The Museum in you

The unhindered enthusiasm to discover the world when you are a kid start creating a museum in you

The aspirations and perspiration of parents growing you adds spice to the Museum in you

The enduring childhood, the thrills, shrills and drills at school shapes the personality of museum in you.

The social activities, confused and dazed teenage, pressure to excel decorates the Museum in you.

The untiring efforts towards challenges, the grit to succeed, and the mark to make a difference are the endearing characters of the museum in you.

The   temptations, the failures, the weaknesses, the frustrations become indelible memories of the museum in you.

The faith, belief, criticism, health, age, upbringing, infatuations, frustrations, bliss, happiness, moods, cherished friendships, soulmates, classmates, society becomes the tapestry of life in the museum in you.

The journey of life appears better than the end, the patience to wait for achievements, getting there to the cherished goals is the final bliss and tranquility of your Museum in you.

The transformation of academy to Economic and well-being clusters

We are in an age of complex challenges which demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.

Students are entitled to expect that they will succeed in learning something of value when they are groomed by schools and colleges. If they don’t succeed, they are entitled to know immediately that they have not. And when they have not succeeded, they have the right to expect that they will be involved in learning that makes success more likely on their next try. Education, which cannot subscribe to these ideas—neither in their words nor in actions—are not likely to manage effectively.

Young Kids should be more engaged in open possibilities with unbridled curiosity, passion for problem solving, taking risks and strong ethics. Present education and society’s wrong expectations are shifting them from those great characters which are the need of the hour.

Unpredictably is the norm of the day. The magnitude of cultural, societal, industrial, technological, environmental and other unforeseen events is so complex that, in order to handle those complex challenges we need to prepare this young generation very differently.

Here are the transformation steps we need in academy.

1. Fitness first and then everything else falls in place. Academy should make it mandatory in keeping everyone in the society hale and healthy by introducing yoga, meditation, sports and community service. Transform universities, colleges/school campuses to have the required infrastructure and grade students accordingly.
2. Citizen resources: Redesign the whole university, college/school campuses for active participation of Citizens, Professionals, scientists, businessmen, industry,  students or anyone who wishes to learn, experiment, tinker and create products.
3. Wellbeing Centres: Redesign classrooms into wellbeing centres where anyone can use the resources for increasing their physical, mental and psychological fitness.
4. Business Academic centres: Remove the legal and all boundaries of identifying academy and business separately. Every business activity should have participation from fresh minded students, faculty along with the employees of the business.  Many a times, Business experts are trapped by their own knowledge and fresh graduates creates innumerable possibilities for some real challenges business faces.  This will be a win-win situation for both industry and academy in areas of working in real world challenges and gaining skills and talents in sustaining business with low costs, higher profitability and new innovations.
5. Clusters of Expertise:  All universities, colleges and schools should be grouped as clusters of specific expertise and that should be based on the knowledge, skills, talents needed in industries, software technology parks, special economic zones and other industrial clusters in and around the academic institutes.

For example if there are many pharmaceutical companies and Petrochemical industries in an area then the academic curriculum of that area’s colleges, schools and universities should be on those specific domains and also on emerging trends such as Robotics, artificial intelligence and data analytics ,drug discovery, Health innovations  etc. in the above sectors.  By clubbing universities, colleges and schools based on the specific domain expertise and emerging trends,  students, faculty will gain real time working experiences.

6. Academic Project clusters: All government funded initiatives, projects , infrastructure developments and all kinds of commercial works of state and federal programs should be initiated in university clusters by making them as part of the stakeholders in that specific projects. This will erase the boundaries between Education and commerce. The initiatives will create employment for students who will be getting grading on their progress in real world work.
7. Functional Degrees. Degrees should be awarded to students and remuneration and other rewards for faculty on the work accomplished in live projects. Those certificates should be based on the expertise gained in specific functional areas rather than general certificates such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering etc. These way each clusters of universities will be building on specific domain skills, talents which can be mapped to business requirements and other such needs.

The proposal is a major structural, legal and strategic change with immense benefits for the good of academy, business and Government.

Since a new business model requires disrupting the present, it’s important to be thoroughly conversant with prevailing model and how present system creates value.

There should not be any confusion about the new business model with changing the activities performed within the present framework. If it is done that way then its plain old business process reengineering. This inside-out view has the potential of labelling mere internal alterations as a new model. Don’t. Instead, academy, government and all stakeholders should take an outside-in view, focusing on outcomes, not activity, in addressing whether the business model is truly new. Internal activities will most likely morph as a result of addressing changes to strategic factors, but this is a second-order effect.

Comments, improvements, new ideas are always encouraged. Let’s make ourselves better with best practices.  Thank you for reading.

New Economic Model and the Role for Academy

The dynamic environment of economic activities that shape the nations growth and prosperity needs a new language and new practices to sustain long term.   There is no end game. It is infinite game of aligning the best interests of our societies to stay hale and healthy, coexisting harmoniously within the wonderful nature by preserving and aligning our economic, industrial, technology and any kind of  progress and wellbeing of all the  living species . This can be achieved by orienting all that progress towards new environmentally friendly products and services and solid growth.

In order to meet that target there is an urgent need to redefine the status quo in Academics and bring academics to the forefront of economic activity of the nation.

Merging Academy and Industry as one entity will lead to major job growth and Economic Resilience when IOT (internet of things), Artificial Intelligence, Robots and Machine learning like technological innovation take away human jobs. The question to ask is  “GROWTH CAN BE MANAGED AND GUIDED, BY WHOM, AND FOR WHAT NEEDS”?  Academy should become the wellbeing centre of excellence (as explained in my Earlier blog here https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/stop-building-classroom-and-focus-on-wellbeing-buildings-and-more-laboratories/

) to sustain and nurture new opportunities in products and services that align us with environment.

Innovation typically precedes strategic decisions and by redefining academy as part of economic growth of any country we will be in a position to create new opportunities and new possibilities.

Here is the game plan for introducing a new paradigm that I call ‘Economic sustenance by redefining academics’.

