This comes six months after the knowledge giant made inroads into the school textbook business in India with a cache of 30 books, 10 knowledge CDs and nine teachers' manuals.

"The fact that the Indian government is stressing knowledge beyond the classroom and is devising a new school education system will help us grow," Cauz told the sources.

The Britannica books cover the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus from classes one to eight.

"While the books published in September 2009 will be included in the school curriculum in April 2010 as additional tools to supplement NCERT knowledge, access to the education portal will be made available on the basis of subscription."

The internet modules under Britannica Online School Edition (BOSE) have been created for three levels elementary (primary), high school and senior high school covering classes one to twelve.

Cauz said, "The e-module was viable in the country with the increasing penetration of computers at the school level."

Source: indiaedunews.net Now, school textbooks, e-module from Encyclopedia Britannica

TREAT FOR BOOKWORMS: The book fair will be held from January 30 to February 7 at Pragati Maidan

Nearly 700 books on different sports published by 75 publishers from across the country will be exhibited at the theme pavilion. The theme pavilion will be set up in hall number 7E where several sports personalities are also expected to interact with visitors during the exhibition. Besides, the organiser of the fair, National Book Trust, India, plans to show programmes and documentaries produced by the Film Division on various sports.

The pavilions for children and youth will also be put up in the same hall. NBT India will also hold workshops, quiz programmes and story-telling sessions at these pavilions. There will be a special exhibition of books on Jawaharlal Nehru and also the ones written by him.

The New Delhi World Book Fair is a biennial event. In the last fair held on February 28, 2008, 1,343 publishers from 17 countries had taken part. In comparison, the number of publishers is less this year with Pakistan's National Book Foundation giving the fair a miss. Though NBT India did not give a reason for its absence, its director Nuzhat Hassan said the foundation expressed its inability to participate. The fair will be on from 11am to 8pm every day. HRD minister Kapil Sibal will inaugurate it on Saturday.

ILLL Director A K Bakshi and team would not commit to a delivery date; but the gift ILLL e-learning portal is worth waiting for.

"We're in the process of speeding up our activities. An attractive incentive scheme for teachers, who generate content on time, is on the cards," said Bakshi.

"We have, however, decided that the portal should go online soon, regardless of the amount of content we have at hand. The ILLL and its contributors will regularly add new material," he added. The institute's e-learning portal, which eventually will cover all courses offered by the university, currently has four main sections e-quizzes, e-labs, e-lessons and e-lectures.

Another major roadblock limited bandwidth will be removed with the university upgrading the current 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps by June this year.

The ILLL team is excited about e-quizzes. Nearly 7,000 questions covering the three years of various undergraduate programmes have already been uploaded on the site. Questions for the honours programmes are being prepared and 3,000 questions are currently undergoing fact-checking.

"Quizzes have been prepared unit-wise. After students take a test, they can know their marks along with the time taken for the test," said Bakshi.

Source: The Indian Express Wait still on for Delhi University's e-learning portal

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit introduced the magazine, which contains articles on new emerging programmes of management and guidelines for students.

The bulletin, created by Dekster, will also provide an insight into industry trends, its demand in terms of placement sector wise, recruitment scholarships and on loan facilities.

Speaking on the occasion here, Dekster Director Sangeeta Mishra said, ''We hope the magazine will bring a new dimension to this truly exceptional management students brand in India and will rapidly build a strong loyal base among youth of the country.''

NILM Director said, ''The magazine will be a milestone for the new emerging face of higher education in the country.'' He gave credit to the Dekster for performing great in past for the publication of journals and magazines, and said the management bulletin would be its another success story.

The magazine, highlighting the best management colleges and AICTE approved management institutes in the country, would be given free of cost to students.

The function was organised by Pratham, a local NGO working to improve the quality of education among India's urban and rural poor children, which reaches out to 8 lakh beneficiaries through its "Read India" campaign.

In a press release, the NGO's state coordinator Roopinder Dhaliwal said the function was attended by children of Urdu-medium schools of Delhi, education workers from different parts of the country and distinguished scholars of Urdu literature.

