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If you have been working in the field of educational computing for a long time, its easy to forget how times are moving along and that many of the adults working in the field have grown up with microcomputers in schools. This presents a challenge to those who have been involved since early days to respond to a growing society-wide adoption of technology where education can be seen to be lagging, whereas it once was seen to be leading.

David Riley 2007. This article identifies three uses of educational technology and evaluates their potential to change curricula and pedagogic strategies. The article is in four parts, with the first outlining a temporal model of change and discussing educators’ expectations of continuities and discontinuities in practice. In order to distinguish minor modifications from culturally significant changes in practice, the second part recaps a variant of Merlin Donald’s cognitive-cultural theory of human evolution. The third part adopts this theoretical perspective and classifies uses of multimedia-hypertext systems, generic software, and computer modelling software, as instances of functional substitution, delegation and innovation. The fourth and final part of the article evaluates the change potential of these types of use, with substitution sustaining existing teaching strategies and curricula, with delegation modifying practice, and with innovation prompting culturally significant change. The article concludes by suggesting that functional substitution and delegation dominate present-day uses of technology and that functional innovation will continue to present both challenges and opportunities to future generations of educators.

T N Gallacher HM Senior Chief Inspector of Schools 1992. This Appendix traces the development of computing in Scottish secondary schools from 1969 to 1992. While it identifies specific national initiatives, these depended for their success on a wide variety of activities undertaken throughout this time by education authorities, schools, teacher training institutions and, particularly, by a large number of individuals whose contributions should not be underestimated.

Jim Doherty with Tracey Leven 1998 - An evaluation of the TVEI Extension to take a national overview, commissioned by the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department (SOEID) in 1996.

The first world conference on computer education organised by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)

An interactive story/ simulation for primary aged children

Peter Twining April 2002 This report provides evidence of the level of investment in ICT in primary and secondary schools in a range of countries around the world. The indicators of investment used include: the amount of money spent; the student to computer ratio; and the percentage of schools connected to the Internet. The main focus of the report is on England and the USA. For each of these countries data from a number of separate sources are compared. The report concludes that there has been a substantial level of investment in ICT in English schools over at least the last 20 years. This reflects the pattern in the USA and other ‘developed’ countries.

This section represents the growth and character of the educational computing industry, which has been a unique feature of the UK scene since the early eighties.