The Hindu : New Delhi News : Personal tuitions go virtual

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 22, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Personal tuitions go virtual

Parul Sharma

"Scienceguru", an online science tutor, to help students

NEW DELHI: All those struggling with tough equations in Chemistry and difficult formulae and derivations in Physics will soon have the option of a "personal tutor" to explain to them the key steps and also help grasp any topic anytime, anywhere.

Perhaps the country's first online Science tutor -- tentatively called "Scienceguru" -- this unique model will help students from Classes VI to XII learn about subjects as per their school curriculum. All that a student needs to do is register with the portal that will provide homework help in multimedia format through step-by-step solutions to clear the fundamental concepts.

An expert panel of nearly 60 teachers from across the country will develop the content of the portal and will tutor students using a virtual notebook and pen.

As soon as the students click on a particular topic using their mouse, they will get the explanation on the computer screen as well as hear it in the recorded voice of an expert.

"A large number of students resort to post-school tuitions. In a class full of a diverse set of learners, many students are unable to cope with the pace with which the teacher explains the subject, primarily because they too have constraints to finish the entire syllabus in the stipulated time," says Shantanu Prakash, Managing Director of Educomp Solutions, the company that has come up with this initiative.

"The portal will be a true companion of students and can be used as and when they want. They can replay the explanation as many times as they desire. All the questions will be from the NCERT book so as to reinforce what the child learns in class," he adds.

The new portal -- to be launched anytime in the next financial year -- is Educomp's second such initiative. Its Mathematics-help programme called "Mathguru" that got underway last July has experts solving problems in easy to follow methods through audio-visual media. At present, 7,000 students across the country are registered users of www.mathguru.com

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