David Wiley writes
More on Fuchs & Woessmann and expresses much more eloquently than I could the concerns we share about this study:
"...what possible, reasonable hypothesis could there be in which the mere availability of anything impacted learning? Would the availability of human experts (not interaction with them, now) improve learning? Would the availability of books? Would the availability of anything? If simple proximity to anything were going to correlate with learning outcomes, I would go back to sleeping with books under my pillow. This hypothesis was ill-begotten to start and muddies whatever actual message the authors want to make. Its inclusion in the report suggests to me that there was a pre-existing bias toward finding no or negative results."...
Providing the means to follow both sides of an issues such as this - involving many smart people - is precisely what's so great about the blogosphere. There's not day that goes by that I don't learn something new using this technology as an enabling medium. That's why I get so pissed off by studies such as Fuchs & Woessmann's that undermine the potential for effective use of this technology when used appropriately and, consequently, provides ammunition for modern-day luddites.