Coming back to the story making headlines 'Destination NASA challenge 2008', here's a recent news clip that I had read in the Times of India. As Sekhar Gupta of the Indian Express once said, the future is what the Times group believes and does. Quoting from the Times:
"Forty-six year old Hyderabadi, Sanjeev Gupta, director Learnsmart India, announced a tie-up with Tata Sky to reach out to millions of students through the web with a self-assessment teaching -learning tool. 24/7 guru.com, the leading provider of this programme made the announcement in Hyderabad on Friday at the Taj Deccan.

Conceived as a quiz based service, the programme covers math, science, and general knowledge for students between classes 3 and 10 of CBSE and ICSE syllabi, giving them the opportunity to identify their strengths and areas of improvement through scientifically designed assessment tests. On subscribing, 50 questions are made available to the learner followed by instant feedback on scores as well as diagnostic reports giving adequate explanation. The students are given a fair understanding of where they have gone wrong and what needs to be corrected. So, what's new for the learner in this package? Sanjeev Gupta says, “The special feature of the package is that we are introducing the litmus test, a diagnostic and testing tool which assesses the student's ability. There has been no testing tool so far." Very importantly, he says,"This tool emphasises conceptual understanding and retention and not role learning where the emphasis is on memorising information which is easily forgotten.” He adds, “So far teaching has been in a physical form through tuition, tutorial, or parental guidance, but now we've made it available on the web so we have a larger customer base.” Tata Sky will beam the programme everyday. The content for the programme will be provided by 24/7 guru.com and Tata Sky will give them the market penetration reaching out to 1.2 million homes immediately and to 1.5 million by December through Direct to Home (DTH). “So it is a win-win situation not only for both of us and also for the students," adds Gupta on a note of conclusion."

URL: http://parents4education.blogspot.com/2007/12/launch-of-interactive-self-assessment.html