I was thinking about what I’ve been writing here, and wondered why I’ve been posting negatively. After all, I’m a computer enthusiast. I think I understand now- I’m a bit like those guys at CAMRA . They don’t have anything against beer, just bad beer.

Maybe I should start a campaign for real IT. It’d be for enthusiasts- people who use IT properly: to solve problems; to make things better; to help people learn more in less time; to express themselves exactly as they want to.

When I worked in the private sector, we used to introduce IT initiatives only when we could see what that initiative was supposed to do. So, usually, there’d be a 3 letter acronym or a jaunty title for the type of thing we were doing- business intelligence; OLAP; CRM; Data Warehousing; Customer Database; Content Management System; Booking System.

In commerce, you can’t get money to do stuff unless you could identify the problem you were solving. Not once did the owners of any business say to me, ‘Put IT at the core of our business.’ IT was already at the core of our business, like English as a common language and the ability to multiply the number of delegates by the conference fee. At no point did anyone feel the business needed to ‘use more IT’ in a general sense.

This is in stark contrast to the prevailing attitudes in Education, or at least as it is reported by the press: this article is on the BBC website, a response to the latest review on primary curriculum.

Computers enter learning ‘core’

Computer technology is to move centre stage alongside English, maths and personal skills in an overhaul of England’s primary school curriculum.

All the report recommends is this:

ICT capability

Focus: Children use and apply their ICT knowledge, skills and understanding confidently and competently in their learning and in everyday contexts. They become independent and discerning users of technology, recognising opportunities and risks and using strategies to stay safe.

Children learn how to:

1. find and select information from digital and online sources, making judgements about accuracy and reliability

2. create, manipulate and process information using technology to capture and organise data, in order to investigate patterns and trends; explore options using models and simulations; and combine still and moving images, sounds and text to create multimedia products

3. collaborate, communicate and share information using connectivity to work with, and present to, people and audiences within and beyond the school

4. refine and improve their work, making full use of the nature and pliability of digital information to explore options and improve outcomes.

And that’s really it- a little aspirational prose buried in a long review. How on earth did it come to be headline news? I would suggest that it’s because journalists know what a computer is, and nobody ever got fired for saying that more computers are a good thing for kids.

All I’m asking for is a little more critical analysis- an understanding that there is good technology and bad technology. Just like there is good beer and bad beer.

Here’s an example of good technology. The folks at Ted.com get clever people to talk about the things they’re clever at. Then video them and make the videos available on the internet. Then our hosts at wordpress make it easy for me to point you at them and show you. For someone who is interested in origami (as I am), this talk was revolutionary. And thanks to Ted and WordPress, I can now do the IT equivalent of buying you a drink- I’m offering you a bit of knowledge. Cheers.