Why schools don't need ICT

This is the title of a provocative, brief and, I think, sound argument here by Ian Yorston about the failure of ICT to improve learning. He says we are smothering the digital revolution with rules.

In his own words:

"If you had to spend a million pounds, you'd really hope to have something to show for it."

"schools have finished up at the wrong end of the ICT revolution."

"...no money has been saved whatsoever...."

"Nor have we seen any obvious gains in productivity."

"The real curiosity is that, even when the newest, fastest, coolest computers have been purchased, heads promptly sit down to draw up policy statements that effectively cripple the machines before they have even been booted up."

"Now that we have finally built the Library of Alexandria — now that, thanks to Google, our students really do have access to all the world's knowledge in a curated and useful context, why would we want to limit their access?"

"We block Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. We denigrate Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. We ban mobile phones and digicams. We even make our students write by hand."

"Schools don't need ICT. It's coming through our doors every day. We just need to adopt and adapt a little bit.

I think he is being a little ironic in his use of the word 'little' in the last sentence.