published: 2010/03/30. tags: online textbooks, Indian textbooks online

Indian Textbooks Online

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I have been a proud sponsor of MIT's OpenCourseWare. My main reason for sponsoring this program is the fact that it enables anyone around the world to be able to access quality education material over the internet. So, even a student in a remote city in India, for example, will be able to access the same course material that is being taught to some of the brightest students.

While this effort by MIT for higher education is good, I would like to see something similar for Class 1 to 12 as well. In this context, recently I was doing some research on the availability of Indian textbooks online. I found only two organizations providing their text books online. One is the NCERT (National Council Of Educational Research And Training). The other is the School Education Department Of Tamil Nadu cooperating with Tamil Nadu Text Book Corporation. Based on my experience, in addition to the NCERT and CBSE central education curriculum, each state in India has it's own education program and text books. So, hopefully in the future, all the states that publish their own text books would take the lead on publishing them online and make them available for free. Further more, if Indian government can make the OLPC dream a reality (in the most cost effective manner suitable for India), and provide all the text books in pdf format through the laptops, the children can reduce the loads of books they carry to school and more importantly it reduces the amount of paper enabling a greener environment. Even if a laptop is expensive, a custom eBook reader like Kindle but more cost effective would also be a viable option for the government to consider.

Going forward, as and when I find more online text book resources from India, I will be listing them here. If you are aware of a relevant website not listed here, please email me.

  1. NCERT textbooks online
  2. Tamil Nadu textbooks online
  3. CBSE textbooks online (not all books are available)

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