University crest

This is just a note to revisit an earlier idea a had, which I was reminded of during Ray Land's presentation at the e-Learning@edinburgh conference last Friday. The following is drawn from my own notes taken during the presentation:

The universities were the printing presses of their time. That’s why they have books as a coda in their crests. Harvard include ‘truth’ as in truth is in the bound book. However Harvard now has the logo as part of a strapline that includes digital innovation, recognising that it’s not just the bounded book.

I could acknowledge Land's view here, making the point that the development of the Harvard university crest can be seen as representing the way that the book is longer the sole means of learning - it is part of the digital educational landscape. 

I wonder whether I could include this as part of a discussion of how university crests might be reimagined to reflect the multimodal nature of learning. I touched on this within my EDC assignment. This could come within the historical section of my literature review. It needn't be lengthy.

I could make the point that the Land draws our attention to the Harvard University crest as a recognition of the way that the digital influences our learning resources. The historical dominance of the bound text within higher education can be seen in the presence of books within university crests of the ancient mediaevel Western Universities. But as the digital has reshaped learning so these crests have been altered to reflect the new ways. Up to this point I'm not saying anything new. However I could move beyond this to suggest that the visual strapline accompanying the old crest implies  could be seen as reflecting the continued dominance of the book, or perhaps a reticence to move away from the certainties of traditional authorship and learning. Perhaps in the future the university crest itself might truly embrace multimodality with a visual representation of new ways of communicating ideas. Nevertheless, the proposed shift from page to screen is sometimes acknowledged, but not genuinely reflected symbolically in crests.

Hmmm. Is this appropriate for the literature review. I like the idea but maybe I'm wandering off towards speculation?