This article reports on the literature associated with practising teachers' uptake of information and communications technology (ICT). Studies reveal a number of factors which influence teachers' decisions to use ICT in the classroom: access to resources, quality of software and hardware, ease of use, incentives to change, support and collegiality in their school, school and national polices, commitment to professional learning and background in formal computer training. The review highlights the role of pedagogy and suggests that teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning with ICT are central to integration. It is suggested that successful implementation of ICT needs to address three interlocking frameworks for change: the teacher, the school and policy makers.

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Learning to read in a shallow alphabetic orthography such as Urdu may depend primarily on phonological processing skills, whilst learning to read in a deeper orthography, such as English, may place more reliance on visual processing skills. This study explores the effects of Urdu on the acquisition of English literacy skills by comparing the reading, memory and phonological processing skills of bilingual Urdu-English and monolingual English children (7±8 years). The bilingual children had more difficulty in reading irregular English words, but were better at reading regular words and nonwords compared to the monolinguals. The poor performance of the bilingual children with irregular English words was linked to their poor visual memory skills, whilst their good performance with regular words and nonwords was related to the presence of enhanced phonological skills. The results demonstrate the transfer of first language skills to reading development in a second language. In English, first language skills can facilitate the development of either lexical or nonlexical routes to reading.

Background to the studyThe word processor has been present in schools for over twenty years and has longed seemed an ideal tool to encourage pupils to re draft text as well as offering other advantages such as a shared screen for collaborative working and professional presentation of writing. Not surprisingly some case studies have provided valuable evidence on the value of word processor for young writers ( eg, Dauite, 1985;Dalton and Hannafin, 1987;Breese, Jackson and Prince, 1996).