www.shiksha.com Specialised sites such as Shiksha promise to help school and college students find the right courses and institutions E-learning, online educations, e-books, online tutorials and more education is no longer restricted to books and classrooms. Internationally, online education searches are common. Here in India, Info Edge has launched Shiksha www.shiksha.com an education portal that claims to be a comprehensive one-stop resource for information on education. Shiksha.com will provide a platform to students in the 15-24 age group to research courses and colleges online. At the same time it will enable educational institutes to reach out to their target audience. What’s in it? Shiksha.com has over 70,000 listings on institutes, courses, events, admissions, results and scholarships. It lists information on graduate, post graduate programmes and vocational courses from colleges in India and in countries like Singapore, US, UK, Australia etc. Users can find details on professional, overseas, test preparations, executive short term courses. The site allows users to interact with other Shiksha.com users, college and alumni groups. It hosts an Ask and Answer section for users to get their queries answered by expert counsellors and others. Giving directions Shiksha.com, has also partnered with Kum Kum Tandon, a renowned career counsellor and will also have a dedicated section on her books on education. The portal will also enable educational institutions to upload videos, presentations and documents to communicate with students online. Keeping with the fact that an offline presence is always useful, Info Edge already has a task force across eight cities. E-ducation rocks The site believes that E-learning in its current form is limited to the top layer of the pyramid. There is need for it to percolate to the lowest layer. Use of innovative technology, always works when it comes to promoting online education. A case in point being Edurite’s Mobile PC solution for education. It is affordable, can be moved around from one place to another and fulfills the required needs. With search tools like Shiksha, students can find education options and even get in touch with school and college alumni (even form a group). This way, a student doesn’t have to run from pillar to post or learn about what courses are on offer.
www.Extramarks.com Students who don’t like the idea of taking private tuitions outside their home and switch to a better alternative it’s online and doesn’t put a dent in the pocket Most students need an additional helping hand at their studies after school. Unfortunately, parents are not often able to help with their books and kids are just compelled to take private tuitions. However, private tuitions always entail high costs, commuting and are very rarely flexible. That’s why more and more students are going online for that extra help. Help at hand www.Extramarks.com is a website that provides educational support to school students from classes six to 12. Currently, it covers only the CBSE and NCERT curriculum and will soon going incorporate the ICSE syllabus as well. It also plans to incorporate state board syllabi of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharasthra and Rajasthan late this year. Extramarks takes a 360-degree approach to support education. Not only can a student come to the website and find related matter to use as reference, he or she can also take mock tests before important examinations to prepare better. The site also has started live online tutoring where a child signs up and schedules classes with the teachers who help them with their studies. This real time virtual classroom actually helps students in getting professional assistance without having to go anywhere. The teachers are chosen very carefully by their head of academics who comes with over 15 years of experience in education and has been the principal of a very reputed school in Delhi. All the teachers are available at the extramarks office from 3 pm to 11 pm between which they take classes. Easy job All a student has to do with go online, register, schedule a class according to his needs, pay for it and it’s done. Students can alter class timings according to their convenience as well. Extramarks holds multiple classes on similar topics so if a child cannot attend a 4 pm session, he or she can attend the class at 9 pm. Managing costs Education has become quite an expensive affair these days and the company wanted to provide a cost effective way of helping children to study without incurring formidable costs. Generate content The website also encourages user generated content, so students can upload information on their blogs and other categories on the website. For instance, Extramarks has a resource center that provides information on schools and colleges, which can be uploaded by the users as well.Currently there are about 300,000 users registered with extramarks.com with approximately 100,000 active students at any given point of time. Ironically, most of these portals cater to international students in the US and UK. Extramarks.com is one of the few sites that focus on Indian students. Download prohibited? No problem. CHAT from any browser, without download. Go to http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php/ To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in