Book Review

This is a timely book, coming out as schools in the United Kingdom begin to think about the New Opportunities Funding for training in information and communications technology (ICT) and colleges are working to enable their students to meet the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) requirements laid down in Circular 4/98. The book seeks to address both student and teacher audiences. The title is an ambitious one. The question – children or computers in control is addressed theoretically in the second chapter – but no compelling reasons are given for one or the other side, and later chapters expand on both approaches with short notes on main teaching and learning issues and what to avoid after each section. The style of writing using commonly asked questions to lead each section does make it easy to locate content, and the chapters are clearly structured and deal with: ` how to organise ICT within the school (Chapters 2–4); ` types of software which could be used (Chapters 5 and 6); ` ICT within the curriculum (Chapters 7–10). The first chapter on why use ICT introduces a lot of ideas and history about the way computers have been introduced into primary classrooms, not to solve problems and issues which teachers had, but as solutions looking for questions. Ager points out the ambiguity in the government's purpose when insisting on networking schools and developing children's ICT capability. They seem to want children to be trained in the techniques needed to make use of current and future technology, and at the same time provide a nationwide facility (giving even greater centralised control?) for 'worksheets at the touch of a button'. He makes an attempt to interpret the features of ICT delineated in the DfEE Circular 4/98 as requirements for initial teacher training. The argument for enhancing learning gets somewhat buried in the technology and the overriding approach of this first chapter develops along the lines of 'we have to do it – so this is how we might go about it' discussing what we need to know and what technology we need to do it. Though being careful not to specify particular software packages, the underlying model is one of schools using a Microsoft Windows platform running standard office software, which indeed has been adopted by many schools. As a result the discussion of applications is heavily weighted towards presentation – through word processors, …