Feasibility
It is wrong and dangerous to imagine that ICT is a panacea or magic bullet for the legions of problems and challenges facing education today. Placing ICT in schools will not automatically improve teaching or learning or even guarantee the acquisition of ICT skills as many well stocked but under-utilized computer labs in schools across the world demonstrate. A common mistake committed in many ICT in Education implementation problems is to focus on ICT in isolation. ICT is only a tool and infrastructure, an enabling platform with a lot of potential, but the focus should be on addressing educational challenges, objectives and priorities.
Developing countries must further contend with challenges related to the feasibility of using ICT given the low diffusion and availability of ICT like tv, radio, internet and computers. Even more challenging is the limited reach and availability of electricity. New ICT like mobile phones that are increasingly becoming more widely available in developing countries offer interesting possibilities, but their application in education still needs to be well thought through.
As developing countries plan to use ICT to solve some of their major educational challenges, they should be realistic and understand the limitations and feasibility of using ICT in their own local contexts.