1. The boundaries, language and legal matters that identify universities , colleges , schools and all educational related institutes needs to be redefined with an eye on tapping the vast pools of raw talents of students(knowledge and skills gatherers) , Research scholars, professors by orienting their academic activities on creating new opportunities.
2. There is a huge effort by government in attracting major industries to invest in their respective states. Some of those industries in areas such as Machine learning, Chip designing, Artificial intelligence, Gene mapping, anti-aging (example: Google Calico project collaborating with Drug maker Abvie https://www.calicolabs.com/ ) have to spend money in establishing research laboratories. Instead Universities and colleges should be tapped and allowed to participate in government’s activities in this kind of initiatives to map the academy’s internal resources, knowledge, skills and infrastructure required by industry and actively engaged. This allows Faculty, students to learn corporate best practices and become valuable contributors to the economic prosperity of the institutes and helps industry with lowering their costs of establishing new laboratories.
3. State and Federal (central) governments spends a lot of money on infrastructure development projects such as building dams, roads, mining (example sand, minerals etc. ) , smart cities and many such activities by floating tenders and inviting private industry to take up the projects.  Most of the projects are not implemented as designed due to various reasons such as corruption, poor usage of manpower, materials and plethora of issues. Academy and students should be allowed to become part of the project’s stakeholders which helps students, faculty to learn vital project management and people’s skills and earn some money for the institutes. Some of the major project delays, poor quality, and corruption activities can be eliminated as students and academy’s interests will be more in implementing quality and good practices in the projects.
4. The whole academic nomenclature, infrastructure needs to be redesigned to make them part of this new economic model by mapping the raw talents of the students , expertise of faculty and connecting them to industry needs.
5. Government should act as facilitator by allowing academy/private participation in projects implemented at state and country wide.

Universities, colleges and Education isn’t here to make us feel comfortable.  The intention, practices and the language is to make students feel excited and raring to go and find the truth and enlightenment. Academic institute in their pure form should be bringing energy, efficiency, bliss and completeness and fulfilment while actively engaging the raw talents of the students.

Want to add your thoughts and feedback. Please do so by commenting.

Stop building classrooms and focus on Wellbeing buildings and more Laboratories.

There is a lot of traction in imparting education using Massive Online Open Courseware (MOOC) where students can pick and choose what they like to learn. Today all top universities and colleges offer a wide range of subjects and also enable students to practice what they learn by making them to complete live projects.

As MOOC gained Momentum it erased the boundaries that only universities can impart education. Today we can see top companies such as Google, IBM , Ted Education, YouTube education , khan academy , Microsoft, Cisco to name a few who are  conducting professional courses that are aligned to what companies are expecting from fresh graduates when they join the corporate.

There are also wide range of offerings for students to pick up skills online for building products such as raspberry Pi projects  https://www.raspberrypi.org/resources/make/  Makezine  projects https://makezine.com/   , Projects made from Arduino chips https://playground.arduino.cc/Projects/Ideas to name a few examples.

One of my JNTUK petroleum engineering student even shared his practical experiences via blog here https://geethakrishnablog.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/fdp-an-experience/

All these events  point towards one trend which is that present and future belongs to learning whatever we want by just having high speed internet connection and knowing exactly what skills we want to acquire that makes us valuable and just join a course.

While technology is reshaping education and enabling students to acquiring most wanted skills on one hand, universities, colleges, schools, both private and public are investing massive amounts of money building classrooms.

All these empty classrooms will eventually become a burden on the sustainability of colleges and universities as they move their classrooms to online. What stays relevant is only labs that allow students to practice what they learn online.

There is still hope for those who have massive investment in Buildings and for those who are in the middle of building more educational institutes. Here is my suggestions for those to consider.

1. There is a need to redefine the language of academics in order to create new possibilities and new way of positioning colleges and universities on a sustainable path.
2. First and foremost re position universities and colleges as Wellbeing centres of Excellence.
3. Those who are investing in building schools and colleges should construct more laboratories for students to do experiments needed in areas such as Artificial intelligence, Robots, IOT (Internet of things) , Bio technology , Bio Mimicry projects etc.
4. Instead of classrooms, Universities, colleges and schools should focus on building Pyramid structures for Meditation  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_power , acquiring knowledge in Siddhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi  , learning Yoga  so as technology takes over our jobs people will have to invent and create new products and services that need extra ordinary capabilities that can be achieved with a high level of meditation, yoga and siddhi
5. Universities and colleges should also build world class sports trainings facilities, yoga and meditation centres. These efforts will sustain them long term profitably as citizens, sportsmen and people who wants to conduct experiments can use the facilities for a fee and overall this will be a win-win situation as universities and colleges playing a vital role in keeping the citizen healthy and spiritually rich and also playgrounds for inventions , scientific discoveries and Research.
6. The boundaries between academics and business should be erased. Faculty should consider themselves as corporate executives and they have a role in developing new products and services just like any company does but one difference is that their focus should be towards wellbeing of the societies and environment friendly. The next big business opportunity comes from rebuilding environmentally friendly products and services.

Please enrich this article with your thoughts as Comments. Thanks for reading

Associating Belief systems and cultural practices to Academics

From childhood some common rituals, practices, beliefs are hard wired into our brains. Some of these practices are beyond the proof of science. Even those with extra ordinary capabilities in science and technology follow certain ceremonies that are still beyond the reach of human cognition. One such phenomenon is seeking blessings from God before a launch of satellite or starting a major and complex projects spanning across the globe.

When we are suffering we look for solace in practices that cannot be proven by science and we take great pains to seek the blessings or visit far off crowded religious places to just get the blessings we need. Come Rain or Shine we are so determined to follow the rituals.

When we look this from a scientific angle we see the best human characters such as determination, focus, will to overcome obstacles, patience and all those best practices that can make anyone highly successful if same are followed in academics or career.

A major effort is going on in reforming education system across the globe. To name a few prominent personalities in educational reform are Bill gates  https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2010/04/12-Foundations-Commit-to-Education-Innovation-with-US-Department-of-Education

, Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/  , Facebook Zuckerberg https://chanzuckerberg.com/ ,  Indian Government sponsored national skills development programs  http://nsfindia.org/,  Massive Online Open courseware (MOOC) programs  and the list goes on.  If we search online we can find organizations, corporate houses, foundations all working to reform education system.

I felt everyone is missing the last mile effort in their Noble intentions of reaching out to every kid on the planet. That is creating curiosity, love, blind faith, solace and all those characteristics that I described above which we follow without questioning when it comes to religion, culture, heritage and whatnot other than scientifically proven methods.

What I wish to bring to attention to all those great pioneers of educational reforms is to align their process, practices and subject matter to bring the same extra ordinary characteristics we show when it comes to all the practices I mentioned above into academics and corporate best practices.

A great research is needed on deeper understanding of how even a very common person exhibits extra ordinary human characters when it comes to religious practices, cultural and belief systems. That insights should then be ingrained in to our educational practices.

