Communication on information technology

For a couple of years I have become increasingly concerned and frustrated at the growing use in some sectors of educational writing of the term information and communications technology (ICT) in place of the well established information technology (IT, called info(r)matics in some countries). Apparently ICT first stopped twinkling in someone’s eye in this context in 1997, when it appeared in the Stevenson Report (Information and Communications Technology in UK Schools). It has become widespread in certain areas of pre-university education, in particular in the influential newspaper for teachers, the TES—while this journal’s parent organisation (perhaps tellingly in the process of changing its name from the National Council for Educational Technology to the British Educational and Communications Technology Agency) seems to use it frequently.