Universal Service: Defining the Policy Goal in the Age of the Internet

The current universal service policies for the Internet focus almost entirely on physical connectivity. This emphasis is misplaced because the Internet is an overlay network that rides piggyback on the existing telecommunications infrastructure. The focus instead should be on Internet services and the end-user equipment and training needed to access them.     

A culture of assessment: A bioecological systems approach for early and continuous assessment of deaf infants and children

Even today, with all of the hearing technology and bilingual programs available, many Deaf children arrive at school with severe language delays. With a renewed focus on having Deaf children kindergarten-ready, assessment of language milestones becomes critical as seen in the campaign Child First and the legislation referred to as Language Equality & Acquisition for Deaf Kids (LEAD-K). Here, a strategy is proposed to ensure that Deaf children are kindergarten-ready. The focus is on a re-evaluation of the epistemologies of the social and individualized medical models of health, as well as Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems approach, to assess all components that impact a Deaf child's ecology to permit maximizing their developmental potentials.     

Doing the Right Thing: Ethical Cyberspace Research

With increased use of the Internet and other computer-based communications resources, researchers have begun examining interactions in, and uses of, 'cyberspace.' In considering ways to conduct ethical cyberspace research, some have looked to guidelines in their own disciplines. A potentially useful ethics statement for social science researchers to consider is that of the Association of Computing Machinery. Keeping in mind some of the ACM guidelines, as well as the similarities and differences between cyberspace and other communications media, may help researchers to be aware of their ethical responsibilities in conducting their research. The ACM guidelines, especially in consideration with other communications media, help remind researchers of the technological environment within which the social interactions being studied take place.     

Guilt, Suffering and Responsibility

This paper examines the moral significance of guilt in the context of how students confront the suffering of another. Within social-justice education, such confrontations are often staged in pedagogical efforts to encourage students to assume social responsibility. Frequently, however, the guilt that students claim to endure as a result of these pedagogical encounters is not perceived to be of much ethical import. By exploring the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein and the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this essay argues that guilt arises out of our susceptibility to another's pain and that it plays a crucial role both in 'making reparation' (Klein) and in the very formation of responsibility itself (Levinas).     

A Community-Driven Metadata Framework for Describing Cultural Resources: The Digital Library North Project

This article describes the Digital Library North (DLN) project, a collaboration among researchers at the University of Alberta, staff at the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and communities within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) to develop a culturally appropriate metadata framework for a digital library of cultural resources. It will discuss gathering of data to inform the first iteration of the metadata framework and digital library prototype, as well as revisions made to both the framework and the digital library based on feedback obtained through community interaction with the prototype.