Also I think by aligning our education system, syllabus, skill enhancement programs to spirituality and to harmonious living with nature, will bring extra ordinary success not just in making our children the best but also saving our planet from disintegration because of our behaviour and practices till date that will lead us just to destruction.

It is time that we align our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education more in tune to Nature’s way of handling the Planet’s resources. Our living standards should not be measured by materialistic gadgets we have but how well we are integrated with the nature around us and how well our gadgets are aligned to nature.

What do you think?  Complement and enrich this thought process with your comments and suggestions please.

Indian University rankings

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. The methodology draws from the overall recommendations broad understanding arrived at by a Core Committee set up by MHRD, to identify the broad parameters for ranking various universities and institutions. The parameters broadly cover “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and “Perception”.

India Rankings – 2016 based on this framework were released on 4th April 2016.

Know more here.

https://www.nirfindia.org/univ

Universities that did not register can do it now by clicking the below link

http://nirfweb.cloudapp.net/Registrationnew.aspx

To know more about my professional work   click here http://skillsnest.com/

Reverse engineering Resume

I was helping one of my master students with his resume preparation and felt that I should write a blog on how job candidates should make their resume appealing from an employer’s perspective.

Before you start your resume you should put your imagination to work. You should think you are the recruiter and interviewing a candidate. What answer are you expecting from the candidate. As recruiter you will ask questions to the candidate as follows

Why are your skills right for this position?

Tell us more about your last job?

How are you going to add value?

What is your work ethic?

Tell us three adjectives that would describe your attitude?

What about your weaknesses?

Why should you matter to us?

Where do you want to eventually live and settle?

Where else are you looking and why do we stand out in your set of choices?

Are there any reasons why you would not take this job if it were offered?

I have written a book “Interview questions with answers” which have 80 more questions with answers so that all branches of engineering and MBA candidates can use it to prepare their Resume.

When you are reading the questions your mind also thinks of what answer you expect from a candidate.

Now let’s take one question from the above “ Why are your skills right for this position? “

Depending on job requirements you can have variety of answers for the above questions. 

Let’s assume the position is a Software engineer and expected skills are soft skills , Java, web and mobile technologies. …

One answer is : “My skills of java code will enable a process and quality improvement,  if implemented in a manufacturing firm production facilities”

 

If a Mechanical engineer has to answer the above question he/she can  consider this sample answer: “my deep understanding of engine technologies (let’s say hyrdolics )  made me to come up with new engine improvement ideas that would be helpful to the company and my knowledge of software coupled with Domain knowledge makes me productive right away “

Look at the answers I wrote. These answers enables you to understand whether your skills and subject knowledge is enough to meet the expectations of the recruiter. In your skills and abilities section of resume you can put exactly what kind of end results you can provide by using your java or whatever you learnt. . By clearly reverse engineering the end results of your training’s and skills you can put the same in your resume and your resume stands out from other candidates very well.

By answering other questions that matches your skills and abilities you can make a resume with end results in mind to clearly mention the benefits you can provide for a recruiter.

If you want more advice you can contact me.. Happy job hunting…

 

 

 

 

The art of leading life.

“Time, not money, is the most valuable commodity of all”

We have proven track record of achieving extraordinary success in things, projects or big goals that we never imagine we can do it. Belief in attempting things that are beyond our imagination and achieving them enriches our lives with fulfilment and many times makes us famous and rich. “Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible”.--Albert Einstein Theoretical Physicist, Philosopher, Nobel Prize Winner

We are living in a very competitive era and we all have onus of making some impact with our way of living life on ourselves and the community around us. We should develop the habit of liking to be challenged, stay self-motivated in spite of negative pressures on us; take big challenges and try our best to accomplish them and people will start noticing you. There is a need for every one of us to make a difference in whatever we attempt to do.

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self”. —Aldous Huxley Novelist

We are known from what we achieve.  But our achievements have a shelf life. That means we cannot just stop improving ourselves and impacting others as role models.  World moves dynamically and age, values, knowledge, experiences are constantly progressing and where we stand is what matters. Taking risks and learning from setbacks and moving forward are the only way to stay relevant in this world. There are problems small to complex that needs to be solved and we have the capability of solving many of them.

Some examples are “Genetic sequencing of human genes that help in target medication for individuals instead of generalized prescriptions”.  Similarly we have global warming challenges to solve. We have challenges to reach Mars, Venus and colonize Moon. Our imagination is what matters the most.

There are people who are able to achieve some extraordinary feats such as  mimic human behaviors, experiences and creativity by using some complex machine learning techniques, Mathematical algorithms such as K-nearest neighbor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-nearest_neighbors_algorithm ) to analyze music , predict Hollywood movies whether they will be hits or flops even before starting on the projects ( http://www.epagogix.com/ ) and finally computers creating music (we don’t need music directors anymore)  http://geb.uma.es/melomics/melomics.html

But for a beginner in life like young students there is ample opportunity for you to start building your life and leading on the edge of achieving some extra ordinary things. Here are some basic principles of achieving some extra ordinary things.

1. Ignore the Noise. Once you firm up your mind and motivate yourselves to start working for great achievements you will find naysayers around you all the time. They will try to pull you down. Just ignore them and slowly and steadily start building knowledge and experiences in what you really want to achieve that is beyond your imagination.

Do remember “It is not who is Right but what is Right” matters.

2. Have clear objective. Start reading/learning diversified information. Today world needs people who are deep in one knowledge area but also very good in every subject matter that is not related to their fields. I wrote a blog on this https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/chance-favors-the-connected-mind/

3. Stay focused: As you continue your journey of achieving great goals you may be distracted         by many events, circumstances, constraints, family pressures and many unknown   factors.            Coming back on track is very important. Doing regular Yoga and Meditation will help you to             regain focus.

                          “Innovation is rewarded, execution is worshiped.”

4. Develop patience. Today digitally connected and instant gratification world is making young students to be restless and expecting instant results. But in order to achieve great things you have to be patient enough and continue your journey until you reach your goals.

                “There is no limitations except those we create for ourselves” ―Lolly Daskal, Thoughts Spoken From The Heart

5. Watch your progress: we all make judgmental mistakes and sometimes it may be that we may choose a wrong direction. So occasionally checking where we stand in our achievements should be monitored and measured. Otherwise all our efforts may be ultimately futile .

