Keynote Address- The Digital Imagination
Presented by Dr. Gardner Campbell, Mary Washington University
For decades, higher education has run faster and faster to keep up with accelerating technological change. We’ve run from contractor to contractor, vendor to vendor, platform to platform, network to network, course management system to course management system. We’ve also run from paradigm to paradigm as we try to build a curricular presence for these technologies in an increasingly computer-mediated society. We’ve run from technology proficiency, to information literacy, to information fluency. We’re still running, and change is still accelerating. We have three choices. We can slow down or stop, and let the vendors design, build, and lock us into a digital campus. We can run faster, bet on every new shiny object, and try not to embarrass ourselves by throwing an email party in an IM world. Or we can run fast and well, but in a different direction, aiming at a different paradigm: that of the digital imagination, of the computer as mind. We can customize this paradigm for our individual needs, but we will not need to construct it, for it’s been hiding in plain sight for almost half a century. It’s time to go back to the future.
Dr. Campbell is a 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. Gardner received his B.A. in English magna cum laude from Wake Forest University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. He has published articles on John Milton, the literature of the English Renaissance, film studies, and information technologies in education. You can read his blog, "Gardner Writes," at www.gardnercampbell.net.
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