Universalisation of Elementary Education being the key agent for social change that can improve the status of marginalized groups and incorporating appropriate technology to ensure quality in mainstreaming education system provides an opportunity to meet the challenge. Education has always been regarded highly in India; however, historically, access to education in India has been unequal and education imparted has been of questionable quality. An overarching purpose of education is to produce responsible, thoughtful and enterprising citizens in a society. In practical terms, education is aimed at fostering an individual’s psychological development and towards equipping them with the capabilities required to positively contribute to society and fulfil their material needs.
The explosive growth and penetration of digital technologies in recent years has greatly influenced education and educational practices. ICT in schools can not only improve the quality with less cost but also increase the possibilities of the multiple effect, greater interactivity between students and teachers, opportunities for learners to proceed at their own pace. The Government of India (GOI), like many governments around the world, and the private and non-profit sectors combined, spend abundant resources on information and communications technologies (ICT) aimed at enhancing access and at improving educational quality in India. As governments increase their investments in ICTs for education, continued efforts must be made to ensure that investments in technology positively impact all aspects of education including intangible aspects.
Research evidence from the various programmes reveals the extent of reach and according to available reports impact has been made in teaching practices as a consequence of the ET program. Further research is required to assess the correlation between investments in ICTs for education and improvements in educational quality and comprehensive measures of student performance. There is a particularly strong demand for evidence that interventions intended to improve education quality are improving student learning particularly in Government schools. There are, of course, other indicators of education quality in addition to learning outcomes (for example, teacher instructional practices), but increasingly there is a demand for learning outcomes as a measure of quality. The impact of ICT use on learning outcomes is unclear, and open to much debate. A disconnect is apparent between the rationales most often presented to advance the use of ICTs in education (to introduce new teaching and learning practices and to foster 21st Century thinking and learning skills and their actual implementation).
This paper will highlight some of the empirical evidences on the significant investments made by the Government of India and private institutions on integrating technologies for school education. One of the outcome of this research paper will answer the basic questions such as when, how and why digital technologies can positively impact learning. While academic studies around the world seem to indicate that technology does positively influence teaching and learning, the paper will determine the further evaluations need to be done to decide if and how technology has achieved this in the Indian primary schools context. The lack of established systematic research studies in India that conclusively demonstrate the effectiveness of technology on teach.