ICTs in Schools: Why Focusing Policy and Resources on Educators, Not Children, Will Improve Educational Outcomes

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have long been perceived as having the potential to transform education and student learning, especially in developing countries. The underlying belief of many initiatives has been that learning will happen if students and learners are provided direct access to ICTs. However, despite years of research, there is little evidence of the value of these approaches. Ideas such as the massive open online course (MOOC) and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project were initially hailed as the “next big thing ” in education because they were seen as a way to offer access to education to all. But most studies show that these initiatives are failing to deliver: course completion rates on MOOCs are usually less than 7 percent, often because of a lack of personal contact.1 A similar cycl