 

6. Not able to accept failure: We should never become possessive of our tasks, work or people we work with. Sometimes if things won’t work out we should be able to ignore our failures and continue on a new path. Possessiveness makes us Sad and creates mental distress and other health problems. I wrote a blog on this subject here https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/failure-is-not-final/

            “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail”                   .– Ralph Waldo Emerson Philosopher, Poet, Author, Essayist

7. Question your acts: You should constantly ask why you are doing something in a                        particular fashion. By questioning your way of doing you will get a chance to do it much                better.  I wrote a blog on this

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/where-there-is-a-why-there-is-a-way/

                  “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,                                 something to love, and something to hope for”.–Joseph Addison English                               Essayist, Poet, Playwright And Politician.

Good luck to you.

“Change yourselves and the world is a better place with You” –RK  This is my quote for you.

Classroom learning with Concert of Technology

While we are learning courses online at Udacity (https://www.udacity.com/  ) and Coursera (http://www.coursera.org/ ),  we are supposed to be actively communicating with fellow students and the course  teams under the discussion forums. During the recent course I took this March 2014, I found out in one of the discussion forum that 10 to 13 year old students are also participating in learning management courses. Technology is allowing individuals of any age, to learn what they want and when they want. It is now possible to individualize instructions in the same way as teachers do to their pupil.

I felt that there is an opportunity to bring my corporate best practices and technology knowledge to schools where the foundation for future behavior of the students gets established.  Smart use of software can help to a large extent to transform school’s methods of teaching but this movement of redesigning classrooms to modern learning experiences needs commitment and a change in mind set  of the  authorities, teachers, parents and students of various schools.  It is a transformation for the school’s management, teachers and all the stake holders.

Education is transforming. But the way education is viewed by our younger generation is troubling. Students stay uninspired and less motivated to learn. Students prefer studies only for getting good marks.Teachers are less motivated to go beyond their comfort zones to experiment new ways of teachings.

STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math)   are necessary for students to help make their countries competitive and them to be employable.  The attitude of just studying for exams/marks is affecting the quality of students’ knowledge and job readiness. Students should move away from subject memorization to training focusing on skills in order to match what modern companies and society is looking for.

Since I worked and lived in the US for several years, I started checking the happenings in the US where STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math)   are given top priority. I found that their national science foundation is pretty serious about reforming education and even private companies are pumping millions of dollars into reforming education.  Their schools are equipped with modern technology tools and software for teaching and by 2019, industry analysts predicts that high school students will take half of their courses online.

Companies like Intel Corporation, Facebook, IBM have given Billions of dollars for reforming education sector.

Companies like Microsoft in collaboration with others are bringing learning experience to millions of children across the globe. More on this here http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/serving-communities/education/

Many schools in the US are adopting technology practices as their way of teaching. Some examples of schools which are forefront in using   technology to their benefit are as below

https://www.altschool.com/

http://www.minervaproject.com/

Even schools in my place (India , Rajahmundry) are pretty enthusiastic in adopting technologies, games, yoga, field trips etc  for students. But what I felt is that they are doing it more for marketing purposes  and more ad hoc  than a continues improvement process to transform the schools best practices, to be  sustainable and result oriented.

Here is what I think should be adopted by schools in shaping our students’ learning experiences, all round growth and the progress of the country’s youth to a sophisticated living with best practices for a better life in this digital century. Remember Technology is not the solution but it is a powerful tool in transforming the nation’s kids to be smart. 

First let’s separate school (Teachers, class rooms, labs and other infrastructure) and learning.

School: Children are the goal of any school.

There is a strong need for bringing some standards of how teaching is delivered irrespective of who the teacher is.  Every teacher is having his/her own style of teaching but there is a need for some guidelines of best practices so that students don’t feel uncomfortable with every new teacher that replaces earlier teacher.

Schools need to teach a new set of skills that go beyond the classroom syllabus. Modern work practices , daily life and cultural transformation of societies makes it mandatory that kids are taught spirituality, leadership skills, Reasoning capabilities, healthy lifestyles, scientific analysis, presentation skills,  yoga and meditation.

School should focus more on creating lab experiences for children (learning by doing) and based on the syllabus (state or CBSE) they should entertain students to make things in the lab. Syllabus should not be taught chapter after chapter but a holistic look at the content should be considered and  school should plan teaching subjects with all connected content so that students will get to know the big picture of the subject matter.

By teaching for many years teachers become comfortable and good at what they are teaching. But they should realize that world is moving at rapid pace and technology is changing how we live and work. There is a need to demystify technology to help them get to know how their subject knowledge is used by corporate and society and guide them to learn from fellow teachers from across the globe.

“We should not just teach what we know. we should always learn something new to teach our younger generation”.

Examples:    http://betterlesson.com/    http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/     http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/    http://peeragogy.org/

http://www.mathalicious.com/lessons   http://www.kickboardforteachers.com/  http://voxy.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/hardest-languages-infographic/

Management of schools should have innovative mind set and should be ready to experiment and invite industry experts for advice in changing how they function. They should not maintain the status Quo.

Students should be encouraged to participate in global challenges to solve some of the world’s problems , that makes them realize the opportunities that exist later in their career planning. http://www.minervaproject.com/

http://www.wecanchange.com/

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/education/competitions/international-science-and-engineering-fair.html

http://www.coursolve.org/

Students should be encouraged to look around for problems in their own  town/city/villages are facing and should be encouraged to solve them.

Example : http://www.notimpossiblelabs.com/#!about/c15vq

Teachers should help children the ability to find the information/knowledge kids need by cultivating analytic skills, curiosity and research skills.

Teachers should encourage kids to ask many questions. Their curiosity leads them to stay creative but many teachers quickly usher kids to stop asking. It’s an unfortunate habit and it’s one that threatens  creativity and innovation skills of the kid.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children’s_use_of_information

School management should not become complacent with their best practices because we are in a state of constant change across all fields of knowledge, practices and lifestyles. Today’s best practices become redundant within few months so it is better to stay agile and review their position.

Learning:  We live in a very dynamic world where information is rapidly changing. It is unrealistic to rely solely on text book for teaching kids. The text book can best serve as direction for planning syllabus completion for the academic year

Modern technology resources are available to reach out to what we want to learn and when we want to learn due to ubiquitous presence of internet facilities across all tech gadgets we use. School management should review what resources can be deployed for better learning experiences for teachers and students.

Some examples of resources available for Schools that won’t cost lot’s of money but keep them on the cutting edge teaching methods are as follows

https://www.remind101.com/  A safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents. Free.

http://www.google.com/edu/apps/#how-it-works  Helps in assignments and other teaching resources.

