I write this as an outsider. I'm not part of the formal higher education system. I'm repeatedly amazed and delighted at the opportunities I get to mingle with the HE community in London. FOTE 11 is one such example.
These are my quick impressions.
Most of the delegates were from universities, as you would expect, but there were a few outsiders. Hmm, “delegate” - interesting choice of word. Wikipedia says: A delegate is a person who speaks or acts on behalf of an organization (e.g., a government, a charity, an NGO, or a trade union) at a meeting or conference ... is that really how it works at FOTE, or is supposed to work?
Key ideas seemed to be: market forces, student experience, and “joining the dots”. For a day that was looking at the future of technology in education there was comparatively little about the latest gizmos. Instead there was a wider perspective, and there seemed a greater sense of urgency and awareness of rapid change.
"Joining the dots" covered a variety of topics. In the first session the dots were the different technologes, and the context was hype cycles, and the "Tsunami of Change". Later on the dots were separate bits of information about students - shades of Big Brother perhaps. Other dots, in various sessions, were different people sharing information across traditional boundaries. One example was where someone is repsonsible for all the vending machines and knows where they are and what they vend - and so now the new students know what they can buy and where.. Mobile phones for "social planning on the hoof" are killing the student bar, the traditional gathering point for socialiszing. All kinds of dots are joining up, some from the top down, some from the bottom up, and some across from one silo to another.
This was not “HE business as usual” with some “toys for the boys”. Change, which is high on my own 'awarenes agenda", was often on the lips of speakers. To me there seemed strong signs of genuine disruptive change – but I don't know how deeply that is general feeling. I went to sample what is changing and what stays the same. As a visitor I naturally see things from my own perspective.
In some ways it seemed that the gap is narrowing between formal HE and the non-formal world where I belong. The walls are breaking down. When it comes to hardware, we (students and visitors) come in carrying our own. When it comes to software the HE system is increasingly moving out to join us in the cloud, making use of Google, and allowing the use of Skype. Open source, a frequent life-saver for many of us out in the non-formal world is showing up more in FE, with another big shift to Moodle.
Financial changes - cuts and student fees - are obviously having an impact and that in turn affects the relationship between HE and technology. I don't know if it's just minor changes and readjustments, or if real structural changes are going on. I can't tell if the tech is still simply an add-on to a system which is largely unchanged, or if anything deeper is happening below the surface.