The use of Smart Board is all set to bring advanced teaching and learning universally, including Nepal. Not only will the Smart Board make teaching and learning fun and easier, but it is expected to revolutionize education and the students of the future expected to reap immense benefits. Nepal, too, is all set to introduce this internet-induced education system from this fiscal year. The National Centre for Educational Development (NCED) will be launching this modern scheme in about 100 community schools in 11 of the 14 districts hit hardest by the recent earthquakes. However, this will not be used in the schools of the three districts of Kathmandu Valley this year. Initially the program will begin using the Smart Board for teaching subjects like Mathematics, Science and English. Incidentally, these are the subjects in which most of the students fare poorly in the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exams. Smart Boards are to be used to teach in these schools in grade XI, and it is expected that the quality of education imparted in these schools would be further improved. If this education system is used properly, it is very likely that the school students would benefit. That this is being taken up seriously is that the NCRD has already initiated preparation for acquiring the needed materials, human resources and other logistics to hold Smart Board classes by replacing the traditional ones. For this purpose, the Government has already allocated more than Rs.180 million.

This is indeed a novel thing for Nepal and for it to prove successful everything needed should be done. Meanwhile, at present this is only going to be a supplementary method for teaching, and if it fails to prove effective the regular classes could be resumed. The Smart Board can be used like a normal personal computer with whiteboards using touch detection. It could work wonders and the use of this information and communication teaching in education in the coming days would bring the best out of the students who are particularly weak in three subjects, mainly Science, English and Mathematics.

The Smart Board is expected to prove effective in teaching various subjects by improving teaching-learning environment

Experts believe that the Smart Board would prove effective in teaching these and other subjects by effecting an overall improvement in the teaching and learning environment. This may mean that more students would be passing the SLC exams in the future. As such, the investments made in the Smart Board education system, if used properly, would not go to waste. The developed countries are using this method with effective results. This is also proving to be a challenge for the traditional method of education, which among other things, requires rot learning. The Smart Board would help the students in taking notes and make education simpler. This would also help keep the students abreast with technology in which Nepal is found wanting. Smart Board teaching is being widely regarded as the method of the future in education. Children would benefit as they could play games as they learn. This method should be extened to other classes in due course of time.

Automatic pricing

The decision of the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) to adopt an automatic price adjustment mechanism of petroleum prices, which came into force on September 29 last year, was long overdue. And it started revising oil prices every fortnight, but such frequent changes in a volatile market made petrol pumps wary, and they did not want to buy oil while prices were falling. This in turn caused shortages in the market despite enough stocks with NOC. Therefore, NOC has decided to revise the prices every month, and it is a sensible decision. The lack of price revisions for long periods had caused many problems, including that when NOC increased prices, the increases seemed to be too big. And protests followed, with vested interests also taking to the streets.

The inability to pay the Indian supplier on time caused disruptions in oil supply, which caused crucial shortages of petroleum products in the country. From time to time, such shortages became long, sometimes even as long as a few months. This had widespread consequences for the consumers and the Nepali economy. NOC had to depend on the government for loans and further loans to make installments of payments. The automatic pricing has ended this difficult situation, all for the good.