Moodle : https://moodle.org/  A Complete education portel for teaching, assignments, quizzes and other cool stuff.

http://www.vincigenius.com/

There is a seismic changes happening in education sector. Companies like Google , IBM, Facebook are investing millions of dollars in reforming schools and developing cool technology tools and educational resources. Bill and Melinda gates foundation, governments, NGO’s and many enterprising individuals are reshaping school education. Schools should continuously monitor the trends and  adjust , align to modern best practices.

Example: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/05/06/google-developing-free-lms-as-part-of-apps-for-education.aspx

https://www.khanacademy.org/

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program/College-Ready-Education

Students should be made aware of what’s happening in other parts of the country and globally and they should be encouraged to connect with fellow students from across the globe for exchanging best practices of learning not just subject matter but also cultural differences and lifestyles of that country.

Example : http://www.newschools.org/venture/school-of-one

Schools should develop a framework of higher order thinking and skills enhancements while teaching kids.

Example of higher order thinking while a subject is taught by the teacher is as follows.

Type of thinking Encouraged	Questions Posed
Memory	Who invented Mobile Phone ? (Martin cooper)
Convergent thinking	How has Mobile phones affected our daily lives?
Divergent thinking	If there are no Mobile phones how would history have been changed?
Evaluative thinking	What would you do when no mobile phone on earth works?

School assignments should help kids to discover and should be inquiry based drawing upon higher order thinking skills. Example Social studies. Ask students to play a role of a political leader and ask him/her  suggest some good policy matters that benefits millions of people.. Maths :  Using internet find 10 most innovative companies of the world, their products, their best practices and make a bar graph of the same.  Science: Design a useful product to a local merchant and demo it to them. Language: Read a book or analyse this article I wrote and put it as a comment.

Students should be taught time management skills. They should be able to allocate time for learning, yoga, meditation, sports and subject contents.

Parents should be made part of this whole process and should be engaged in all the efforts that schools is attempting,  to prepare their children for a digitally connected  world.

Ultimately I would say to school managements that “If you are not living on the edge you are  living in a crowded space of too many me too type schools”

You are all welcome to reach me thru your comments.

Thanks to kids from “Tennis Couching Centre” Rajahmundry for valuable feed back of their experiences and to the coach Laxman for the support.

Uncommon Sense and Common Nonsense

“What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

The above statement reminded me the struggle I’m going thru to convince that there is a greater need of modernizing education to prepare our young  students to the fast changing corporate needs. All that I see with students and the college managements are that they make sure the old “Status Quo” remains in spite of knowing how technology is shaping our daily lives and how influential it is in learning new skills.  I tried to categorize the problems in to the following segments to go deeper into the main problem and understand the core issues rather than come to conclusions/answers to the problem.

Economic: Colleges divert scarce money to activities such as functions, worthless seminars, meetings and other unproductive activities just to garner media attention with an intention of getting more admissions for the college or making sure their photos and news about them is printed. There is no mechanism in place to check the return on Investments of Seminars, meetings and press releases etc.

If this money is used in building laboratory’s students can make something useful to society. The quality of the outcome from the practicals in the Labs will bring repute to the college and that will make the college the most sought after for student admissions. The path to reputation of quality education/college is hard and most of the college managements take the easy routes of popular unproductive mechanism to sustain.  .

Students on their part should make sure they are getting skills and education they deserve for what they pay the colleges. After all they are the customers of the college. Instead most of them are influenced by cinema, media and other factors that divert their efforts, creativity, and energy to wrong issues that won’t help them to acquire skills, education, and knowledge to succeed and have good life for long time. They struggle after college to get into jobs they love.  Most depend on luck to get jobs but later repent the life of working on something that they do not like.

Functional: The class room teachings, planning of syllabus are most unscientific and still continue traditional way. Today’s awareness levels of students , their interests, their attitudes towards life, their learning abilities and the students attentions should be considered while planning the syllabus and the way a professor teaches their students. Universities and Colleges should make it mandatory for students to learn from “Massive Online Open Course ware (MOOC’s) taught by top professors from elite  universities of the world. University and colleges should grade on practical projects that students work on to  solve the problems faced by society.

Students on their part should allocate proper time to learning vital skills required for their career;  not for tests and marks. They should realize that there is vast difference between reel life (cinema type life) and real life and without putting some efforts they cannot get the skills they need to succeed. For their projects they should look at the challenges the nation faces and provide solutions in the form of their project submissions.

Students should be encouraged to take challenges posed by global philanthropic organizations such as Bill and Melinda gates foundation http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ , Hult prize (http://www.hultprizesix.com/)   and http://www.xprize.org/

I wrote an article “chance favours the connected Mind” to elaborate on how technology is reshaping what we learn and how we learn.click here to know more https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/chance-favors-the-connected-mind/

Access: Colleges lack modern class rooms with fast internet connections, practical labs and other teaching aids. This is again due to the wrong priorities of the colleges to divert funds to other areas which won’t help in bringing quality education and skills to students. Even traditional libraries are not attracting enough students to reading because they are not treating that as priority and just act as record keepers of books.

Today the need of the hour is more practical labs and less class rooms. Traditional Class rooms should be replaced with Online teaching and online lecture videos. 

Colleges also bring some eminent scholars for seminars or meetings but it just concludes within that day and follow up on the seminars outcomes are rarely followed subsequently by staff and students. Most of the managements are more interested in media news of the activities on the next day. That is the only follow up I keep seeing.

Students on their part seriously lack interest in reading and attending Seminars. They should develop reading and listening habits to learn new skills. They should realize that reading good books, listening to a professional  is time well spent.

Students should network with the professionals that come to college for subsequent relationship buildings and getting to know what industry is expecting from them.

Social:  Parents and society is influencing colleges/school to a large extent in shaping how these colleges/schools function. In schooling parents are expecting their kids to get the best marks rather than worrying what their siblings are learning. Most of the parents don’t care whether their siblings are having physical exercises, knowing the importance of yoga and meditation and getting the right knowledge and skills to succeed in life and career.

At college levels most of the parents are forcing their kids to join what they think is right for the students instead of knowing the interests of their kids.

There is a dire need of constructive role for parents and society to play in shaping how we educate our youth.

First Parents, tutors should learn the trends that are happening in Industry and in particular how education is changing due to MOOC. Parents and all concerned authorities, business leaders should  closely work with colleges and help/force colleges to deliver what they are supposed to. Colleges on their part should work closely with Industry and constantly upgrade the syllabus to meet the modern corporate requirements.

