Wednesday, August 8, 2007, Washington, D.C.
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Finding Balance: Teaching Software vs. Critical Thinking

Roxanne O'Connell (panel moderator), Assistant Professor of Visual Communication at Roger Williams University, holds an M.S. in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley. As a teacher and publishing consultant with more than 20 years of experience in design, marketing, and new media, she specializes in information design, audience research and website usability. Research interests include New Media, particularly social computing such as Blogging and Podcasting, Perception and Visual Rhetoric. She is an associate editor for Roger Williams University's journal of civil discourse, Reason & Respect, and Vice-President of Epsilon Rho, the Roger Williams chapter of Phi Beta Delta an honor society for international scholarship. In her teaching, she works to include elements of service learning and user-centered design. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Salve Regina University.

Edgar Huang is an associate professor in the IUPUI School of Informatics. His journal articles on media convergence, streaming media, copyright issues concerning DVD ripping, online imaging, documentary photography history, digital imaging manipulation, and the Internet and national development are seen in Convergence, Journalism and Communication Monographs, Visual Communication Quarterly, Information Technology for Development, etc. Huang's documentary photography of the Tiananmen Student Movement in 1989 is in the permanent collection on China New Digest (CND.ORG). He won national awards for his video and Web productions. Huang has taught media convergence, video production and editing, photojournalism, Web publishing, graphic and layout design, research methods, computer-assisted reporting and news writing courses in different universities since 1984. He has served in the AEJMC VisCom Division for multiple years. Huang received his Ph.D. degree in Mass Communication from Indiana University in 1999 and M.F.A. degree in Visual Arts from UC, San Diego, in 1995.

Larry Pryor was a reporter for The Louisville Courier-Journal and then for the Los Angeles Times, where he was an environment writer and assistant metro editor, among a variety of positions he held there. In 1982 he became the news editor for Times Mirror's pioneering videotex project, Gateway, until that project ended in 1986. When the Times re-entered electronic publishing in 1994 in a project with Prodigy, he returned to online journalism, eventually becoming editor of the paper's Web site, latimes.com, in 1996. He moved to the USC/Annenberg School of Communication in 1997 as the school's first online journalism program director and helped launch and edit the Online Journalism Review. He is an associate professor and teaches reporting and writing. He conducts research on panoramic perspectives and 3-D news spaces.

Carol B. Schwalbe is an assistant professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, where she teaches magazine writing and online journalism. She also produces the award-winning Cronkite online magazine (cronkitezine.asu.edu). Her scholarly research focuses on the role of images in shaping ideas and public opinion during the early years of the Cold War, ethical concerns about publishing violent images, and the visual framing of the Iraq War on the Internet. Before moving west in 2002, she enjoyed a long career at the National Geographic Society -- senior text editor for National Geographic magazine, senior articles editor for National Geographic Traveler, senior producer for nationalgeographic.com, and editor-writer in the Book Division. She lives in Tucson with her herpetologist husband, two cats, four Gila monsters, seven desert tortoises, two box turtles, and a dozen snakes.

Michelle Seelig is a visual communication educator with over 10 years of teaching and research in this field. Seelig's academic qualifications include a B.S. in Advertising and Art Photography and an M.A. in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Photography from the University of Miami, as well as a Ph.D. in Mass Communication with an emphasis in Information Technologies from Florida State University. Her professional experience is in desktop publishing, photography, video production, and web design. The primary focus of Seelig's academic career has been in mass and visual communication coupled with emerging technologies. Her main research interest is the convergence of new and traditional media in news organizations; this includes the role of content producers in visual communication, as well as the impact of technology on pedagogy.

Joel Geske teaches Advertising (creative track); Web and new media; visual communication; how the brain processes verbal and visual information; typography and web design; journalism in newly independent countries, such as Ukraine. He holds a Ph.D. from Iowa State University and has published in Journalism Educator and College Teaching and has worked as an advertising manager, copywriter and associate creative director in an advertising agency. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Iowa State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching in Large Lecture.

Note: Bio information and materials provided as received from the panelists and/or panel moderator.

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