Free laptops improve tech skills of Tamil Nadu students: Survey

The report also says that 100 per cent of students perceive that there had been significant improvement in their technical and academic skills.

IMRB international, a research and insights organisation, did the survey sponsored by Intel and was released by state IT secretary T.K. Ramachandran during the Digital India Summit 2014 organised by ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu on Thursday.

Explaining the objectives of the survey, Biswapriya Bhattacharjee, group director, IMRB, said that they wanted to determine the impact of the Tamil Nadu government’s free laptop distribution scheme on the youth of the state by way of their technical knowhow, attitude to laptop usage and spill over impact of computer usage on the society at large.

The survey conducted in five arts and science colleges in Chennai and Madurai pointed out that about half the girl students spent more time with the laptop, besides 75 per cent of the time spent being for education related activities. The final outcome of the report was that the students were able to identify and utilise the device for multiple purposes.

Releasing the report, Mr Ramachandran said that the survey augurs well for the state that the laptop scheme had reached the students and provides positive results. “We have distributed over two million laptops to students in the state. The report shows how students have welcomed the scheme and how it had made a big impact in their lives,” he said. Listing the various initiatives taken by the state government, the IT secretary said his department had plans to come up with an SMS gateway and e-payment mechanism soon.

Mr Ramachandran noted that with state’s proposal to provide broadband facility to Arasu cable TV subscribers, 70 lakh households would be benefited by the scheme, which would be launched within three months.