Equal importance should be given for sports, Yoga and Meditation because this are more important in today’s corporate lifestyle for a balanced, healthy life.

Students on their part should realize that they should give equal importance to learning and acquiring new skills to take on the challenges of modern industries. They should realize that they are not only shaping their destiny but the overall destiny of the country and the quality of living standards of society.

The whole world is becoming competitive and many are looking at India because we the only nation with maximum young population with average age of 26 years.  Here are some links related to our state of education in India.

http://forbesindia.com/article/briefing/primary-education-in-india-needs-a-fix/35287/1

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/world/asia/indian-universities-still-lag-behind-in-world-rankings.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/india-education-state-private-school

http://www.asercentre.org/Keywords/p/205.html

http://mhrd.gov.in/

http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/education/higher-education-in-india-how-it-looks-and-where-does-it-stand.html

http://www.norrag.org/es/publications/boletin-norrag/online-version/a-world-of-reports-a-critical-review-of-global-development-reports-with-an-angle-on-education-and-training/detail/india-ranked-at-105-in-the-education-for-all-development-index.html

So my pursuit of bringing this kind of awareness will continue  to convince the college/school management and parents about the seismic shifts in imparting education to meet the modern society’s challenges. The most uncommon Sense of changing dynamics of education and skills enhancement to meet modern industry requirements, needs lot of attention but the challenge to eliminate  Common Nonsense of today’s educational institutes and students attitudes towards learning is a big challenge and i’m hoping to hear from you what we can do together. Comments are  much appreciated. Thanks

Measure your happiness, How your face looks at 60?

We all want to be Happy. Do you agree? Then read this and it will make you happy.

In this digitally connected world we are  becoming heavily busy and miss the opportunity to analyze and introspect ourselves and  what makes us happy .  Most of us are so busy checking our emails, socializing with friends on Facebook , twitter and other sites, spending time in movie halls or working towards our goals and don’t have time to take a snapshot of day’s events and judge how we reacted to each event or situation that happens to us during the day.

We have a choice to be reactive or be creative,  but most of the time we spend days, months and years in a reactive mode by attending to our daily chores. We don’t think much about the routine we perform everyday and get used to the daily grind. Due to that we slowly stop thinking that things can be done in a much better way and our day can be more productive by questioning our daily routine and how we perform it. We just need to become more creative and focus on improving our daily routine. The net result of improving our quality of life leads to some spare time so that we can use the same  to reflect inwards and check what actions, incidents and events during the day makes us Happy and which ones makes us Sad. By introspecting about our selves deeply,  helps us to improve our happiness levels for the rest of the life.

We have technology to assists us to monitor our day’s events, happenings , our moods and experiences towards such events and happenings. By tracking our everyday living we can get rid of things that makes us Sad or ignorant and improve and strengthen our practices that makes us Happy. Introspecting and self analysis of our behaviors helps us tremendously in improving our mental abilities and physical fitness.  Make sure you spare an hour everyday before sleep to analyze the day’s events and how you reacted.  Which action of yours made you feel happy , helped in enriching you and which one is neutral and which one made you Sad. By doing that everyday you will start finding a pattern about how well you are shaping your life.  Remember the saying

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” -Charles Swindoll

In order to help you monitor your day i’m giving you the links of some great self  data mining tools. Enjoy and remember that you can always have a “better life with best practices ” (Skillsnest tag line) and  a quote from Ben frankling to motivate you for a good life.    “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” -Ben Franklin

https://www.rescuetime.com/signup/solo/lite

http://runkeeper.com/  to measure how many calories you burnt during your workout

http://www.realidata.com/cgi-bin/rTracker/iPhone/rTracker-main.pl

http://www.quantified-mind.com/

http://quantifiedself.com/2013/07/ashish-mukharji-on-three-years-of-tracking-happiness/

http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/

http://quantifiedself.com/2013/04/konstantin-augemberg-on-tracking-happiness/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOETUvaOxDA&feature=youtu.be

http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/07/how-daydreaming-can-help-you-pay-attention/

Want to know how you look when you are old?

You can also make your choices to be happy as you grow older. But no one gives a serious thought about aging until we reach a stage where the symptoms of oldness shows up in the form of body becoming weak and vulnerable to diseases.  There are websites that would show you how you look when you are 60 or how many calories you will gain in the future with your present life styles etc.

Click here to know how you will look at age 60 and beyond http://faceretirement.merrilledge.com/

http://www.futureme.org/

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

As you build your career you may want the world to know about you and your experiences , skills and expertise. There are couple of good websites that allow you to promote your selves such as follows

http://www.expertfile.com/

https://about.me/

http://zerply.com/about

Building self confidence

Self confidence was not something that people are born with. Developing self confidence takes time and effort and yes, it is well worth the effort.

In my case, building self confidence was a gradual process. No matter how old or experienced we get, developing confidence is something that you should never stop doing. One of the things I found helpful was to step outside of my comfort zone. Comfort zone means that you are not trying anything new.

I realized early in my life that I need to be fluent in speaking English and be able to communicate well with others. One of the habits I developed was reading the news paper. That helped me to learn new words in English but I was thinking how to use that advantage to speak well with others in English.  So between friends we started a training institute to give tuitions to school children and intermediate students with nominal fees to cover our expenses. But for the first time I was facing audience. I was nervous and first few days I could not speak well. But as days passed by I became comfortable with students and was able to speak and on the way learnt more words in English. That is the fist step in building self confidence.

Then came the job offer. Now I have to face experts and I’m back to nervousness. I then asked my friends whether they can do mock interviews for me and ask whatever they like to and I answer them. I got good practice but on the day of interview I was still nervous and hoping to take control of myself. As I walked in, there are around 10 to 12 experts sitting in a big hall. The moment I saw them all my practice and confidence nosedived and I was very nervous. Fortunately the team was very comforting and helpful. I think most of the interviewers know our situations. As the questions rolled out from their mouths my nervousness become less and less. By the time I’m done with interview I was confident and smiling. I got the job too.

I continued my pursuit of  reading and mastering new things every day. That helped me to get a job in US of A  and I went to US and worked with some of the smartest people on the planet. I learned a lot and I keep learning every day from all situations and all kinds of people. Confidence increases if you know the subject well. So never stop learning in your life whether you are young or old. It keeps your mind healthy.

The trick was to start small and then keep challenging myself  and step outside my comfort zone on a regular basis.

