Teachers must counteract dazzling but inaccurate depictions of the past, like the new Disney blockbuster Dinosaurs, with equally exciting learning material, Lord Puttnam, the Oscar winner turned educationist, warned yesterday.

The peer, now chairman of the General Teaching Council, criticised the "sanitised" Disney depiction in Dinosaurs, a computer based animation film which is breaking box office records in the US.

"It's very attractive but absolutely and specifically untrue," he said. "The dinosaurs are kind of cute - they are nice to each other, they are a benign community ... I don't think the film ever explains why they are not still around.

"It's so compelling in terms of its imagery. And, while it is remarkable, the challenge to all of us in education is to come up with something which can compete with it."

In a speech to the National Association of Head Teachers in Jersey, Lord Puttnam said teachers had to be able to "offer alternatives to the Walt Disney view of history".

By 2003, he said, Britain would have a shortfall of 330,000 people trained in information technology - "a very serious blight on our economic future".

"We cannot afford to turn our backs on the learning potential offered by digital technology and hope it will somehow go away," he said.

Outside the conference, Lord Puttnam said he was saddened by the atmosphere in schools today.

His son had taught in one school for a few weeks and had been told to walk down the corridor with his arms by his side in case female pupils barged into him and accused him of assault. Teachers were also told to keep doors open when alone with a pupil.

"It's crazy that a professional human being starts their day with a kind of assumption that they are either a serial rapist or a paedophile. That's a non-society," he said.