But as the Minister of Education put it in a recent speech, “(in the first version) we did not forget ICT, we just forgot to write it”. Accordingly, the final version of the strategy paper mentions ICT as an important tool to enhance the professional level in all subjects, and more weight must be put on ICT in teacher education. This very much describes the present situation in Denmark: in most strategy papers, ICT is explicitly mentioned only sporadically, but in most initiatives ICT is implied. You may interpret this in a positive way: we have reached a certain level of ICT maturity – it is always on the agenda, and ICT is considered as an important and necessary tool/instrument for the success of any given programme.

Since late 90’s, the Danish government has launched a series of major initiatives on how to ensure a fruitful usage of ICT in education, e.g.:
“Sektornet – Internet broadband for all schools”
"ICT and Media in the Danish Folkeskole, 2001 – 03”
“ICT in the Danish Folkeskole, 2004 – 07”

No new targeted ICT-programme is at this point in time planned to succeed these actions. More recent initiatives, like the major reform of upper secondary education and a forthcoming seminar on learning resources in primary and lower secondary education include ICT. The reformed curriculum mentions ICT skills, virtuality and progression in these competences; and e-learning and digital learning resources are understood to play an important role in modern (life-long) learning.

UNI•C is an agency of the Ministry of Education with the role of implementing and coordinating new national ICT initiatives for education, and often we maintain these central services after these initiatives. During recent years, quite a substantial number of personnel with an expert knowledge about (and feeling for) ICT in education have moved from the ministry departments to UNI•C. This, together with a noticeable decline in focused ICT actions with dedicated funding is currently  causing us to reconsider our future role.

The use of ICT in schools for education continuingly increases, with ICT being explicitly written and integrated in the curriculum of all subjects. This growth will not stop. However, there is a threat that a decrease in central support (money, encouragement and coordination) may reduce the pace and innovation. At the same time, current structural and regional reforms create a number of new self-governing institutions under the Ministry of education. They need coordinated ICT development and support in lieu of what they used to receive from the regional authorities. There is also a new national scientific expedition from Denmark starting soon, and a lot of information from researchers onboard this ship on its voyage around the Earth is supposed to be delivered by the schools portal “emu.dk” run by UNI•C – so we have quite a few new challenges.

Introducing ICT in education has been a political priority – now maintaining and further developing the fruitful usage poses new challenges.