Computers and other aspects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) allow children and young people a wide variety of activities and experiences that can support learning, yet many of these transactions do not take place in traditional educational settings. In fact many of these may not be considered educational according to our conventional understanding of that term. For most of us, discussion about learning is inextricably related to formal education systems (how schools should be organised, managed and run). However, any interest in the role of ICTs in childrens learning forces the recognition that many children are immersed in ICT-related activities in their homes and with their friends. This recognition requires us to acknowledge a wider ecology of education where schools, homes, playtime, the library and the museum all play their part. This review, then, is an attempt to map out the different approaches to understanding how young people may be learning with ICTs in a range of settings outside the school. The particular focus in this report is children and young peoples use of digital resources that are primarily viewed as leisure activities and which, often, are viewed by formal educational establishments as outside the realm of valued educational experience. This comprises, for example, childrens playing of computer games, their use of chat rooms, their exploitation of digital media and digital television and so on, in other words, all the activities that are now mediated by digital technologies as part of young peoples social and cultural lives.
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