Novel sites at school

"DOT COM" seems to be the new mantra that has virtually heralded the millennium and there are scores born everyday (they also appear to be dying as fast as they are born!) all over Cyberspace's firmament. Here novelty and innovation are the operating words that keep dotcom pulses beating and our mouses clicking, wondering what new moves they have up their sleeve to keep us hooked to their site and to increase the number of eyeballs or site traffic as they prefer to call it.

To join this bandwagon is yet another dot com, but with a difference. Called Schoolnet, they have as their main goal decided to make education an interactive affair. It is called networked learning in e-parlance and their target audience are Kindergarten to Class 10 of the CBSE, ICSE and the State Board. The learning they offer is called the 'K -10 Program.' Just precisely what is their modus operandi? Interactive educative programmes through multimedia, CD-ROMs, reference-info that is available online, digitally accessible data, internet-based work tools that have been downloaded and which today is the hallmark of e-based empowered education. When a school decides to enrol as a member of Schoolnet, all the essential infrastructure and the technical know-how so necessary for interactive networked learning where the 'learner' connects to global teachers is provided. This also means gateways to a common storehouse of data, information, lesson plans and activities culled from authorities in specialised fields. Actually, to synopsise, the access to knowledge is undergoing a revolutionary change previously unheard of. No more feverish search for 'vital info' from age-old, dog-eared hard bounds at archaic libraries, when all that you want to know can be accessed at the click of that mouse!

Incidentally, Schoolnet is an offshoot of IL&FS (Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd ) and its major stake holders are the Housing Development Finance Corporation, The Central Bank of India, Unit Trust of India and International Finance Corporation based at Washington. The Schoolnet is headquartered at Bangalore and is headed by Mr. Uma Shankar Visvanathan also based in Bangalore.

Who knows, a few years from now such close educational symbioses such as online chatting and information exchange between students all over the world will make teaching and learning wholly digital-based and there will be no typecasting of how learning should be. For us, we may think that our classrooms are irreplaceable, but they eventually might be vestigial reminders of an era of learning gone by...

SHANTI ARUNKUMAR

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