Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Everywhere you look, in print and on the Web itself, the Great Internet Backlash is gaining momentum. Nicholas Carr predicts general cognitive collapse in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Internet guru Jaron Lanier insists You Are Not A Gadget, and subtitles his book "A Manifesto." The New York Times runs a series of articles with headlines ranging from "Attached to Technology and Paying a Price" to "Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime." Even Sherry Turkle, who has celebrated cyberspace as an essential tool for the development of identity, titles her forthcoming book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. What can we learn from these arguments? What are their implications for teaching and learning? We'll explore these and related questions, and consider whether a new paradigm of "digital citizenship" can offer a better vision for teaching and learning with ICT—as well as a recovery of the goals of the original founders of the Internet.
Dr. W. Gardner Campbell is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, where he also serves as Associate Professor of Literature, Media, and Learning in the Honors College. Before coming to Baylor, he was Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, where from 2003-2006 he also served as Assistant Vice-President for Teaching and Learning Technologies. He has been involved in teaching and learning technologies for nearly two decades, including work at the University of San Diego and the University of Richmond. Dr. Campbell received his B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Frye Leadership Institute (2005), was chair of the Electronic Campus of Virginia from 2006 to 2008, and has served on program committees for both EDUCAUSE and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. He currently serves on the ELI Advisory Board and on the Board of Directors for the New Media Consortium.
Dr. Campbell is a life member of the Milton Society of America (Executive Committee, 2004-2007), a former secretary of the Literature/Film Association, and a contributing editor for Literature/Film Quarterly. He has presented at numerous national and international conferences on Renaissance literature, film, and teaching and learning technologies. Recent presentations include keynote or plenary presentations at Baruch College of the City University of New York, the University of South Carolina, the New Media Consortium's Commission on Accreditation's Inaugural Convocation, Benedictine University, the University of Wyoming, and the Skelleftea campus of Umea University (Sweden). Recent publications include articles on Milton's prose (MLA Press), Orson Welles (Literature/Film Quarterly), separate essays on a personal cyberinfrastructure, faculty development, and podcasting (EDUCAUSE Review), and information technologies in higher education (Change). You can read Gardner's blog, "Gardner Writes," at http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1.
