This is for the first time that this scholarship will take care of complete education of the two girls, including their boarding, lodging and air travel.

Hailing from low income families, they had never thought they would go outside India to pursue their dreams. While Karishma will pursue a course in bio-medical engineering, Anjani has opted for computer engineering.

The initiative is being carried out in partnership with NGO Lend a Hand India (LAHI), which works in the education sector in rural India. Director of international admissions at UC, Jonathan Weller, who visited the village to felicitate both the girls, said, “Ours is a large university and we have almost 800 students from India. We are giving them full scholarships which will take care of every expense. We will give the next scholarships once these two graduate. Since it will take almost five years for them to graduate, we have a lot of time to plan the next scholarships. We might even try to go to other states.”

According to M Balakrishnan, deputy director, IIT-D , before deciding on how to make the best possible use of the land, permission from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has to be obtained on the same.
“We have already written to MHRD about the land offered to IIT-D and after we hear from them we will use the land as an extension to our current campus,” he informed .

As per Rakesh Kumar, registrar, IIT-D , the institute will not conduct BTech programmes at the new campus . It will rather use that land for research related activities and entrepreneurship development programmes. The new campus, when ready, will ease out space-related problems that the IIT is facing now. IIT-D is spread across 300 acres of land out of which 50 acres is forest area.

With the available spread of land already in use, there is no space left to construct facilities like more research labs. Also, the student strength of IIT-D at present is approximately 8000, for which the current campus is not adequate.

The other problem faced by the institute is the shortage of faculty. IIT-D is short of almost 200 faculty – as against the sanction.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle on Thursday, Prof V. G. Idichandy, deputy director, IIT-M, said the Union government had asked Dr T. Ramasami, secretary, ministry of science and technology, to evolve modalities for conducting a single entrance test for admitting students to all higher education institutions in the country.

But then, some IIT administrators have been demanding that the IITs be allowed to hold a separate joint entrance examination (JEE) “so that we can get the top one lakh students who clear the CET”, Prof Idichandy said.

He said, “About 15 lakh students may take the CET but if a student wants to join IIT, he needs to be one among the top one lakh who clear the test and he may be asked to sit again for JEE as we want to admit only the best students.

IITs are special and we serve as centres of excellence, so we want to conduct our own entrance examination. But ultimately everything rests with the IIT council which governs all IITs”.

He however admitted that the IITians were divided in conducting a separate entrance test for IITs.

Source : Deccan Chronicle

“How to create/develop online courses” workshop was attended by 21 faculty members from various universities, including Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, Anna University, Chennai, and Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Maharashtra.

“Open universities in the world and other traditional universities are developing online courses to enhance the reach of their study materials through videos, web content, internet and satellite,” an IGNOU official said.

“We understand that the teachers should be prepared to meet the challenges of the future and so the workshop was organised,” added the official.

The training included explaining and describing the instructional design for online courses, highlighting tools used to create such courses and so on.

“There should be judicious use of multimedia, activities and interactivity among learners for effective online learning,” said Madhu Parhar, director, inter-university consortium, IGNOU.

Uma Kanjilal, director of school of social sciences, IGNOU, elaborated upon information and communication technology initiatives at eGyanKosh – a national repository initiated with a mandate to store, index, preserve, distribute and share the digital learning resources.

“eGyanKosh has open access and has emerged as one of the world’s largest educational resource repositories,” said Kanjilal.

According to her, over 95 percent of IGNOU’s self-instructional print material has been digitised and uploaded on the repository; 1,600 video programmes on YouTube and virtual classes are initiatives by the varsity towards a flexible learning environment.

Meanwhile, the participants were all praise for the workshop and credited IGNOU for providing a detailed understanding.

“Being a technical person I know that we have to design a system from scratch but I am very thankful to IGNOU team for explaining everything in detail,” said Amit Agashe from Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune.

The Scholarship carries a sum of Rs 1,000 per month and contingency grant of Rs 2,500 annually, a press release from H Nagalingappa, director of physical education here states.