Don’t be afraid to take on a new task when asked by your manager or professors at college or your parents or anybody. Turn it into a challenge and keep thinking in the back of your mind that this is just another method in building your self confidence and learning new things. Use modern tools and methods to accomplish your work in a much better way. Don’t  just stop with first solution for a problem  but try to look at the problems from different perspectives. You will be surprised to know how many ways a problem can be solved and that gives more confidence to you.

Don’t expect to gain a massive amount of confidence in one day. It’s a gradual process. It took me years. More challenges and opportunities you are faced with, the easier it will all become to become confident. Be careful though, not to mix up self confidence with being over confident. They are two different things. Don’t have unrealistic expectations of you either. Take one step at a time and build on it. Building self confidence comes from a person’s desire for self-development, accomplishments and achievements. And yes, the rewards are so worth it and I’m one example for you to learn first hand what wonders self confidence can do. Want to learn more then email me.

Free Online courses from MIT, Harvard and others

Education is evolving rapidly and traditional methods of attending classes are replaced by online courses. There is a need for students to take advantage of attending these courses offered by some of the world’s top universities from across the world.

According to a New York Times article Harvard and MIT are joining hands to offer free massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as they are known, called edX.  edX will offer 5 courses for free to students . Courses will be in engineering and humanities.  Those who complete the course will get a Certificate of Mastery and Grade.  More details can be obtained here http://www.edxonline.org/

Meanwhile at another company called Udacity   http://www.udacity.com/ 20,000 students are taking online course on six subjects.

Not only Harvard and MIT are in the race to offer free online classes but universities such as Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new commercial company,  Coursera  to offer online courses to students. https://www.coursera.org/

Coursera also offers free humanities courses . https://www.coursera.org/courses

Online education can affect local universities badly if they don’t reform their primitive way of imparting education to students. Technology is rapidly influencing everything and traditional Indian Universities are still lagging way behind in restructuring their courses, modernizing their labs, teaching methodologies to a generation of digital students who will soon abandon going to traditional colleges and adopt online courses which are mostly offered for free.

“Projects like this can impact lives around the world, for the next billion students from China and India,” said George Siemens, a MOOC pioneer who teaches at Athabasca University, a publicly supported online Canadian university.

“Online education is here to stay, and it’s only going to get better,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, a past president of Tufts who is a member of the Harvard Corporation.

Above are mentioned in New York times article.

More about online courses please click the links below

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/free-education-from-mit-princeton-or-stanford/

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/grass-root-student-to-global-standards/

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/education-at-your-door-step/

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/stanford-university-offering-free-online-courses-anybody-can-enroll/

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/learn-anything-free/

https://skillsnest.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/internet-resources-and-opportunities/

http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/barriers-adoption-online-learning-systems-us-higher-education

Talent cannot be hidden

I was reading a telugu news paper and came across an article mentioning about Geetham students going to NASA to  build a device to mine special materials from Moon surface. I felt very happy and pleased to know that in the world of Facebook, twitter , movie culture there are students who are working towards reaching outstanding goals in their life and in turn raising the nations talent levels. MY best wishes will always be with them. I know we have many hidden gems in our student community with brilliant ideas. In the form of supporting them  i strive to bring some of the best from across the world to enrich students thru this blogs’. This blog is to let you all know that Intel conducts  science talent every year. I’m pleased to say that the first prize this time went to 17 year old Nitin Tumma for doing research on breast cancer. Here  is the link

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/03/13/teenager-unlocks-potential-pathways-for-breast-cancer-treatments-wins-intel-science-talent-search

“Intel is committed to supporting math and science innovation across all levels of education. The Intel Science Talent Search is just one example of Intel’s support of education at the high school level” More here  http://www.societyforscience.org/

Many Indian students achieve first positions in several competitions ranging from science , maths to spelling bee across the globe. we have students from rural villages in India  with hardly any support or infrastructure becoming IAS officers to holding top ranking positions.  Hard work, focus and sincere efforts to master the subject will always make you achieve great . If you are reading this Hope will be getting inspiration from this success stories and you will reach greater heights too. Let’s build this nation to be top destination of the world.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success” -Henry Ford.

Some websites that help in supporting rural innovations are here http://www.nif.org.in/

http://www.hotteststartups.in/

http://www.deshpandefoundation.org/

Grass root Student to Global standards

The national science foundation predicts that mastery in one of the   STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math)   is necessary for students to make countries competitive and them to be employable. Education is transforming but the way education is viewed by our younger generation is troubling. Students/ Parents worry only about getting good marks. The attitude of just studying for exams is affecting the quality of students’ knowledge and job readiness.  The time to adjust to corporates best methods, use of technologies, tools and methods is affecting the overall efficiency of companies and in the long run affecting many up and coming companies to compete in global environment. The image of poor employee standards affects business so much that many companies with high growth potential cannot grow beyond  the boundaries of their own state many times to expand business. Even i’m not able to grow my company too due to lack of good software guys with domain expertise. Education become a major   central, front and back issue for talent hungry companies.  Education is the key for students to become highly successful in career and also for country to be competitive.

Universities, colleges are still promoting   education which won’t meet the rapid, innovative and agile corporation’s needs that constantly upgrade their employee’s skills to stay relevant in business.  Students become uninspired and don’t believe in hard work anymore. Teachers less motivated.  Universities, colleges focus on survival.  clcik here to know more http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_stu_att_fin_sch_bor-student-attitude-find-school-boring

Companies find it hard to get the Young talent they need. This has made major corporations to see this as a business opportunity and entering in to education sector in a big way. World bank is providing $500 million interest free loan to Indian government to promote quality education in Indian schools.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/world-bank-offers-500-million-loan-education-india-120005484.html

Indian Government is  promoting $12.9 billion programme thru Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) http://www.indg.in/primary-education/policiesandschemes/rashtriya-madhyamik-shiksha-abhiyan-rmsa  .

The national board of accreditation http://www.nba-aicte.ernet.in/teqip.htm is trying to make technical education relevant and dynamic and aligned to industry needs

India is bidding to get a permanent seat on prestigious Washington accord for international accreditation of Indian technical educations. This is particularly a good news for BTech engineering students since it allows them to get overseas jobs easily and can eassily study in foreign universities.  More about Washington accord here http://www.washingtonaccord.org/

More about this news here http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/services/education/soon-indian-btech-degrees-may-be-recognized-abroad/articleshow/12420543.cms

Intel Corporation, Facebook, IBM like companies have given Billions of dollars for reforming education sector.  Money cannot transform the practices, mind set and how education is taught in the classroom. Money can give the required infrastructure but it cannot give the skills to be a good employee. It cannot give technical expertise or intellectual capital strength. Studies should move away from subject memorization to skills focussed trainings to match what companies are looking for. My prediction is that Online education and skills certifications given by companies become more relevant and acceptable for employment than a collage degree if students don’t pay attention to learning and college courses are not aligned to what industry needs.

