Realizing the promise: how can education technology improve learning for all?

This publication is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology. While there is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere - as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies - an important first step is understanding how technology is used given specific local contexts and needs. The surveys in this playbook are designed to be adapted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the use of technology. The report is structured as follows. Section 1: Introduction. Section 2 adapts a framework to think about the potential levers of system improvement - specifically, the interactions between teachers, students, and the instructional material, and how they can be mediated through parents. Section 3 proposes an approach to diagnose the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system to adopt ed-tech interventions. Section 4 provides an overview of the four potential comparative advantages of technology to improve learning outcomes, and reviews the most rigorous evidence available on interventions from developing countries. Finally, section 5 outlines how school systems can monitor the results of innovations to understand how well they are implemented and whether they are delivering the desired improvements in student learning.