Candidates studying in the first and second year degree courses in colleges affiliated to the university, who have represented and excelled in sports and games at the state, national and international levels, and are less than 20-years of age as on July 1, 2011, are eligible to apply. Application forms can be collected from the office of the director, Mangalore University, Mangalagangothri 574199. Last date to receive applications is August 5.

Source : Times of India

The deputy director of education has instructed junior colleges to accept applications of only those CBSE students who appeared for board exams. “When students get the approval of their school principals before submitting their forms, the principals should confirm if the student has given the school-based exam or the board one,” said an official from the deputy director of education’s office. He added students who appeared for school-based assessment can apply to junior colleges after the online process ends.

Provisional admissions will be based on a letter attested by CBSE schools with the applicant’s marks on it. “We are giving students their marks on our school letterhead so that there are no issues. We received our school’s consolidated report from the CBSE board so marksheets should reach soon,” said Seema Maindiratta, principal of DAV School in Kharghar.

Sources in the school education department said CBSE representatives plan to meet the education minister and senior government officials on Monday. “It is only after the meetings that we will take the final call on students who took the school test,” said a senior official.

“We are still in the lurch. Neither do we have marksheets nor will our applications be accepted in colleges. CBSE schools have already started their classes and we are still hoping the state government will accept our applications to junior colleges,” said Naina Mathuria, whose child gave the school-based exam.

So far, option forms of 1,594 CBSE students have been confirmed through online admissions.

Source : TOI

The judge thus struck down the earlier notification of the DAV management asserting that the schools should continue with their fee structure of 2008-09 academic year. The decision of the state and subsequent fee hike notification of DAV school management was challenged in Orissa High Court by Parents’ Association of Cuttack-based DAV school terming these (fee hike) “uncalled for, unilateral and arbitrary.”

Source : Times of India

A department official said, “We have already dispatched a circular which states principals of CBSE schools should approve admissions only of students who have taken the board exams. If students who have taken the school test are found to have applied, the schools would be held responsible. If such cases come to light later, the school’s NOC could be withdrawn.”

Since there is no difference in report cards of students who have taken the school-based test and the board exam, the education department has to rely completely on information provided by schools. Though the deputy director’s office claims to have sent circulars instructing schools of the admission process, principals claim they are yet to receive it.

Source : Times of India

According to chairman of CBSE, Vineet Joshi, “this is an outreach programme of the Board designed to address a diverse group of students across Indian and abroad using different modes of communications like telephonic counseling, question-answers columns in news papers, interactive voice response system (IVRS) and online counseling through CBSE website.” These are free of cost service.

This year 49 principals, trained counselors from CBSE affiliated government and private schools and a few psychologists will participate in tele-counseling to address exam related psychological problems of the students. Forty four of the counselors are available in India while four are located in Dubai, Doha, Kuwait and for the first time one centre in Japan.

In Indian student can dial a toll free number 1800 11 7002 which will give centralized access to CBSE helpline. While the general queries will be answered by the operators, students will be connected to the principals or counselors in case of exam related anxiety or stress.

Students and parents can also use the tele-counseling through the IVRS mode on BSNL on 12501022 or log on to the CBSE website and interact with the chairman on exam related issues. The director (academic) and controller of examinations, CBSE can also be contacted for on-line counseling on director.edusat@rediffmail.com, mcsharma2007@rediffmail.com

Announcing this at a meeting of principals of affiliated colleges, P Narayanasamy, director (academic courses & student affairs) said classes for the first year postgraduate students would commence on September 1.

Since the AUT Chennai was a new university, the Anna University’s regulations of 2008 for undergraduate courses will be adopted for the affiliated colleges of AUT Chennai. For postgraduate courses the 2009 regulations will be followed.

The university has also release the tentative academic schedule as per which the first semester examinations for BE/BArch students will begin on December 27 and the second semester examinations will be held from June 6 next year.

Meanwhile, the AUT Chennai controller of examinations A Peer Mohamed urged principals to depute senior faculty members for valuation of answer scripts.