India No. 4 in World's Best Education Destination list

It is an ill-kept secret that Indian education standards are among the best in the world. But now, it's official. India stands at number 4 in the list of most desired education destinations.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the body which conducts GMAT recently conducted a survey, which pegged the United States and the United Kingdom at No. 1 and 2, but what has come as a real surprise is India's rank. The third most powerful Asian nation has been placed at the 4th most desired place to study management courses.

GMAT is one amongst the top B-school entrance test which is conducted at global level. Canada has secured the third position in the lot. Even Spain and Israel have appeared in the list among the top preferred destinations for B-schools.

 

Source: http://education.in.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4611231

Google to content farms: It's war

Google has set in motion the changes that it announced recently to combat "content farms"--companies that produce large amounts of inexpensive, search-engine-optimized content that have been frequently decried for their low quality.

But will there be sweeping changes in the way we view and navigate the Web? It's hard to tell just yet.

"In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking--a change that noticeably impacts 11.8 percent of our queries--and we wanted to let people know what's going on," Google said in a blog post last week. "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Part of this strategy involves a Chrome browser extension called Personal Blocklist.

But Demand Media, the recent IPO at the forefront of the "content farm" controversy, said last week that it's been unaffected by Google's algorithm change, so far. "It's impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term--but at this point in time, we haven't seen a material net impact on our Content and Media business," Demand Media executive vice president Larry Fitzgibbons said last night in a blog post. Demand Media, nevertheless, leaves open the possibility that its content could be affected in the future.

Indeed, Google said the changes may not be visible immediately, especially as the modifications to its algorithm are currently affecting only U.S. users. "We're very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it's a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results," the Google blog post explained. "We've been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we're working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results."

What's at stake for Google here is the fact that critics have said content farms are making search results less useful and less relevant. With pressure from the "social search" trend fueled by Facebook's success and from search rival Bing inching up in market share, this decision may be more pressing for Google than it appears at first glance.

Soource: http://www.zdnetasia.com/google-to-content-farms-it-s-war-62207115.htm

National Science Olympiad (NSO) Exam: 2011

National Science Olympiad (NSO) Exam: 2011

About NSO Exam :

The National Science Olympiad is organized every year to motivate students to strive for better and deeper understanding of scientific facts and data and to enhance their reasoning, analytical and problem solving skills All school students from class 2nd onwards are invited to participate in this unique contest that tests their understanding, level of knowledge, applications and power of reasoning. 

Benefits from NSO:
Every participant of Level I is awarded a Certificate of Participation.
Students get a chance to be assessed at national / international level and are awarded performance-based Rankings.
Students gain confidence to contest at national / international level in a world where from admission to elite courses to selection for choice jobs is becoming more and more competitive.
The spirit of competition and sense of recognition inspire students to excel in the chosen field of study and set higher goals.
Top three students of the final round from each class are awarded special Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. The top 500 (total 6500) winners (class-wise) are also endowed with cash prizes and scholarships, courtesy of the official sponsor.
All participants selected for Level II are awarded Certificates of Merit indicating their performance in the Level II.
Every participant who scores 50% or more in Level I is awarded a Certificate of Participation. School/College of each medal winning participant of the final round is awarded the ‘Intellect Trophy’ for having groomed and nurtured the talent.
The comprehensive SQ (Science Quotient) report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the participant.
A comprehensive SSQ (School Science Quotient) report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the school vis-à-vis national / international performance to enable the schools to improve the quality and level of science education at their end.
NSO Exam Date : November, 2011

Website: www.sofworld.org

Important Links:
NSO Syllabus
Click Here For More Details
Courtesy: sofworld.org

World education rankings: which country does best at reading, maths and science?

The OECD's comprehensive world education ranking report, PISA, is out. Find out how each country compares

• Get the data

• Jessica Shepherd
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 December 2010 15.43 GMT
• Article history

World education rankings show how countries do atreading, maths and science. A pupil in a science lesson. Photograph: David Sillitoe/Guardian

The world education rankings from the OECD are out. The UK is slipping down in maths, reading and science, and has been overtaken by Poland and Norway, this major study of 65 countries reveals today.

Around 470,000 15-year-olds across the world sat a numeracy, literacy and science test last year, the results of which inform the latest Pisa study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

PISA rankings within OECD. Illustration: Paul Scruton for the Guardian

The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) is highly respected across the globe, and enables politicians and policy-makers to assess how different country's education systems compare.

It shows the UK's reputation as one of the world's best for education is at risk, and has tumbled several places since 2006.

The UK is ranked 25th for reading, 28th for maths and 16th for science. In 2006, when 57 countries were included in the study, it was placed 17th, 24th and 14th respectively. Poland has stretched ahead of the UK in maths, while Norway is now ranked higher in reading and maths.

Andreas Shleicher, head of the Pisa programme, said the picture for the UK was "stagnant at best". "Many other countries have seen quite significant improvement," he added.

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading