Ahmedabad’s Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University (BAOU) has launched an SMS service to help students and others learn the meanings of words.

BAOU vice-chancellor Manoj Soni says, ‘Gyaan Bindu is meant to help students from open universities, as well as those in Stds 8 to 12, from Gujarat and CBSE boards. We have a database of 5,000 words, picked from Indira Gandhi National Open University’s course material, our university’s course material and social science and science textbooks for Stds 8 to 12. This is our way of giving back to Gujarat on the occasion of the state’s golden jubilee.’

If you have a query, type ‘Baou’ followed by the word and send it as an SMS to 9429909999. If you live outside Gujarat, prefix 0. The charges are nominal – you will not be charged Rs.5 or Rs.8, as with many premium SMS services. You will not be charged for the reply, which will be in English and will contain not more than 150 characters. If the word is not in the database, the university will send you an SMS with related words. The word will be included in the database within 48 hours and its meaning will be SMSed to you.

We sent an SMS on November 1 at 5.45pm to find out the meaning of the word ‘mitosis’ and got a reply the following day at 3.40pm. We were not given a reason for the delay.