Students from other secondary schools will be able to log on to the Internet and join in the live classroom discussions too. After the live netcast, the lessons will be made available on the RGS website through a service similar to the video-on-demand service, which means they can be called up at any time. The lessons will be taught by the best RGS teachers and netcast through broadband, high-speed network Singapore One. RGS teachers will also serve as tele-tutors.

After viewing the lesson on the Internet, any student who needs clarification can call the tele-tutor on duty. The schedule for Net lessons will be available a few weeks ahead on the school's website. RGS has not finalised which levels will kick off the cyber studies yet. RGS principal CarmeeLim said the aim is to make the ``RGS brand'' of education available to all students. She said: ``Other schools always want to know how our students turn in such good results consistently.

``We have good students, but more importantly, we have very good teachers who come up with creative and innovative lessons which take our students beyond the subjects taught in school.

``Now, through the Cyber Learning Centre, we can bring what we do at RGS to the other schools.''

She added that her students and teachers also stood to benefit from interacting with students and teachers from other schools. Some schools have already agreed to join in the live classroom sessions, promising more lively classroom discussions. ``The boys joining in may have a totally different point of view on a poem or a novel,'' she said.

Teachers could also gain from sharing methods and ideas. ``We hope that eventually, good teachers from other schools will also come to our Cyber Learning Centre to lead or co-teach lessons,'' she said.The project has cost $1.6 million so far, and the school is looking for benefactors, but lessons will be available free of charge on the Internet. Most of the money has been used to build and equip a classroom with state-of-the-art video-conferencing and casting facilities which will allow lessons to go live on the Internet. The classroom, fitted with computers, cameras and microphones, can accommodate 40 students. Up to 60 students from other schools can join in the live sessions.

Two top-ranking boys' schools, Raffles Institution and Victoria, have already agreed to join RGS in their live lessons. Victoria's principal, Chia Choon Kiat, said the RGS project is a great opportunity for schools to share expertise. Victoria is also looking into putting some lessons on the Net.``This way, we can share our best lessons and teachers,'' he said.The National Computer Board is providing technical support for the global classroom project.

`Second Life'

Terumitsu Ootani worked his way up the corporate ladderat a financial brokerage firm for 35 years and retired on his 60th birthday two years ago. To complete the classic Japanese salaryman story, Ootani should have filled his retirement with travel and giggling grandchildren.

Instead, Ootani and his wife, Kuniko, are up to their elbows in pickles and soybeans, plowing three large farm plots and producing enough organic vegetables to feed themselves and their children, with enough left to sell at market, reports New Strait Times.

``If I were a billionaire, maybe I could do something different,'' said Ootani, who sold his Tokyo home and built a small farmhouse in the mountains 75 miles west of the capital. ``Life is so long after retirement. If I lived on my pension, I would have just enough to eat. That's not what I wanted.''The Ootanis represent the new realities of retirement in a country with the world's longest living population. Today, men's life expectancy is 77 years, eight years longer than in 1970. Women typically live almost a decade longer than ageneration ago, to almost 84.

Yet despite this dramatic change in life expectancy, most people still retire at 60.

And as people live longer, millions have changed their approach to the 20 or so years they can expect after retirement. The Japanese term for retirement used to be `extra life', a leisurely bonus tacked on to the end of a career when one was taken care of, usually by family and a lifetime of savings. But in a reflection of the new attitude, and often financial worry, about life after 60, the latest term for retirement is `second life'.

It has become a time when people try new careers and continue earning a paycheck.

The Japanese government is encouraging this trend as one way to overcome the greatest long-term obstacle to this nation's economic recovery: its rapidly changing population. Japan has an exploding number of elderly in need of expensive medical and pension benefits, the birth rate is dropping to a record low and there are fewer laborers in the work force supporting those onpensions. Italy, Germany, the US--in fact most major industrial nations--are experiencing the same changing demographics, but no country is hurtling faster toward an aged society than Japan. Today, nearly a quarter of all Japanese are over 60, and that number is expected to increase in 25 years to 1 in 3 people. Paying welfare, health and pension benefits for all those elderly could gobble up more than one-third of the national income, according to recent estimates.

How the world's second-richest nation copes with its graying society--and how individuals alter their approach to retirement--is considered a test case for much of the world.