Where communities are under pressure, ICT offers support: Palestinian schools are struggling to equip, so home computers, webcams and mobile phones provide valuable additional support (p8-9); Native American peoples are writing their own stories and their own curriculum on CD-Rom (p14); Newcastle’s Hilton Primary School is providing affordable PCs and broadband for parents for just pound;3 a week, with help from the eLearning Foundation (p12); in Belfast parents are developing their own education at Holy Cross Boys’ Primary. And, as the TES Make The Link campaign is showing, mutually beneficial international links such as that with South Africa’s Mamelodi township (p10) are enriching the curriculum and schools.

Of course, ICT is its own front line with constant innovation requiring thought, expertise and support for its adoption in schools. Handhelds have long had enormous potential (Edict p4, and more on this in the next Online, June 17) but it takes pioneers like Dudley (p28) to blaze a trail. And it is the delicate but crucial mix of appropriate use and imaginative exploitation that marks up the importance of ICT on whichever front line.

www.tes.co.ukmake_the_link