Thursday, 17 April 2008

Textbooks online

Somewhat old news, which one heard only today.

The Tamil Nadu state School Education Department has a website where it's put up all school textbooks (classes 1 to 12) ... http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/

Some digging led to the discovery that other states have textbooks online as well, but one found nothing as comprehensive as TN.

States that have books /chapters online (not just syllabii, which a lot more states have):
Pretty enlightened move (and more power to Amma's state for the most decent execution)!

The NCERT also had plans in this direction, but not much has come of it. All they have on their sorry excuse of a site, are syllabii and what looks like bits of random textbooks. Get your act together, guys...

Of course, now that the crucial first steps (faltering in some cases) are happening, one hopes to see better stuff too -- like perhaps interactive lessons/ tutorials/ exercises, or video... Best to leverage the interactivity of the medium, wot?

Also, our governments should do something about moving school textbooks onto non-commercial licenses (so that atleast other people can begin building more learning materials)... those books were created with public money, after all.

No comments: