The whole world woke up to the huge shifts in our way of life  on 11 March 2020  with the declaration of Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic by WHO.  Undeterred by the shift, the indomitable spirit of Humankind has tried to evolve new ways and means to get around this present crisis and start life afresh. Indians in general and the academic community, in particular, were no exception. In order to reap the benefits of Information & Communications Technology to the fullest extent, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India, actively began to spearhead the mode of online learning with the active support and collaboration Of UGC & its Inter-University Centres, INFLIBNET and CEC. Various forms of digital platforms were initiated which can be easily accessed by teachers, students and researchers in the Universities and Colleges. Following is the list of some of the ICT initiatives of MHRD and UGC along with their access links:-

• SWAYAM Online Courses:     http://storage.googleapis.com/uniquecourses/online.html provides access to the best teaching-learning resources that were earlier delivered on the SWAYAM platform. These resources can be viewed by any learner free of cost and that too without any registration as such.  
• UG PG MOOCs:   http://ugcmoocs.inflibnet.ac.in/ugcmoocs/moocs_courses.php
  hosts learning material of the SWAYAM UG & PG (Non-Technology) archived courses. 
• e-PG Pathsala:    https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ e-PG Pathshala is an initiative of the MHRD under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) being executed by the UGC.  At any time of the day students may enjoy these Video classes imparted by renowned teachers of the country
• e-Content courseware in UG subjects:    http://cec.nic.in/cec/

The Consortium for Educational Communication, popularly known as CEC, is one of the Inter-University Centres set up by the University Grants Commission of India. It has been established with the goal of addressing the needs of Higher Education through the powerful medium of Television along with the appropriate use of emerging Information Communication Technology (ICT). It provides e-content in 87 Undergraduate courses.  http://cec.nic.in/cec/vyas  The Vyas Higher Education Channel is dedicated to the students studying their degree courses in Universities and Colleges. The Curriculum which is being followed is based on UGC model curricula and CBCS compliance.

•  SWAYAMPRABHA:      The SWAYAM PRABHA (https://www.swayamprabha.gov.in/) is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on a 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. It is a bouquet of channels offered by the HRD ministry. It offers open course learning to students in schools and colleges. The channel number in different DTH service providers are as follows:   
•  Airtel TV: Channel no. 475, Channel no. 476, and Channel no. 477 
•  Tata Sky: Channel no. 756 which pops up a window for SWAYAM Prabha DTH Channels.
•  Dish TV: Channel no. 946, Channel no. 947, Channel no. 949, and Channel no. 950. 
• Students can watch education programs on these channels and on NIOS YouTube channel with 6 hours of the recorded broadcast from 7 am to 1 pm followed by 6 hours of Live Session from 1 pm to 7 pm. For each broadcast, four different subject experts would take one and half hour session each. Learners can also ask questions from home through a phone call.
• CEC-UGC YouTube channel:      https://www.youtube.com/user/cecedusat provides access to unlimited educational curriculum based lectures absolutely free"
• Cotton University - Inhouse E-Resources

Following are the List of some Open Access Online Learning Resources

National Digital Library of India (NDL)
https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
https://doaj.org/

Directory of Open Access Books
https://www.doabooks.org/

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)
https://nptel.ac.in/

Shodhganga-a reservoir of Indian theses
https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/

Open Access Theses & Dissertations
https://oatd.org/

Open Knowledge Repository - World Bank
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/

Legal Information Institute of India
http://liiofindia.org/

PubMed Central (PMC)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?cmd=search&term=

Project Gutenberg
https://dev.gutenberg.org/

HighWire
https://www.highwirepress.com/

Southern Connecticut State University
https://libguides.southernct.edu/openaccess

AGRIS
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/index.do

ScienceDirect Open Access Content
https://www.sciencedirect.com/#open-access

AidData
https://www.aiddata.org/

ILOSTAT
https://ilostat.ilo.org/

Oxford Open Access
https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access

Project Euclid
https://www.projecteuclid.org/librarians/lib_oa

SpringerOpen Journals
https://www.springeropen.com/journals

Taylor & Francis Open Access
https://www.tandfonline.com/openaccess/openjournals

Cambridge University Press Open Access
https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/open-access

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IIT PAL:  PAL (Professor Assisted Learning) lectures, which are prepared by the IITs, aim to help students crack the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), and are telecast on Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry's Swayam Prabha Channels. In other words, IIT PAL IS  A CONTENT BASED VIDEO LECTURES PLATFORM FOR JEE MAIN AND NEET-UG ASPIRANTS BY IIT PROFESSORS / SUBJECT EXPERTS IN THE SUBJECTS OF PHYSICS, MATHEMATICS, CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY.

SO, HS 2ND YEAR SCIENCE STUDENTS CAN AVAIL OF THIS WONDERFUL PLATFORM AND TURN THEIR DREAMS INTO REALITY.

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Over and above the aforementioned open access online resources, there are also some other  useful apps :--

• Google Hangouts is Google's longest-running messaging and video chat service. As of June 2020, this service will only be offered to consumer accounts, which is basically anyone with an @gmail.com or @googlemail.com email address. Hangouts can be found in the Gmail sidebar and at hangouts.google.com.  
• Google Meet is a video conferencing app. It is the business-oriented version of Google's Hangouts platform and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. The solution enables users to make video calls with up to 30 users per high-definition video meeting.  
• WhatsApp is free to download the messenger app for smartphones. WhatsApp uses the internet to send messages, images, audio or video. The service is very similar to text messaging services, however, because WhatsApp uses the internet to send messages, the cost of using WhatsApp is significantly less than texting. You can also use Whatsapp on your desktop, simply go to the Whatsapp website and download it to Mac or Windows. It is popular with teenagers because of features like group chatting, voice messages and location sharing.
• Online Voice Recorder is a convenient and simple online tool that can be used right in your browser. It allows you to record your voice using a microphone and save it as an mp3 file.