A number of interactive websites that provide not only sample papers but also concise notes, learning aides and even online interaction with teachers have come up in the recent years. Newsline also surfed the net to see the kind of information available.

Googling “help for CBSE boards” throws up 5,10,000 hits, with a plethora of sites, including government websites such as cbse.nic.in, edudel.nic.in and others offering sample papers. Several blogs also give links to sample papers and tips on cracking the boards.

Some, like yuvajobs.com/education, cbseguess.com, also offer sample papers for ICSE and links to state and CBSE board websites. The blog Gyanguru.com even offers scanned copied of the past 10 years’ papers along with a post on ‘tips and tricks’ for stress-free revision. But it is only a few websites that offer interactions with teachers and counsellors along with easy to learn diagrams; memory aids and mocks tests.

Websites like onlineteachers.com, zeelearn.com/testpapers, extramarks.com and compassbox.com offer online tests for all subjects of class X and XII. They also offer flowcharts, maps, and solved sample papers for different classes. Where they score over older sites such as cbseguess.com is that apart from the expected questions and sample answers they also allow a student to take online tests for each chapter and topic. Interactive pages on these websites offer maps, flowcharts, and diagrames on important topics. Concise notes highlighting the important points in each chapter are also given.

Run by well-known brands in the field such as Zee Education, Career Launcher and Extramarks, these sites also offer a year-long e-learning programme that can be used in place of tuitions.

Atul Kulshreshtha of extramarks.com says, “What we have tried to develop is a 360 degree approach and make the content student friendly. A student can study all through the year with the various self-learning levels at his own pace.” Launched in October 2007, the site also provides real time learning help from teachers during set hours of the day to registered users.

Teachers and students say that using the web is a welcome option. Class X student Vrinda Jain says that getting sample papers online is an easy option.

“We spend a lot of time online anyway so it’s easy to download a sample paper. It also saves the clutter of keeping several model test paper books.”