Published Saturday, September 13, 2003
Here to Stay
The Appian returns with fresh blood and new ideas for the 2003-2004 school year.

By Andrew Mandel and Eric Kinne
APPIAN STAFF WRITERS

The following are website ideas that have and have yet to be implemented:

One question - where would the day/date go? Upper right hand corner, above the picture?

THE FRONT PAGE...

Assuming that we are going to link this new site to our old site ASAP (see #3 below), I'd like to see the front page feature three sections, with larger headings:

1. STORIES WE'RE WORKING ON

Over The River?
Harvard University's top decision-makers are putting the finishing touches on a plan that would move the Graduate School of Education across the river to Allston, according to reports in the Boston Globe and The Harvard Crimson. In a memo to students this month, however, GSE Dean Ellen Lagemann said the deal is not yet sealed. "There are a number of scenarios being discussed, and HGSE moving is only one of them," she wrote.

Dean Pursues New Vision
Graduate School of Education Dean Ellen Lagemann is leading the faculty to reconfigure the entire academic structure of the school, doing away with the three "areas" (APSP, HDP and L&T) and creating a core curriculum for students.

Noguera and Juel Depart
Pedro Noguera, frequently rated as "the best professor I've ever had" in course evaluations and an influential scholar on communities and schools, has left his tenured professorship for New York University, surprising students who had been told he was simply going "on leave" this year. He -- and the popular Chall Reading Lab Director Connie Juell, who has moved to Stanford -- joined the faculty three years ago.

Moses Shares His Wisdom
Bob Moses, voter rights advocate, winner of the MacArthur "genius" grant and founder of the Algebra Project, teaches a course this semester on mathematics as a civil right.

Gender Studies Gone
A year ago, the Graduate School of Education could claim both Jane Fonda's $12.5 million grant for a gender studies center and the celebrated author of In A Different Voice, Carol Gilligan, on its faculty. Both are now gone, as is the entire master's program in gender studies.

2. FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Harvard Idol
The GSE's own Dorinda Carter and Heather Harding took second and third prize in the University-wide rendition of the popular TV show, "American Idol."

3. GETTING INVOLVED (perhaps this section can go underneath the picture as its own column)

The Appian is the Graduate School of Education's student-run newspaper and aims to be a forum for the happenings and ideas of the GSE community. If you are interested in becoming a writer, editorialist, artist, story editor, layout designer or web specialist for the paper, e-mail theappian@gse.harvard.edu.

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BIGGER ITEMS (in random order)...

1. The use of the shield. Though I think it looks great, I have been told by the HGSE webmaster that it is technically "illegal" for us to use the Harvard shield on an outside website without express permission from the dean. We can either pursue that permission from the dean, or get one of our artists to craft a different illustration for the masthead.

2. Place for "Updated Sept. 13, 2003".

3. Altering the old site. Tina Hansar in Student Affairs told me that our username and password for the public site are theappian and ch@ngeme, respectively. And the HGSE webmaster gave me this site as instructions for adjusting the old site (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/resources/webpubgse_admin.html). Justin, perhaps you can decipher the instructions and figure out how we can

4. Extra categories. Below the other links on the lefthand column, let's have a category called "About The Appian" and another called "Contact The Appian," which is a mailto: link to theappian@gse.harvard.edu.

5. Re: the photo. Let's have a space for credit for the photog, and a little more breathing room in general around the caption. And let's make it standard to have a teaser for each caption, in caps:

THE LOVE BOAT: GSE Dean Ellen Lagemann (left) and Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies Christopher Dede get cozy on Friday's harbor cruise, sponsored by the Office of Student Affairs.

6. Populating the site with some Crimson content. During the Tuesday meeting, I will ask the Board of Editors if they think we should pursue Crimson permission to place links to their HGSE-related articles to our I will check with The Crimson to find out if it is alright if we link to their content .

7. Intuitive article naming. Because we will (hopefully) be dealing with a lot of content, I want to make sure that we name our links intuitively so that the next generation of Appian editors can work with the site easily. For the Harvard Idol story, for example, I could see us naming the link "idol0201," for the subject of the story, plus the school-year of publication (02), plus the issue number of that year (there was only one issue, so it's 01). If you have other suggestions, please suggest away!

8. A story page. Let's experiment with a story page so I can see what you're thinking there. I would love to see Headline, date of publication, byline, story and link to the author's e-mail address at the bottom.

9. Fancy things. I don't know how complex it is to do (and feel free to say, you're crazy), but ideally we'd have features such as "e-mail this article to a friend."

10. Re: the domain question. Let's take this up with the Board of Editors, but I am thinking of longevity -- and an "theappian.com" or, even better, "theappian.org" seems more appropriate for taking us through the years and not making you tethered to the site for longer than you need to be.

Eric Kinne, Ed.M. '04, is a student in the Language and Literacy Program.