For Agarwal, the board prescribed NCERT books as well as the U-like series of sample papers that proved to be the key. ``I read the NCERT books back-to-back. I would sit and write every line in the book so that I could remember everything,'' she says. That did the trick, Agarwal claims. According to Garima, or Gary as she's called by her family, an astounding number of questions featuring in the board exam came from these two books. ``The majority of questions that came in the exam were from the textbook, as well as the U-like series. There were very few questions that I had not read in the NCERT book already,'' Agarwal adds.

This was especially true of mathematics. Agarwal says that if students just add RD Sharma to the mix, it will be enough to see them score very high in the board papers.

However, she cautions against opting for too many books as this, she says, only confuses students more. ``The U-like series helps you practice on the pattern of questions that will come in the paper,'' she says, adding, ``One must write down everything that you are learning. That's the only way to memorise all the information.''

To help remember everything, Agarwal says she had a notebook for every subject where she would write down the salient points of every chapter.

``I would go over these points repeatedly instead of going through the entire chapter. Also, writing it all down helped me memorise the points,'' adds Agarwal.

While writing the paper, Agarwal says having good presentation helps score more marks. ``Write clearly, underline important points and dates and keep lines cutting out answers to the minimum. Give your answers in points and separate them by drawing a line between them,'' she adds.

For the last month, 13 video courses in science and engineering of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have been on free trial runs on YouTube (youtube.com/nptelhrd.com). So, you can sit in Ahmedabad or Amsterdam and login in to 40 streaming hours of IIT classroom teaching video. Even classes at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, will get on YouTube soon.

"The video courses will be permanently posted on the site after the project is firmed up in less than one month," said Mangala Sunder Krishnan, coordinator of web, IIT-Madras. Come March, 110 video courses, spanning 40 hours, will be ready for viewing.

The project is part of the National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a joint venture between the seven IITs and IISc, funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Taking a cue from US universities who post course content on YouTube, Krishnan said, "Since our bandwidth is low and a bigger one is more expensive, we decided to experiment with YouTube. Not only will this be available online, it will be free."

Free online education is being seen as a means to fill the vacuum left by an acute shortage of teachers in various disciplines, and the fact that only 10 per cent of India's five lakh engineering students are "employable".

NPTEL will also allow colleges to use the course material for in-house students, to help students without Internet access.

"While it will be free for government-aided institutions, private institutions will be charged a one-time fee of Rs 1 lakh," said Krishnan.

With SNDT Women's University becoming NPTEL's "user institute" on Wednesday, 220 of its affiliated colleges will be able to access the course content online. University Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor SS Mantha said: "By March end, all 110 course contents will be viewed online by our students. We will also create course content for NPTEL in disciplines like pharmacy, nursing and management."

WWW.WORLD

• Named cbsetutor.com, this website contains the entire NCERT curriculum.
  
• And the best part is that this is absolutely free.

"In the next three months, thousands of students will need value-added study material to prepare for the boards. They will need to know where they stand on an all-India basis. And they need to distress them- selves under pressure of the exams. The website tries to cater to these needs," said Anil Sharma, the executive director of the company.

To begin with, the company has a panel of 15 experts who are professional tutors, former teachers, educationists etc, who have designed the tests and the content. Besides, members have an option of posting any study-related doubts online and cbsetutor promises to get back to them with correct answers in less than 24 hours.

With blogs, chats, games, messes, communities etc, a virtual "Lounge", the ambience is akin to a social-networking site. "So it's preparing for the boards with the feel of actually doing fun stuff on the Net," he said.

Solil Chatterjee, a director of the company, who returned from the UK after studying mechanical engineering, said, "In western countries like the UK, virtual learning is almost a mandatory aid to conventional learning. In India it has not taken off because websites have not been able to provide intrinsic value to students and teachers."

Online tutoring, the business of using telecommunications or the Internet to make teaching and learning convenient, is a bit like a call centre offering support to a customer But here, the customer is a student and the person at the other end is a qualified teacher imparting skills.

With online portals offering affordable educational support for students, it is a win-win situation for students, their parents as well as teachers working for these portals.

Lessons Over A Pipe

• Online tutoring is a $ 4 billion industry and is growing at an estimated rate of 10-15 per annum.
  
• Worldwide market for online tutoring is estimated to be in the region of $12 billion a India has 9.5 lakh schools and over 220 million school students.
  
• Online support more affordable than regular tutoring.
  
• An average middle class home in india spends over 35 per cent of its annual earnings on children's education.
  
• White board technology involves the use of digital pens and is an offective tool for remote tutoring.
  
