Debate over 'computer-literate children'

"For the past 25 years, digital technology has been heralded as a means of radically transforming education. Yet despite expenditure on the part of Government and intensive promotion by industry, the technological revolution in schools has failed to materialise--claims an education expert...Professor David Buckingham said that, outside school, digital media have come to occupy a central role in most young people's everyday lives. Children are living 'digital childhoods', immersed in a complex multi-media environment; but they are also being aggressively targeted as consumers. As a result, he claimed, society is witnessing a widening gap between the culture of the school and the culture of children's lives outside school."