This article discusses students' pedagogical thinking in situations where the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has a (well-defined) pedagogical role and rationale. By analysing students' pedagogical thinking in this setting, it is also possible to better understand their motivations and self-regulation. Pedagogical thinking as viewed from the student's angle is a new area of educational research. Our research method is a combination of the Stimulated Recall interview and the semi-structured theme interview. In addition, some background data were gathered by questionnaire to discern students' different uses of ICTs and their contexts. The findings suggest how the educational use of ICTs is considered to be meaningful and motivating by both genders and among all the interviewed age groups, in spite of the fact that an acute and vocal critique seems to develop among older students. The differences reside in students' reasoning regarding decision making in task operations between genders, which was one of the background variables--girls actively include identity and opinion, while boys emphasize the quality of performance as motives for decisions. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)