Companies like Microsoft with collaboration with others are brining learning experience to millions of children across the globe. According to a report from FC  “products like Office 2010 and Kinect for Xbox 360 that help bring education alive for kids, the company also partners with hundreds of NGOs around the world to help young people gain access to the tools they need in order to realize their full potential. Thus far Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program has channelled $500 million toward education systems around the world, reaching more than 196 million teachers and students in 114 countries.”

More on this here http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/serving-communities/education/

Microsoft Imagine cup encourages students to solve world’s toughest problems.

http://www.imaginecup.com/   and https://www.dreamspark.com/

Microsoft employees are encouraged to go and teach in schools and colleges under Technology Education and Literacy in Schools scheme. More here http://tealsk12.org/

When I came back from US I was interested to do something to our student community. I have seen many instances of money given to institutes or colleges not giving the results I expected. So I decided to volunteer myself to teaching   and to enrich their skills thru my blogs. I constantly upgrade my knowledge of what companies look for in students and try my best to transfer that knowledge to them.  Not many students read blogs nor i get a chance to go to every college  but I’m hoping that students will realize that their involvement is what will shape their career and this country’s future. My contribution to my country’s young is  to do my best to bring grass root student to global employee standards.

Free education from MIT, Princeton or stanford

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is launching a online diploma courses under a new name called MIT.x  free of charge to anyone interested. Traditional education is becoming expensive and needs students to leave their native place in search of higher education. Technology is changing the game in such a rapid form and many   universities, colleges are forced to adapt to new way of teaching with less cost to students.  Many online courses are already available but there is a fee to be paid to get a certificate from reputed universities. MIT plans to teach free education online with a MIT certificate sent to you on successfully completing the course. Here is the link for more information.  http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219.html

Already academic earth (http://academicearth.org/) is bringing education to masses thru online courses from universities like Princeton and Stanford and will be giving strong competition to MIT .

For those who want to know which university is good in US,  Kiplinger finance has come up with a list of 200 Best universities. Each year, Kiplinger’s assesses quality, cost of education  , the percentage of students who are admitted out of those who applied, the test scores of incoming students, the ratio of students to faculty members, and the four- and five-year graduation rates. Check for more details here http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges/

With  khanacademy (http://www.khanacademy.org/)   and youtube education (http://www.youtube.com/education)   , singularity university http://singularityu.org/  and flatworldknowledge http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/ there are plenty of opportunities for students and those who are interested to get a diploma or degree to pursue or learn a subject matter for free from some of the best professors and teachers online.

Live Projects, Lab experiments at your door steps

Imagine the millions of students that go to school/colleges with no good infrastructure  or labs for doing lab Projects There are so many schools/colleges  across India that cannot provide Lab experiments to the students. In order to make education relevant to present society needs and fun a new approach to student learning and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is taken up by HP thru its social innovation project called catalyst initiative http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/social-innovation/catalyst.html . HP is building next generation citizens to tackle the planets most pressing problems thru science and technology in the areas of health, entrepreneurship, community and education. Students are working on some of the complex problems such as purification of sea water etc.   There are 250,000 students from the most rural villages from across the globe who are participating in the projects that HP enables. HP collaborates with local establishments such as Agatsya International foundation http://www.agastya.org/   in India to make it happen. The idea is to break down all the barriers between countries, secondary and college education, universities and NGO’s by collaborating with people from across the globe to solve the most pressing problems, engage young minds (students) in learning and problem solving without any limitations. Imagine a rural student who wants to conduct a science lab experiment or live project using MIT and University of Queensland in Australia faculty help and infrastructure.  He / She can do that thru HP catalyst or Agatsya foundation. Agatsya a partner of HP catalyst are using 62 mobile science vans that go to rural villages to allow students to run science experiments. They have 28 rural science centers, and 170 acre creativity lab campus. As of today Agatsya reaches to 4 million students, 150,000 teachers in India and is supported by Indian institute of Science, Defense Research and Development Organization and Tata institute of Fundamental Research.  HP is supported by World economic forums, global education initiative and OECD.  Find more details by clicking on the links

http://www.agastya.org/

http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/ourmeetings/2011/default.asp

http://www.iste.org/welcome.aspx

http://www.ewf2011.org/

http://www.weforum.org/videos/global-education-initiative

I made this easy for you to know.

http://www.iearn.org/country/iearn-india
iEARN (International Education and Resource Network)
iEARN is a non-profit organization made up of over 30,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 130 countries. iEARN empowers teachers and young people to work together online using the Internet and other new communications technologies. Over 2,000,000 students each day are engaged in collaborative project work worldwide.

http://mumbaivotes.com/  Don’t vote but Select.

We either vote to a party or a politician without knowing completely about his background and  whether he will serve the country honestly and sincerely.   Sometimes we skip elections completely because we feel that our vote is worthless since the candidates are either criminals or dishonest or unknown characters.

Once elected they become immune to performance reviews of what they accomplished while in power for the betterment of the citizens.

A student wants to change this all and he wants us to know before hand whom we are selecting not just voting. The idea is catching up and he is opening similar websites in bangalore , Delhi and other places. Let’s support his cause.

A similar website is http://praja.org/  Praja is a non-partisan organization. It was started in Mumbai in 1997 by a group of eight individuals whose vision was to re-establish accountability and transparency in governance.

http://www.icarewecare.org/

A 17 year old named Priyanka Jain launched a student run nonprofit called iCAREweCARE, which is dedicated to helping high school and college students identify causes they care about, find local organizations that address those problems, and then write about their experiences, or connect with their friends over them. There is a Web site, and Facebook connections for rapid and deep information sharing.

http://mycube.com/  Facebook makes ton’s of money on the content we share on it. But a new social website mycube wants to share money with whatever content, pictures, videos and other stuff you post. On MyCube, you can charge for access to the content you create–pictures, articles, videos, and so on–and you can charge “down to the cost of a cent,” says Staël von Holstein. “This is essential, because a lot of information on the Internet is worth cents, not dollars. Once you can start charging cents for articles, photos, and videos, and then have a lot of people reading,” you can start charging for that content. You can also choose to feature advertising instead of charging your MyCube followers/ friends/ customers.