So much has changed in the way technology is used and taught in schools nowadays compared to twenty years ago — and so much has hardly changed at all. I’ve been excavating the past via the early issues of my newsletter, Computers in Classrooms as it was called back then.

In the third issue, from June 2000 and reproduced below, the following issues were among thjose considered:

• a report on using technology across the curriculum

• news about a new ICT scheme of work from the QCA

• a project to encourage parents to try out the internet

• education in the USA, which included this finding:
  78% of full-time teachers participated in courses in the past 12 months about the integration of educational technology in their own subject. The perceived usefulness of such courses was directly related to their length.

• is not knowing everything there is to know about a program something to be ashamed of? Plus an observation from an advisory teacher about the idea of kids knowing all about technology:
  Children do not 'know' about computers and the internet, they are just
  not intimidated by technology. Confidence and knowledge are not the same
  thing.

• Plus EF: The problem with computers is that if you can't read, you can't use them.
  If you don't know how to spell, a spell checker is useless. Her point is backed up by a series of words that would not be highlighted by a spellchecker.

One reason for republishing these newsletters is that I firmly believe that if we don’t know about the past we’re likely to repeat it, an observation that applies in teaching as well as history and politics in my opinion.

The original newsletters didn’t have any graphics and used only a typewriter font, because the software I used to distribute it had several limitations. I’ve added a bit of colour in this reproduction to make it a bit easier to read, but otherwise it’s just as it was in the year 2000. I hoipe you enjoy reading it.