Online educational tools to help students

It's a competitive world and academia is not without its own challenges. With annual exams around the corner, here are a few online educational tools to help students augment and revise their curriculum; help them find the right career path; and even pick the perfect college

Merit Nation 

Of all the websites mentioned here, Merit Nation has the most exhaustive collection of online academic content. It caters to all the grades across CBSE/ISC, ICSE and state boards of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Additionally, it also covers junior college for Science, Commerce and Humanities, and even has material for the IIT-JEE and NEET examinations.

Sign up at the site, and you are provided with a fairly large amount of free content. Subjects are listed on the left as icons, each with four sections: Study, Test, Revise and Ask & Answer.

The 'Study' section is formatted like a text book, with lots of text and diagrams; but it should be noted that several lessons also come with an additional video made by a teacher. The Test and Revise sections will let you assess how much you have learnt.

In Ask & Answer, you can pose your queries to be answered by experts or fellow students, as well as browse others' Q&As.

The IIT-JEE and NEET sections are equally well populated with tons of information about both examinations and all the study material you will need to prepare yourself. The free material here is limited though.

Whatever course you are in, you can pay to upgrade to a basic or all-inclusive online course, which gives you everything you'd need. For school and junior college, the discounted price as of writing is 3,800 per grade. IIT-JEE courses range from 5,999 to 15,999, while NEET rates are between 4,999 and 11,999.

www.meritnation.com

iPerform

For those enrolled in a CBSE school, iPerform is a great way to augment classroom learning. Unfortunately, the site doesn't cater to other boards of education.

Sign up for a free account for a few lessons that serve as a preview of the paid site; to unlock the full curriculum for any one grade, it costs 4,000 annually.

The site itself is divided into three parts: Learning Zone, e-Testing Zone and Interactive Zone. The Learning Zone is where all the lessons are imparted. Choose a subject (English, History, Physics, Maths, etc) and the lesson in it that you want to learn. Instead of a standard textbook format, iPerform has turned the chapters into slideshows, annotating each lesson with images. What's more, a box below the slideshow lets a student post queries, which show up in the Interactive Zone where educators can help them out.

The e-Testing Zone offers three modes: revise, exercise or smart assessment. iPerform will analyze the student's performance and track progress, along with other parameters such as the student's focus, learning and present it all in the Performance Report tab.

iperform.classteacher.com

India College Search 

Can't decide which college in the nation is right for you? India College Search is the only resource you will need to make up your mind. Fantastically designed, it streamlines the whole process. First, choose the field - engineering, management, medical, law, architecture, computers, hotel management and pharmacy.

Next, pick the course (for example, B Tech/BE or M Tech/ME) and the geographic location, where you can choose from multiple choices between states and cities. Hit 'Search' and you're ready to go. The results are a list of colleges with basic information such as whether it's a public or private institution, course duration, annual fees, and small icons to denote facilities such as hostel, gym, library, laboratory, auditorium, etc.

Once you know what you want, click that college and you will be taken to its landing page, which has photos, location map, overview and description, faculty, events, admission procedure, eligibility, and recent cut-offs. If you like what you see, hit the 'Add to Shortlist' button - a list you can access through your profile. India College Search claims to have over 7,000 colleges listed, of which 1,187 accept applications via the website.

www.indiacollegesearch.com

Mera Career Guide 

When you are finally done with your exams, you can turn to MCG to help you decide on your future course of action.

If you already know what career path you are interested in, try searching for it; otherwise, go through the list of 1,374 topics to see something that catches your fancy. You'll be taken to a Q&A forum with questions from other students, and which have been answered by career counsellors, letting you learn a bit more about the subject.

The 'psychometric assessments' will let you measure your aptitude and fine-tune your interests. Choose your current academic level or go in for the all-age 'ideal career test'. Once you are done, Mera Career Guide will show you a preview of the full report that displays the education stream that's least recommended for you.

For the complete report, you will have to pay 500 to access information on the best course for you, supplemented with a graph of your interests and aptitudes, your strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Besides, MCG also has career guides that you can access for a small fee, to better guide you with personalized advice.

www.meracareerguide.com

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATORS:

Coursera: Regarded as the best website for online education, four of Coursera's courses have been deemed worthy of college credit. The material, spanning across subjects such as humanities, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, business, etc, are all designed by world-class professors. Learn at your own pace, test your knowledge and reinforce concepts with exercises.

www.coursera.org

Khan Academy: With almost 4,000 videos that will teach you about any subject you want to learn, the sheer number of topics covered here is Khan Academy's biggest selling point - and hey, it's all free. It has gotten plaudits from education experts across the world. Students are advised to make good use of the dashboard feature that lets them track their academic progress. www.khanacademy.org

TED-Ed I TED: (Technology, Entertainment, Design), the idea sharing platform, has an offshoot dedicated to education that is choc-a-block full of videos to help in learning. TED-Ed is not really academic or adhering to curriculum. The videos are meant to augment what you learn in a classroom. The best part is that each video comes with links to dig deeper into the topic, as well as multiple choice and short answer questions. ed.ted.com

MIT Open CourseWare: The world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has put a large amount of its under-graduate and graduate courseware online for anyone in the world to use, from lecture notes to full videos of classes. ocw.mit.edu

YouTube Edu: From Khan Academy to Stanford University, most online academic providers use YouTube as a partner; and the video-sharing service has put them all together under one roof, hosting over 7,00,000 highquality educational videos. YouTube Edu has short lessons from top teachers across the world, full courses, and videos from global thought-leaders. And yup, it's all free. www.youtube.com/education

Teachers go through these websites to support what they teach, but in no way can these replace the teaching that takes place in classrooms. None of these keep up with new teaching methods, especially since the CBSE board introduces many innovative methods regularly. Examples are repetitive and the animation may not be up to the expectations of tech-savvy kids. — Sunita George, vice-principal of R N Podar School, Santacruz; teaching for 17 years. 

Students need to understand that such material can only help with revision. Parents need to be more careful before investing in such websites and study material DVDS. Teachers are put through regular training programmes to keep them up-to-date with the syllabus... Still, these websites can definitely act as support material. — Aarti Bhatia, teacher with a South Mumbai school; teaching for 9 years. 

Since the state board syllabus has been upgraded to match the standards of centralised education boards, students have been facing a lot of difficulty in coping with the syllabus. This website (meritnation.com) provides students with a lot of study material which is easy to understand. Also, they provide a lot of revision and tests, which is helpful during examinations. — Susan Babu, supervisor at Holy Family High School, Andheri (E); teaching for 27 years.

(with inputs from Shreya Bhandary)