Julie Little from UT speaking now on mobile learning initiatives at her school. They started in 2001 when the president said “we’re going wireless.” What happened next? A group of folks in academic technology got together over strong Turkish coffee and said “what do we do now?” Sounds like a recipe for disaster–or not. Venimus, videmus, colemus (we come, we see, we cultivate), Julie says.

It takes a president to say “here we go.” It takes an enormously talented and committed learning community, administrative and instructional, to say “let’s go here, and here, and here.” And most of all, it takes full ownership campus-wide to effect and sustain institutional change.

Getting from leadership to community and back again, recursively, is one of the central problems of any civilization. It strikes me once again that higher education is a civilization laboratory. We must devise the most interesting experiments we can imagine.

Go Julie! How fortunate I am to have met so many strong leaders at Frye 2005. Days like today, I pinch myself: I know that person; I’ve spent many hours with her and others just as strong and talented, soaking it all in, thinking “emulate, emulate, share, share, aspire, aspire.” Real School!