Learning made easy

www.education.eth.net

THE INCREASING pressure on the students made by institutions, parents and society are bound to complicate matters and reflect upon their health. With accent on performance in studies as well as co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, the students are at the receiving end. Only those who can cope with such stresses and strains come out successful. It is with the idea of guiding students and helping them realise their potential that this website has been designed.

The site deals with issues such as how to study well, prepare for the board examinations and competitive examinations and where to look for career guidance. Tips to deal with examinations are combined with suggestions for tensionless study by educationists and those in the field. Many youngsters are not making it good simply because of their psychological fears and obsessions. Such topics are analysed and suggestions given for improvement. Articles on how to deal with sensitive issues of drug abuse and bullying are worth the notice.

Apart from lessons on English grammar, mathematics, physics, and chemistry, interesting sections on scientific experiments make the site a complete one. Why are some left-handed? Can you float in quicksand? Do snails have legs? Such questions add to the practical wisdom in the experiments section which tells you how to make a volcano, a cloud and a parachute! And if the site doesn't quench your intellectual thirst and you are craving to find answers to questions, ask a scientist on the site who will be glad to answer.

For the confused minds and those without guidance there is a counsellor. The site also offers contests. The "Bet you didn't know" and "Enrich Yourself" are added features. As the race for going abroad for higher studies and jobs has shifted into higher gears, an "Education Abroad" feature has been included.

http://www.batchmates.com

When we were young we had no concept of friendship and did not read the bestsellers on the subject, but friends we had, by the dozen. Now, we know what makes for friendship; and we lap up all that is in black and white on how to make friends. Yet we have fewer friends.

I am yet to find someone who has denied that making friends is easier when at school or college. As grown-ups we are a lot more cynical and a lot less idealistic; and bitter experiences have taught us that someone could smile at you and still deceive you. All of us are, to varying degrees, wary of change, whatever the form in which it comes into our lives. There are quite a number of us who see a stranger as a Trojan horse. If you are one who wants to make a (re)connection with the past, and would like to know how life has treated your batchmates, but don't know where to make a start, look here. There is batchmates.com

At batchmates.com, you register yourself under the schools and colleges you went to, so that your friends could find you. By entering your profile, you leave your footprints there. You can edit your profile anytime - enter your new e-mail address, new residential address and all the other new things the winds of change have swept into your life. You could also upload group photos of you and your batchmates.

Among the extremely useful features are Buddy List, which is "your ready-to-use comprehensive list of all the friends whom you meet at batchmates.com and "My ReminderBook," which helps you keep appointments and dates by sending reminders to you.

One of the interesting features on the site is the Name Certificate. Here, your name is analysed and eight of the most positive traits embedded in your name are displayed in pictorial splendour on a certificate, which you can frame and flaunt to friends and family! Other benefits that come with a batchmates.com membership are "crorepati formula, gifts galore, t-shirts, books, batchpoints, hot deals, buddy bargains and backpacks."

http://www.worldbook.com/fun/bth/earthquake/html/earthquake.htm

Life is often like the man who has a knack for committing sartorial impropriety, wearing outfits and hues that violently militate against the occasion. On a day (January 26) when Life should have been all smiles and played avuncular to us Indians, he chose to wear a grim face, to be outfitted in black and carry the sickle of death.

The tremors of the earthquake epicentred in Gujarat shook the nation, figuratively and literally. All of us saw in the quake what we wanted to see, hear what we wanted to hear and read the lines we wanted to read -- the philosophical among us asked if did not stand to good reason now, that we were no better than colonies of ants which get trampled upon without a thought. And that meaninglessness was at the centre of existence, not the love of a personal god. Godmen saw the need to appease the gods with prayers and ceremonies. And anti-dam activists looked at us with a sad smile.

And then there were the curious among us who wanted to know a little more about this quirk of nature that could in almost no time reduce dreams and lives to dust and rubble. And they went to http://www.worldbook.com/fun/bth/earthquake/html/earthquake.htm.

Here World Book editors have compiled a collection of articles that "examine earthquakes," the damage they cause, and how to minimise their destruction. There are also links to subject- related websites.

(Compiled by K. Kirubanidhi & Prince Frederick)

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