• Teachers got paid anywhere betwoon Rs 150 to Rs 250 per hour.

Extramarks uses a points based system for students and teachers earn on the basis of what they do on its website. For instance, asking a query from a teacher costs you 30 points whereas you earn 5 points if you log in to the website daily One can also buy 300 points for Rs 99, which means you can get 10 questions solved for Rs 100. It is a bit like asking an astrologer questions and paying according to the number of queries.

The development represents an innovative way to address several issues plaguing higher education. The private sector has long complained that engineering graduates arrive ill-equipped to work and need much more training and exposure. Meanwhile, academia finds itself in the midst of a crippling faculty shortage.
"The project is aimed at providing a standard for academic content for both faculty and students across India," says Mangala Sunder Krishnan, principal coordinator of the project at IIT Madras. "A large number of private institutions have entered the field of engineering education with inadequate faculty support and training."

Students and faculty will be able to access lecture videos and course material by logging on to a search engine.

"We are in advanced stages of discussions with a few service providers to provide our course content on a non-exclusive basis," says Kannan Moudgalya, head of IIT Bombay's distance engineering education programme.

Authored by Jayashree Gupta, chairperson and managing director of Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL) and edited by R. Anuradha, the book is targeted for children in the age group of 7 to 14 years.

Speaking on the occasion, Sharma hailed the initiative to educate children about human rights. "Till citizens know their rights, they will not be able to assert themselves."

Sharma's suggestion to the author was that in case she decides to revise the book, she could stress the need for nutritious food for children for their mental and physical growth. Gupta said the main purpose of writing the book is to sensitise children to the basic concepts of human rights. "India has ratified all the conventions and treaties related to human rights but the problems continue. We still have 30 crore illiterates, one crore children child labours and 19 lakh infants dying every year for want of access to health care besides a terribly declining sex ratio."

While stating this here today, a spokesman of the Board said that the examination of the elective subject would be conducted internally at the level of the schools. The schools would send the results of those students who would opt for elective subject in grading to the Board and the latter would include it in the certificate of Secondary
class.

He said that computer education would be made compulsory from 2008-09 in class eleven and from 2009-10 for class twelve. It would be compulsory for the students to study and appear for the exam. However, getting through it would not be compulsory. He said that the syllabi of Computer Education would be prepared after consulting experts of I-T companies like NASSCOM.

He said that a Research Wing would also be set up in the Board to further raise the standard of education in the State.He said that new Research Wing would study the best school teaching practices in the country and on the basis of that study qualitative improvement in syllabi, teaching-learning processes, conduct of examinations and teacher-oriented programmes would be made.  The spokesman said that a significant decision had been taken to introduce "Kalpana Chawla Award" in middle, secondary and three streams of Senior Secondary for the topper girls from results of 2007. He said that in Secondary Examinations March-2007 two girls jointly bagged first position; hence the Board had decided to award "Kalpana Chawla Award" to both of them. Similarly, one or more girls who would get first position in these examinations would be given this Award.  

Books from the management education to biotechnology, law and legal studies, information technology, mass communication to nanotechnology, environment and public relations are on display.

The exhibition has been organized by the University Information Resource Centre (UIRC) of GGSIPU, from October 31 to November 3 and the exhibition was inaugurated today by Prof. K. K. Aggarwal, vice-chancellor, GGSIPU, in the presence of V. K. Jain, registrar of the university and Subhash Deshmukh, university librarian, among other university officials and faculty members.

The Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) has taken a major step forward in imparting a realistic approach to medical education in the field of `internal medicine.' In a unique venture, designed to teach through a discussion of cases actually seen in clinical practice, the Department of Internal Medicine, AFMC has prepared a book entitled `Saturday Clinics of AFMC.' It will be released during the National Medicine Update 2007 to get underway on Saturday.

The book has covered a wide spectrum of diseases en countered in the practice of neurology, cardiology, nephrology, respiratory medicine, endocrinology, environmental medicine and infectious diseases. The compilation includes cases actually discussed during weekly clinical meeting. The presentation of material includes history taking, clinical examination, relevant investigations and a discussion of each case to bring out important points to be borne in mind by treating physicians. Line diagrams and flow charts have been included to highlight important aspects of diseases, noted by various authors. The dilemmas faced in diagnosis and management of cases has been underlined through appropriate questions and answers after every case discussion.

Around 80,000 books will be put on display in the fair, covering fiction, non-fiction, literature, fashion, health, spirituality, education and most prominently children's books. ``We want to encourage children to develop reading habits and organising the book fair is a way of reaching our aim,'' said Shakti Malik, president of the Federation of Indian Publishers, which is organising the fair in collaboration with the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO).