We've got a new toy in school. The postman arrived last June bearing a state-of-the-art computer with all you've ever dreamed of in the IT department - fax, Internet and enough RAM to run a small power station.

Mind you, none of us could tell RAM from a ewe but it sounds like something you should definitely have.

We're told that we can set forth on the Information Superhighway and feel the thrill of being a traveller in the Information Age from the comfort of our own classroom (i.e., the global classroom!). There are no boundaries when you're on the web.

The problem is that we feel more like the fly than the spider, who at least has some control over what she's doing. This piece of technology is sitting at the back of my classroom and it's causing me problems in more way than one - mainly because I don't know what to use it for.

I have one fellow in the class who has one at home and he announces that it's brilliant for playing Quake - but by the sounds of that I can't see it being on any Department list of software.

So an ICT course seems like the only hope. I have the strange feeling that I'm being suckered a bit here: Greeks and gifts keep popping to mind. I know this is quite an expensive piece of machinery which has landed on my doorstep, but in truth, I never asked for it. Now, I did ask for a visiting teacher for my special-needs pupil - but, of course, that wouldn't make the Tiger purr quite so willingly.

However, now I have it, and bar I send it back I may either use it or appear as if I am denying my children access to their future in the age of computers.

And so, the course. We're lulled into a lovely sense of security on the first night with talk of teachers' professional competency and our right to decide for ourselves whether or not ICT would work as a tool for us. Ten minutes later I'm wrestling with a mouse that's hell-bent on highlighting everything except what it is meant to. I feel like a junior infant trying to hold a pencil for the first time, and it's very humbling.

I click and drag and scroll and feel in control until suddenly everything disappears off the screen and I realise that I haven't a clue. "Undo, undo," my tutor chants and magically it all appears again.

We follow up with a "software package" that even I can manoeuvre with relative ease.

Mind you, it has all the bells and whistles, and precious little in the line of curricular content, but I can see a glimmer of potential there. Fergus, who wears me down daily with his cheetah-like progression through any exercise I set him, could be "challenged and stimulated" (read as "kept out of my hair") with this wonder-machine.

The piece de resistance is our foray into cyberspace. She's a wily one, our tutor: we set forth on the web with a look at "General Interest Sites" - Coronation Street to be exact. I'm mesmerised - everything you ever wanted to know about Corrie and then some with the full benefit of glorious multimedia. If this is anything to go by, I have a feeling addiction therapy could soon be the only hope.