You are entering teaching at a time of many innovative and exciting ways of learning. However, one thing that you will find is that the teaching profession is very wary of change, some might say almost impervious to it.

In the best schools, and these are not always the most prestigious schools, the attitude to learning has changed. There has been a shift from teaching to learning, and educational technology has been used as part of that process. It is in that kind of school that information technology will flourish, and it is that kind of school that you should be looking for.

As a new teacher you will not be able to effect great changes in the school you choose. A poor choice for your first appointment can take years to recover from. How do you choose? All schools these days feature computers in their glossy brochures but there are a few simple tests to determine whether computers are essential ingredients of the learning.

Ask to meet the person who has the responsibility for IT. Are they sympathetic? Do they talk about computers or do they talk about learning? Are the computers in the school open access, and are they distributed around the site? Talk to staff at random about their use of IT. Are they enthusiastic, defensive or dismissive? Ask to see the IT policy of the school, then try to separate the reality from the rhetoric. Finally, talk to the pupils.

A frequent mistake is to define IT too narrowly as being just about computers; it is wider than that. IT is about video, it is about cameras, tape recorders, CDs, fax machines, electronic mail, even photocopiers. The best IT should be an extension of the mind, to enable us to think better, to access more quality information, to communicate with more people, to capture ideas and images, to engage with issues, to control and improve the elements of everyday life.

The concept of IT capability is at the heart of the national curriculum. It should not be confused with teaching skills to pupils. Skills have to be taught, but IT capability goes beyond that. It is about giving pupils the opportunities and the freedom to use IT in real situations. IT should be in the classroom or nearby so that problems can be solved, ideas explored and edited, theories tested, information acquired, ideas presented, communications extended.

You should not be expected to be a teacher of IT but someone who uses IT and encourages its use by pupils. The School Curriculum and Assessment Authority has produced non-statutory guidance for the use of IT in national curriculum subjects and that will be supplemented in the future by material from the National Council for Educational Technology.

IT has already changed our world radically: air travel, the retail trade, entertainment, the work place, domestic appliances, satellites, newspapers and journals have all been transformed.

Good classrooms have always used the natural world as a stimulus for learning and inquiry. The technological environment of children is just as important. If classrooms are not to appear technologically bleak to children who are surrounded in the real world by possibilities that are more stimulating, more empowering, they have to be staffed by teachers who not only want to give children access to information technology but can also share the sense of excitement and adventure.

The recent advances in communications can open up access to information sources across the world. Your students can now communicate across the world at very low cost. Multimedia and desktop publishing mean that students can use the technology to present their information in new and different ways. We can use graphs and animations to make difficult concepts more accessible. Above all, students find that IT can be a friendly environment where making mistakes is not seen as a vice but as a way of learning, where it is easy to experiment with ideas and take risks.

You will need help. The main organisations concerned with information technology are the National Council for Educational Technology and, particularly for multimedia work where the language of film is central, the British Film Institute. The BFI concentrates on the media aspects and the NCET on the computer. Both groups welcome enquiries.

If you have come straight from college or university into teaching, your understanding of the commercial world might be limited. Part of the IT curriculum insists that we should give pupils an understanding of the impact that IT has made on working life and society. There are local organisations - Education Business Partnerships, Teacher Placement Service - that work with teachers and business to encourage greater understanding.

IT moves fast; you need to read to keep up. The speed means that there are few books which stand the test of time. The American writer Seymour Papert has two books which express the sense of excitement and possibilities: Mindstorms and, more recently, The Children’s Machine (Harvester Wheatsheaf). To give you a sense of what is going on in the outside world I would suggest The Virtual World by Howard Rheingold (Addison-Wesley) or The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (Penguin). To really keep up to date you need to read magazines and journals: the computer section of The TES, Educational Computing and Technology magazine and the IT journal aimed at primary schools, Microscope.

So how do you start? Try to get as much access to a computer as you can. Ask the school if you can take one home during the holidays and weekends. Buy one if you can afford it, but don’t make false economies by buying a cheap (old) machine that will not be able to run the best of the current crop of software programs. It is useful if the machine that you buy will run the software that is in use at school. Contact firms such as Acorn, Apple and Research Machines to see if they have any special deals. Software enquiries can go to your local authority advisers or firms such as TAG Developments.

First make sure that you learn one strand of IT that you will find useful in your work. For most people that is word processing. Your own IT development will be in two phases: phase one is spent acquiring the skills and the confidence and the second phase discovering how to use IT as a tool for learning. You will probably need to ascertain the range of courses in your area. The co-ordinator of in-service training in your school will be able to advise you about this or the NCET will advise you of course providers who are in your area (Acorn publishes a catalogue of courses).

o Acorn Computers. Tel: 0223 254262 o Apple Computers. Tel: 0800 127753 o British Film Institute. Tel: 071-255 1444 o Business in the Community (education section). Tel: 071-629 1600 o Educational Computing. Tel: 0895 622112 o Microscope. Tel: 021-476 1181 o National Council for Educational Technology. Tel: 0203 416994 o Research Machines. Tel: 0235 826175 o School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Tel: 071-243 9226 o TAG Developments. Tel: 0474 357350.