The Vice-President, in his speech, said the books reminded him of his childhood and suggested that the cost of such books be kept low in order to ensure that they reach one and all.

Source: The Indian Express NGO's efforts pay off, Urdu story books now within reach of all

ITPO and Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP) said idea behind highlighting literature from NE is to promote rich literary heritage of the area. ``Not many people in Delhi know much about the literature of the seven states,'' said Subas Pani, chairman and managing director of ITPO. ``Obviously there will be several books for children. They will not be disappointed this year,'' said R C Govil, president of FIP.

The seven-day fair would host many seminars on topics like how to succeed in competitive exams, positive literature for youth, scientific stories in Indian literature and how to study intelligently. ``We will have cultural programmes such as Ghazal and Geet to make the event lively,'' said an official involved in organizing the event.

The fair also provides business opportunity for people in the book trade.

The wordily titled 'Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online learning Studies' also found that combining online and face-to-face instructions is even better. That is, online education when combined with traditional classroom is better that pure classroom teaching or a pure online course.

This is a valuable finding for India as well, where online education is growing.

DPL is seeking donations from corporate houses and the local legislator of constituencies so that they can purchase the vans, DPL chairperson Shailaja Chandra told reporters on Tuesday. DPL is promoting the plan to corporate houses under their social responsibility schemes, while it will benefit legislators by providing reading facilities to residents in their areas.

Chandra also said the corporate house can put up their advertisements on the sides of the mobile library vans in lieu of the donations.

DPL introduced the concept of mobile vans in 1953 and currently it has four such vans for the city. Chandra noted that the demand for libraries has risen since colonies such as Rohini and Dwarka have come up. She, however, added that due to lack of funds DPL has been unable to provide service in these areas.

"Our vans are huge that cost up to Rs 25 lakh. We are therefore trying to get Maruti vans, which are more affordable," Chandra said, adding that if corporate houses offer the vans, DPL will provide the books and pay for the maintenance. She also invited people to donate more books for the libraries.

Source: The Indian Express Now, plans to make libraries visit your doorsteps

Merely a small amount of schools in the city have opted for this course till date.

However, NCERT is not dejected with the response and is about to come up with a new book "Srijan" devoted to this course and those who have designed the curriculum hope that its popularity will soar with the launch of this book.

The course carries 100 marks in Boards and is optional; it is divided into three parts creative writing, media and translation.

The NCERT book is introduced for class XI only as of now is bilingual for translation from English to Hindi and vice versa.

Although students had a book published by CBSE in class XI, NCERT officials say the new book will make the course much more interesting.

Source: indiaedunews.net NCERT to launch 'Srijan' for creative writing

Leveraging the spread of its broadband network, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, or BSNL, has entered the online tutoring business as part of its efforts to increase revenues from valueadded services.

BSNL, which aims to enroll some 200,000 students to its branded service, Livetutor, in three years, faces flattening revenues as more customers give up their fixed-line phones, the mainstay of its business, in favour of mobile phones.

The state-owned firm, which has tied up with Hyderabad's Smartlinx Voip Networks Pvt.

Ltd to sign up customers and teachers, plans to differentiate its service with personalized online tuitions via a videophone or Web camera.

Indians spend an estimated $40 billion (around Rs2 trillion) a year on education and training services, according to estimates made by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in March 2008. Online tuitions form a tiny sliver of that demand but is growing explosively. Estimates by the brokerage firm put the total tuition market at around $27 million with projections of $280 million by 2012.

Students seeking tutoring lessons, ranging from a month to a year, will have to register at www.livetutor.in to start with, a senior BSNL executive said. "He or she will then be given a choice of teachers along with qualifications, experience and rates. The student will make a choice after which the chosen teacher will call the potential student and complete the selection and appointment formalities," said Anil Jain, deputy director general, broadband, BSNL. "The student and teacher (will then) fix a time and date to start." The service, which is priced at between Rs50 and Rs400 an hour depending on the level of studies (ranging from type of classes to quality of teachers) needed, requires a BSNL broadband connection and a videophone or webcam set up in place. Livetutor aims to sign on around 50,000 teachers for the service.

Source: Live Mint BSNL enters online tutoring service