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Paul Bacsich 2005. The UK’s attempt to develop a global e-university ended in public failure in 2004. The main focus of this paper is to exploit the failure as a case study to update the literature on ‘critical success factors’ for virtual universities and so provide lessons for e-universities worldwide. However, since much of the public comment was superficial or ill-informed, it is also inevitably in part a critique of the public view. Although several alleged reasons for failure were incorrect or specific to the era, some of the real reasons still have much relevance to the worldwide scene.

New teachers were using computers in their own schooling, unlike many pioneers

Gardner & McMullan 1990 – The quest for the best methods of providing computer/information technology literacy and competence for school pupils has taxed the British education system for almost three decades. This paper maps the various developments over this period and considers how the different viewpoints have contributed to the current position in which the conventional curricular subject, computer studies, is being actively discouraged as the prime vehicle for promoting information technology literacy.

Peter Goodyear 1998. This paper argues for a re-examination of our established ways of trying to understand ICT-based innovation in higher education. It suggests that a project-centered, rather than an environment-centered, approach to understanding innovative developments has obscured some key elements of what has been happening in higher education practice in recent years.

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.

A study into the experiences of teacher educators who have engaged with developing the use of ICT in school and teacher education. The aim was to give voice to the achievements and concerns of these teacher educators during the short history of ICT in school. In so doing the project aimed to: draw attention to initiatives which have been more successful than others and highlight the factors leading to their success, highlight particular difficulties associated with developing ICT, report on the factors which have provoked and sustained engagement with the development of ICT, examine the role of ITTE and other professional groups in supporting innovation with ICT, compare and contrast the present with the past ‘landscape’ regarding the use of ICT.

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

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.

The development of educational computing in the UK began in the early 1970s. This has resulted in a wealth of knowledge, experience and artefacts. It is timely now to look at these materials and to represent them as an accessible and substantially complete collection of one nation’s pioneering and world-renowned innovation.