ELI Web Seminar, January 14, 2008 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT); runs one hour

Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0

Special Guest

Gardner Campbell
Professor of English
University of Mary Washington

W. Gardner Campbell is professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, where from 2003 to 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 and San Diego and the University of Richmond, where in the fall of 2006 he was director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. Gardner received his BA in English from Wake Forest University and his MA and PhD 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 (2007–2010).

Gardner 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 the 2006 Seminars on Academic Computing, EDUCAUSE 2006 and 2007 roundtables on faculty development, and the Spring 2006 ELI Focus Session on mobility and mobile learning. Recent publications include articles on Milton’s prose (MLA Press), Orson Welles (Literature/Film Quarterly), separate essays on faculty development and podcasting (EDUCAUSE Review), and information technologies in higher education (Change).

Summary

Julie Little, Interim Director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, will moderate this Web seminar with Gardner Campbell in which he discusses teaching and learning with Web 2.0.

Since the 1990s, we’ve been putting our Web courses in boxes, mastering enterprise course management systems, and striving for single sign-on seamless integration between all Web-enabled business and academic environments in each of our colleges and universities. Sometime around the turn of the century, however, explosive innovation on the open Web began to turn a “read only” environment into a “read/write” environment. With the development of RSS as a syndication platform, the read/write environment began to support and foster a very powerful, loosely coupled information architecture across the World Wide Web. In 2004, a group led by Tim O’Reilly gave this phenomenon a name: Web 2.0.

In this seminar, Campbell will explore the concepts behind Web 2.0, some of the individual tools and services (Flickr, Facebook, Second Life, del.icio.us) that are commonly listed under this rubric, and the implications of this phenomenon for teaching and learning, particularly in higher education. He will also present several ways in which he and his colleagues have used Web 2.0 tools and services, both as teachers and in their own learning, and comment on the good, the bad, and the ugly results. If time permits, he will also speak to the relationship between Web 2.0 and the open source software movement. Finally, he’ll offer some thoughts on what Web 3.0 might look like, and why educators should care.

Additional Resources

• Batelle, John. "A Brief Interview with Michael Wesch."
• Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think."
• O’Reilly, Tim. "What is Web 2.0?"
• Wesch, Michael. "The Machine is Us/ing Us."
• Wikipedia article on Web 2.0
• ELI's 7 Things You Should Know About…
• Citizen Journalism
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• Facebook II