Welcome to the Spring, 2006 Issue

You might recall that in the last issue we asked division members to send us links to syllabi for the classes they teach in political communication. Our purpose was to finally complete a "teaching resources" section for the APSA Political Communication website.

We want to thank everyone who sent us links, and to say that it's not too late for others to send their links as well. You can send them to David Ryfe.

We also want to announce that the "teaching resources" section of the APSA Political Communication website is now live! We're excited for you to visit the site and take a look at what we've done.

To celebrate what turned out to be a fairly time intensive exercise, we have devoted a good part of this issue to teaching-related themes.

In our commentary, we've asked Kevin Barry, Associate Director of the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Notre Dame, to describe his philosophy for incorporating new technologies in the classroom. The alternatives these days seem endless--everything from powerpoint to wikis. How should we make these choices? As you'll see, Kevin's basic advice is to think learning outcomes first, technology second. Kevin is a great resource on these issues, and we want to thank him for volunteering to share his views with our members.

When we heard what three of the division's members are doing with new technology in their classes, we knew we just had to share the information with others. So in our roundtable, we have asked Mauro Porto, John Gastil, and Tim Groeling to describe and reflect on their use of on-line discussion boards, wikis, and video production, respectively.

Finally, our featured resource in this issue is the Purdue on-line writing center named "Owl." If you haven't stumbled on to this site, you will be surprised at the great number of writing resources available here for you and your students.

We hope you find the discussion and material helpful.

Of course, no issue of PCR would be complete without the usual assortment of up-to-date information on recent books, calls for papers, upcoming meetings, and grants deadlines.

To those of you going to Dresden for this year's ICA conference--we are jealous and refuse to talk to you! But perhaps you can tell us all about it at the APSA conference in Philadelphia next August.

Have a good, no, a great, summer.

David Ryfe