Upon Further Review

Reviews, Previews, and More

We offer six new reviews this issue: two book reviews, one web-site review, one web-software review, and two writing software reviews.

Also, in pieces we are terming "responsaviews," we offer two new looks at Joan Tornow's Link/Age, written both as reviews of Tornow's book and as responses to Joan Latchaw's review of Link/Age in Kairos 2.1.

And to close, with this issue we launch a new experiment, a preview of book not yet written.

New Reviews

Bradley Bleck's review of Dawn Rodrigues's The Research Paper and the World Wide Web, considers what the book offers both teachers and a students. See if he recommends the book to both.
- In a thoughtful response to Bleck's review, Dawn Rodrigues suggests that the next generation of web research books will need to offer strategies for more fully integrating library with Internet research.
Charles Green surveys and assays Walt Whitman web sites, combining his study of Whitman and his perspective as Project Manager for The Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive to offer critiques of the websites' content and presentational quality.
Andrew Higgins reviews James Strickland's From Disk to Hard Copy and notes that though it is not cutting edge, it holds value for teachers who are starting out in computer-networked classrooms.
Jake Shewmake reviews Ceilidh, software designed for web-based conferencing and document sharing. In addition to covering the software's features, Jake includes links demonstrating how Utah State University's Writing Center uses Ceilidh.
Ann Woodlief praises Norton's CONNECT.Net, weaving in with her voice, the views of colleagues and students who have used the software.
Peter Sands compares the leading writing software for writing courses taught in networked-computer classrooms. Seen as an ongoing project that will be updated as new products and new features to old products come to the market, Sands encourages you to share your thoughts and comparisons with him for future versions of this piece.

Responsaviews

Susan Halter and David Silver offer further consideration of Joan Tornow's Link/Age: Composing in the Online Classroom. While they each find agreement with Latchaw's criticisms, they also find more value in Tornow's book than Latchaw chose to emphasize. Taken together these three reviews offer an expanded sense of Tornow's book. The question is, however, which perspective would you emphasize in your own reading? What is more important--how a study is designed and written up, or how value can be found in it whatever the design?

Pre/View

Shortly after departing for Dallas and his position with the Dallas Convention and Visitor's Bureau, Kairos publisher Mick Doherty received a query from MIT teachers Dan Stevenson and Ed Barrett. They asked if Mick would review a book-in-progess that they were preparing for MIT Press, wondering if Mick would use some portions of the book in his class on writing on the web and creating web-based hypertext with his students.

Instead, we invited Stevenson and Barrett to post their proposal here, in Kairos. We, and they, invite you to preview the proposal and to (p)re-view the book-in-draft with your students. With the cooperation of MIT Press and participation of the authors, we hope to follow this book through its production and publication. We'll be inviting responses to the proposal here from both teachers and their students, inviting the authors and their editor to join us in Kairos /Lingua MOO interlogues, and when the book is complete and in press, we'll find reviewers who have not been part of this process, as well as one or two who have, to write a book review for us. Interested in learning more?