Ah haa.  The difference engine it  came to me really when I was researching the history of computing and I found that one of the earliest names for a computer back in the 1800’s was a difference engine one of the first computers that computed difference and it was a very large object the size of a big room, brass cogs and wheels and it took several people to drive it physically but it was able to carry out large complex navigation calculations.  It started as an idea in one mans mind  and another man  took it further.  It wasn’t built for a long time after its initial design.  The interesting word there was difference because we have come a long way with computers in education and I thought it was perhaps time to revisit the difference in the UK in particular the government has spent close to 2billion pounds putting computers into schools but still now tries to centrally dictate how schools should use them and what good practice looks like and there seems to be a paradox in there in that if you give schools, teachers and students a tool that seems to have a great potential for difference, you cant really expect them all to run in the same direction and I think maybe its time to start to celebrate the difference and think that some schools are going to take ICT and turn it into a really creative tool to build music technology areas look at broadcasting, look at ways in which they can build their creative curriculum and enhance it with ICT.  Others are going to look at the diagnostic effect of admin and the use of ICT within that.  We are all going to do it differently.