Why is it okay to be stupid about IT?

My daughter had to give a presentation at school yesterday, and she decided to do it as a computer slideshow. We duly saved the work onto her USB memory stick, and as my daughter is only seven and a memory stick so small and losable, I sought out the teacher myself. As I handed over the memory stick I explained that the presentation was saved in two different formats as we weren't sure which would work best with the school's system, and I was met with polite bafflement, a nervous laugh and the usual comment along the lines of 'don't confuse me, I don't know the first thing about IT'.

We wouldn't use a lawyer who didn't have a clue about the law, or send our kids for music lessons with a teacher who couldn't play a note or football training with a coach who couldn't kick a ball to save his life.

Why, then, do we allow such a crucial part of our children's education to be guided by people who have little idea how to approach it?

Our children are expected to be confident users of a number of electronic media in order to learn. My teenage stepchildren routinely email homework to teachers and word-process essays or produce design assignments on the computer; our seven year old is expected to use several educational websites for homework, research and further learning. How, against this background, can a teacher cheerfully admit to being pretty much clueless when it comes to computers?

Who's being let down - children or teachers, or both?

Teacher training isn't my area, but the results of it, ie my children's education, most definitely are. Teachers should be supported so the hilt in bringing their IT-literacy up to scratch. Schools - and pupils - can only benefit from teachers feeling absolutely confident handling the technology that will increasingly underpin their teaching.

All set and raring to go

I do hope any tennis fans haven't been lured here by use of the word 'set' - this is a Wimbledon-free zone. Oops, there I go again with the keywords-du-jour.

Anyway, now you're here, chasing strawberry juice down your chin and watching the goosebumps crawl up your arm, stay awhile and have a quick read - you may be able to say you knew me before I was famous, but realistically everyone I know til my dying day will be able to say that as fame is a fickle thing and rarely seems to favour those who feel they deserve it. Not that it's fame I'm really after. No.

What I secretly - or not so secretly - hope for is a successful writing career.

I long to hear my plays broadcast on Radio 4. It's my heart's desire to have my books published and actually on sale in real bookshops. The ultimate thrill would be hearing one of my works discussed on A Good Read. It's enough to give anyone goosebumps. I'm lucky enough to be married to A Good Man who is entirely behind me on this and has now presented me with the ultimate writing tool - a laptop! Although, having also recently supplied me with a new baby he could be said to be giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

The idea is that with the laptop I can be footloose and fancy free, taking advantage of every spare minute to, er, pen a few lines in the furtherance of my goal. It has begun: last week I sat for an art class, as is my wont (and it pays for my daughter's music lessons, something of which I hope she'll be justly proud when she's older), and took the trusty laptop with me. Many of the drawings portrayed me as the archetypal modern woman sitting at a bistro table, tapping on my laptop, the only thing missing being clothing. I'm booked for next week too and so will be grabbing with both hands the opportunity to get some proper work done while I get paid for sitting around, slightly chilly, doing nothing. The grandparents are lined up to look after the baby one morning a week too while I swan off to the library and hope to cadge someone else's wireless connection for the purposes of research, with my own fearfully expensive mobile broadband up my sleeve should I have no choice but to pay my way.

How can I fail?? Well, the ways are many and glorious I should imagine, but I won't go down without a fight. If I squint - and let's face it who doesn't these days, while holding the newspaper ever further away - I can just see 40 hoving into view. My goal, here advertised loud and clear, is to be in print by then. Watch this space.

Mum's Army?

As I changed sheets and amused the baby this morning, I listened to Radio 4's Book of the Week, The Junior Officer's Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey. I was struck by the parallels between motherhood and elite officer training at Sandhurst.

The similarities came thick and fast: the fickle and raging colour sergeant/toddler; the one-upmanship; the 'who's had the least sleep' competition; the sense of believing things can get no worse and then realising that not only can they, but that when things return to the previous pitch of agony it will actually feel like a major improvement; and most of all the unswerving and intense loyalty to this bunch of miscreants that makes your life hell. I've often thought that with their skills of multitasking, continual re-prioritising and ability to predict with absolute accuracy a course of events, all while retaining information seemingly beyond fathers, such as what's for supper tonight and which child is due when where, mums are wildly underestimated - by themselves, as much as anyone else.

The differences are in the details: it's non-spill cups we mums clean and assemble in our sleep rather than weapons; the one-upmanship centres on whose baby is in cloth or cramming in the most organic asparagus; we're not spending our sleep-deprived nights in muddy trenches on training exercises but padding to and fro across the landing whipping out a boob for the baby, and when the baby returns to waking up at midnight we're turning cartwheels that he's sleeping past 9.30pm, when previously getting up at midnight had been a real killer as you'd only been asleep half an hour. Patrick Hennessey tells us of the friendships forged in the crucible of exhaustion and agony - I think most mums can relate to that as their baby is passed to them for the first time.

By the LEFT you revolting lot, it's time for a clean nappy - now MOVE IT up those stairs!