Thanks Mick! The 21st Century has reached my computer!

Ultimately ICt is critical for a number of reasons.
1) The world in 20 years time is going to demand that everyone has a working knowledge of how technology can be used for work, rest and play....the Mars phenomena!
2) Some children will need a grounding in ICT as the basis for a career in ICT and will have the basis (after an advanced education with and in ICT in Blackpool) for further career development and exploration.
3) Blackpool needs a foothold in the white collar world of ICT and as yet doesn't have this sector in the town. To help the town emerge from the deprivation it now experiences it needs a silicon revolution and to create jobs, skills and technology which will enable it to escape from deprivation.

Therefore schools need to be driving this understanding and the acquisition of these skills. For some children they will need to acquire these skills for the first time, for the overwhelming majority who seem to have enhanced ICT skills on entry to school, it will be about how ICT can generate new ideas, thoughts, solutions and strategies. Therefore not ICT for the sake of it but the the development of the concept. The sort of exploration and enquiry that says "what will happen if...."

This journey into the "what if..." with technology is what all innovation is about.
When I left college I had a list of college friends email addresses and phone numbers. I would have loved to have had something to help us all to keep in touch.
Mark Zuckerberg came out of college with all of that motivation but also an understanding of technology which allowed him to say "what if..." but then follow it through with technology providing the answer.
I guess it's the Zuckerberg approach to life. Without technology Facebook would still be just a vague idea. Who knows what our kids inspiration will lead them to if we provide them with an understanding of what technology can do!!

I believe the world already demands a working knowledge of ICT, both in the workplace and for recreation.
In the late 70s and early 80s, when those first BBCs, RM machines and Amstrads first made their way into schools, it was the teacher who controlled the computer assisted learning. Indeed the teacher was sent away to learn how to write BBC Basic because it was believed the teacher would create and control the programmes. The world didn't wait. Technology embraced the world of children and adults and children are now almost autonomous in that world whereby neither parents nor teachers are able to gain access, particularly the mobile phone through which many access their on-line networking. PCs and laptops are standard household items although it's the television and mobile phone that will make these standard ICT items less important. Principal use is around sharing, socialising and collaborating.
I've just read the Cambridge Primary Review's Consultation Response to the DES National Curriculum Review. They hold the view that ICT should be in the domain of Literacy in order that we can best help children approach media and ICT with a degree of discrimination and an awareness that should attend reading, writing and communication of any kind. They believe that the use of ICT as a communication tool makes it an aspect of the language curriculum that demands rigour that is no less than what we apply to the handling of the written and spoken word and all other traditionally conceived text. Our role then is to balance and explore the relationships between new and established forms of communication, especially to ensure that the developmental and educational primacy of talk is always maintained.
(The latter follows reference to Baroness Greenfield's expressed concern about the risks of excessive exposure to screen technologies and the danger of losing opportunity for real conversation in real time.)