Thomas Seay is Coordinator of SF Projects, University of Kansas
_http://www.aboutsf.com/_ (http://www.aboutsf.com/)
He writes: Our first major project is a speaker's bureau, and I've appended
an announcement on that subject to the end of this email. I hope those of
you who are interested in speaking about SF will join in, but I'm mostly
writing to ask for assistance in our next project.
We're hoping to build a major curriculum resource for classes about
speculative fiction at all academic levels, from elementary school right up through
university study. This will include Accelerated Reader tests for young
students, study guides and handouts on major SF novels, and just about anything
else you can imagine being useful in a classroom, all built and maintained on a
wiki.
This wiki will soon be opened up to the public, but to get it off on the
right foot, I want to set up a few example pages to establish the basic
structure of the wiki and to demonstrate what a curriculum might look like. Would
anyone here be willing to help out with this -- say, by uploading a study guide
you've already created for a SF novel, posting a reading list for a SF
class, etc.?
If so, please drop me a line off-list at [log in to unmask]
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rff/post?postID=6hiRPs1UZ70zV9cCufN6p9BBy1ZhoryzTUzvOk1F5Llvd057
B5wb2za3HKjr9bpI27nS2WAijA) and I'll set you up with the wiki information!
Thanks, and best wishes, -Thomas Seay
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When libraries, schools, businesses, and other institutions need to hire a
speaker to discuss science fiction and fantasy, they too often don't know how
to contact a qualified author or even where to begin looking.
The Speculation Speakers and Media Resource program hopes to change that.
Speculation Speakers is the first major project of AboutSF, an organization
funded in part by SFWA and hosted at the University of Kansas. Through
AboutSF's website, SF authors and other qualified speakers can post and maintain
their own online profiles in an easily searchable database. The program also
actively seeks engagements for enrolled speakers.
Joining the Speculation Speakers bureau is free, and all SFWA members will
be accepted. The bureau has three speaking topics: Science Fiction -
General, Fantasy - General, and Horror - General. Simply submit your information at
the following address:
_http://www.aboutsf.com/speakers/apply.php_
(http://www.aboutsf.com/speakers/apply.php)
Speculation Speakers also serves as a press list for journalists seeking
comment from SF authors. To join the press list, be sure to choose "Available
for Press Inquiries" as one of your speaking topics.
In order for a speaker to be listed, he or she has to opt-in to join the
bureau. If you have any speakers you're familiar with who you'd like to enroll,
would you mind dropping them a line to letting them know we exist?
AboutSF is part of Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the
University of Kansas _http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter/_ (http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter/)
The aboutsf.com website also could use some advice on what primary and
secondary teachers and librarians would like as an on-line course in science
fiction and a one-day workshop that might travel around to various sites on
invitation.
We have our own concepts, in my case drawn from nearly forty years of
teaching SF courses of various kinds (I have a fondness, for instance, for a genre
course that discusses science fiction through a survey of where it came from
and how it developed into what it is today, as my six-volume ROAD TO SCIENCE
FICTION illustrates, and I think this background is essential to anyone
attempting to teach SF; but I don't want to enforce my preferences on everyone
else).
For the on-line course we will try to work out academic credit, but it may
be easier to offer English credit than Education credit. Would this be a
problem? Should we go the extra mile to obtain the imprimatur of the School of
Education? David Brin has suggested academic credit for the one-day workshop.
We can explore this possibility, but I have doubts that anyone will give
credit for one day, or even two days. Would a "certificate of attendance" from
the Center for the Study of Science Fiction be useful? Let us know what you
think. Jim Gunn
-- posted by David-Glenn Anderson
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