity, not uniformity.

Let's have a great class!

Dr. FAB