Tower of babel - keynote

Georgia Nugent, President of Kenyon College (previously of Princeton, Brown and others). This was an excellent keynote, I'm sure Liz will add bits about this one too. It was unexpectedly good with the possible exception of her insistence of pronouncing it "babble" - I wasn't sure whether it was a US/UK thing or a classicist (her obviously)/very not (me) thing. Anyway there was a strong library focus to this too. Looking first at the "Tower of Google" and their proposal to develop a universal, global library, digitising 20 million texts, and the rights and wrongs of them doing it.
Rights - universal, free, democratic, equitable, inclusive, instant
Wrongs - ownership, control, profit
...but then, she suggested, this is the way huge libraries have always been developed (Alexandria, Rome, Vatican for example) based on extraordinary wealth, items gather by less than magnanimous means (not just for the love of knowledge) and to display status and power - but the public benefited none-the-less.

so what you need to "conquer the known universe" is a vision a goal to create something spectacular, access to extraordinary resources and the ability to mobilise a community or organisation to make it happen - all of which the google "boy billionaires" have in abundance.
- just to go "off topic ish" for a minute, in the Bb Town Hall post I mentioned a Bb/Google partnership, I've managed to track down the press release http://www.blackboard.com/company/press/release.aspx?id=913818 - Helen, I think we need to have a good look at this....

OK back on topic, Georgia then flipped her tower of babel reference, well, babble of course, and talked about whether the lack of a shared language in learning technology is hindering progress. What do the different groups want:
Presidents (VCs) are concerned about cost, ROI, reliability, security media management - are tempted by what it can do to widen access, attract students, deliver to new markets but concerned about some sort of security breach that creates a firestorm in the press.
Faculty are concerned about losing their autonomy, the time it takes to learn and relearn tempered by feelings of inadequacy.
Students want (and are therefore concerned if they don't get) ubiquity, reliability, endless capacity, speed and cutting edge, they also want autonomy - this is their technology.
Parents (always feature as a strong stakeholder in the US) are concerned about security and cost
IT Professionals are concerned with network security, reliability, cuttidng edge technologies but are they out of synch with users needs, resources and skills
- but how do we know if that is the case? how can we enhance communication commonality to find out?

An interesting anecdote - 3 years ago Kenyon introduced a student laptop policy - all incoming students get a standard laptop with a standard university image on it, fully loaded with access to relevant software - 3 years later both staff and students are still opposed to the initiative. Staff believe that ubiquitous laptops disrupt their teaching (although to be fair, if the institution hadn't bought them it wouldn't stop them existing). Students are opposed because they see it as an issue of freedom - free to choose their own machine, own multiple machines, high end, idiosyncratic etc etc - the paternalistic "hey kids, come to us, will give you access to some technology" was likened by Kenyon students to the supression of free speech in the Soviet Union.