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The more clear-cut effect appears with home use: in every country, students reporting rare or no use of computers at home (on average 18% of students) score much lower than their counterparts”.

One of ICT’s main strengths is its capacity to support informal learning. Self-learning and informal peer-learning are by far the two most important mechanisms for obtaining skills and competences;

If high amounts of computer usage at school are not associated with the better performing students, teachers may need to look more closely at the manner of this usage. Stronger supervision and structured lessons, involving the setting of concrete tasks to be achieved using computers, may improve their impact on performance”.[p.64]

• “The PISA evidence confirms previous studies showing the particularly strong association of performance with home access and usage“.

This possibility would be consistent with the observation that the amount of usage most commonly associated with the best performance is “moderate” – between once a week and once a month.

STATEMENT TWO: Frequency of ICT use in students does not determine their academic performance.

STATEMENT THREE: No correlation between the level of ICT access and the percentage of the ICT use.

STATEMENT FOUR: The impact on education and training has not yet been as great as expected.

First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This “Three-E Strategy,” if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.

Technology must be easy and intuitive to use for the majority of the user audience—or they won’t use it.

Complexity, however, remains a potent obstacle to realizing the goal of making technology easy. Omnivores (the top 8 percent of users) revel in complexity. Consider for a moment how much time some people spend creating clothes for their avatars in Second Life or the intricacies of gameplay in World of Warcraft. This complexity gives the expert users a type of power, but is also a turnoff for the majority of potential users.

Web 2.0 and open source present another interesting solution to this problem. The user community quickly abandons those applications they consider too complicated.

any new technology must become essential to users

Finally, we have to show them how the enhanced communication made possible through technologies such as Web 2.0 will enhance their efficiency, productivity, and ability to teach and learn.

In 2007, The Report of the NEW Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: Tough Choices or Tough Times made our nation hyperaware that "World market professionals are available in a wide range of fields for a fraction of what U.S. professionals charge." Guess what? While U.S. educators stuck learned heads in the sand, the world's citizens gained 21st century skills! Tough Choices spares no hard truth: "Our young adults score at “mediocre” levels on the best international measure of performance." Do you think it is an accident that the word "mediocre" is used? Let's see, I believe we saw it w-a-a-a-y back in 1983 when A Nation At Risk warned of a "tide of mediocrity." Tough Choices asks the hard question: "Will the world’s employers pick U.S. graduates when workers in Asia will work for much less? Then the question is answered. Our graduates will be chosen for global work "only if the U.S. worker can compete academically, exceed in creativity, learn quickly, and demonstrate a capacity to innovate." There they are

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."