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

The Impact of Automation on present Employees and young graduates

The anxiety of job loss is palpable for several employees from across the industries. Robots, Deep learning, Artificial intelligence has rapidly matured in taking care of most of the work performed by millions of Software engineers or white/blue collar workers.  Automotive and auto parts, electrical and electronic parts, business process outsourcing, textile, clothing and footwear  and retail are some of the industries that already are seeing loss of millions of jobs.

Most of the Banks, financial institutes, brokerage firms  will face closure due to rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin which will affect millions of graduates/MBA’s  wanting to work in financial sector.

There are driver less cars, deep machine learning techniques which can accurately predict diseases (Doctors are you reading this?) and provide medical advices are some examples of how deep the impact will be.

Modern machines, Robots, sensors, Software can now not only do manual routine tasks but also do work that requires cognitive intelligence.

As a result a highly trained radiologist or a specialized software engineer in a company is in danger of being replaced by a Computer software or a Robot that have the cognitive capabilities and can work consistently.

According to a World economic forum report “current trends could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labour market changes over the period 2015–2020, with a total loss of 7.1 million jobs—two thirds of which are concentrated in the Office and Administrative job family” Source:  http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf

Due to rapid and wide spread automation, AI, Deep learning and Robots replacing humans,  there will be no requirement of software engineers who are just specialists in any core technologies such as JAVA, Web or RDBMS. Rapid maturity of the above mentioned technologies will have the following impact on employment, present jobs and future jobs.

1. Around 56% of jobs in industries such as Logistics, Healthcare, banking, transportation etc. in areas HR, Services, deliveries, finance, IT,  middle management jobs (supervisors, managers, Software engineers, clerks, tax experts, bank clerks etc. ) are automated and employment in this areas will be dwindling rapidly.
2. Other areas of job loss will be are hotels and restaurants (80.7 per cent), wholesale and retail trade (77.5 per cent), construction (70.8 per cent) and manufacturing (61.6 per cent). Source : http://www.ilo.org/global/lang–en/index.htm

3. By year 2020 employees will be working with Robots and other intelligent machines as colleagues and they have to take orders from machines to fulfill the remaining work that is not already replaced by the machines.
4. There will be a situation in many companies, where humans will not be able to get jobs and only robots handle entire company operations. One such live example is Dyson’s automated Singapore plant where 55 robots do all the work that is done by 100’s of engineers. https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671939/dysons-80-million-new-factory-dedicated-to-its-most-unsung-invention
5. Infosys an Indian IT giant plans to embrace automation and artificial intelligence, besides other newer technologies. Post-automation of certain operations, Wipro is already in the process re skilling 4500 employees for new technologies.
6. Few and few companies will visit Universities and colleges for recruiting students (NO MORE CAMPUS Recruitment)  and there is no choice for universities and colleges but to rapidly adopt to changing business needs and adopt to new skills and teach students the same. Otherwise they will be producing huge numbers of Un employed youth that will have a cascading effect on industry and the country’s growth prospects.

Suggestions for Universities, educational institutes, Schools and other skills imparting institutes.

1. Employees, Students should have the mindset for New skills adaptation and they should always be willing to be learning constantly based on the business needs.
2. Change the ratio of teaching staff to include Industry experts in the proportion of 60% academic and 40% Industry experts in universities, colleges and schools and make faculty accountable of what skills they impart to students and reward only those who make students acceptable by industry.
3. Avoid recognizing Marks as the parameter of students success in academics and recognize and reward special skills , creativity shown by students. Allow industry experts to teach students ‘Creativity , innovation and change” and make it mandatory for students to prove they are learning this vital skills.
4. Eliminate class rooms and replace with Practical labs. Embrace online MOOC classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course  and make students to pass the courses designed by industry and academic experts.
5. Ask students to solve society’s or industry’s problems as part of school, college project submissions. Indian Government as part of engaging citizens has shared some challenges with rewards. Check details here https://www.mygov.in/  BTW i participate in some of the challenges.
6. Change syllabus to include what industry will be needing in coming years. Be Proactive in knowing the skills needed in next 5 to 10 years rather than reactive in teaching present skills needed.  There is a huge requirement for software and hardware security experts by 2020. A report from Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)2 found that the global cybersecurity workforce will have more than 1.5 million unfilled positions by 2020. But the security industry is a fast-growing market.  More details on this report is here. http://blog.isc2.org/isc2_blog/2015/04/isc-study-workforce-shortfall-due-to-hiring-difficulties-despite-rising-salaries-increased-budgets-a.html
7. For those who are working in Software industry or any other sector here is my advice.  Visualize yourselves working with robots, machines only and into next 10 years of your career and work backwards to check what skills will be in demand after 10 years and start learning them right now. If you just know one skills you will be in danger of losing your job pretty soon. Having a diversified skills set is a reward in present job market.
8. Jobs in areas such as Artificial intelligence, robotics,cyber-security,  building intelligent machines will be on raise and also many traditional jobs that need deep cognitive skills won’t be replaced rapidly and there is scope for job stability.
9. Because of huge pressure, stress, anxiety in work areas,  individual’s health will suffer which will force for more visits to hospitals. Yoga and meditation will gain tremendous influence in helping those who embrace Yoga and Meditation. I advice young students to start seriously practicing YOGA and Meditation. You can make a career in this two healthy areas.

Finally those who are lifelong learners and who can rapidly adopt to changing job specifications, skills will stay relevant and those who resist change will be side-lined.

Any comments, additions to this article are welcome to do so. Thanks

Catch me if you can.. A story and corporate lessons

One day when kasyap’s father woke up and came out he saw that his goat is missing. He thought that the goat might have gone out thru the gate that was open.  He is worried and he asked his neighbor ‘Hello Rao did you see my goat anywhere’ No replied Rao. Why don’t you check in the fields, it might be grazing there suggested Rao.

‘Yes I will go right now’ and he called Kasyap and said ‘Kasyap our goat is missing and why don’t you go looking in the village if you can find it. Also take your friends with you so they can help you find it quickly’

‘Ok Dad ‘said Kasyap and he goes out to meet his other friends.

‘Our goat is missing Gopal, can we all search for it?  Some thief must have stolen the goat.’  Asked kasyap.

‘Yes we should catch that thief like detectives’ said Gopal excited about catching a thief.

‘Let’s go and meet our gang and let’s do the detective work’ said kasyap.

So they went and met the remaining friends and all started going around every house.

‘Hey that one looks like our goat’ said when they saw one in some ones house. Kasyap went near the goat and the goat yelled out loadly ‘MEEEEEEEEIII’

‘Hey kids what you are doing. Are you stealing my goat?  Go away or I will hit you’ yelled the house owner.

‘No this one is not your goat Let’s go ‘ said Renu and they went looking in other house.

Meanwhile Pinki saw a goat grazing nearby. ‘Hey there is your goat I think kasyap’  Let catch it’.  They ran towards the goat and the goat jumped up and down with sudden rush of kids towards it and hit a cyclist coming on the road and ran in to the street.

“What the heck????????’ yelled the cyclist while falling down? Hey you kids why did you shout like that? Raising his hands to hit the kids he yelled.

‘Run Run before he catches us ‘yelled  charan. They ran towards the goat again. Meanwhile the goat is now under panic and just rushed into a tea stall and hit the stove where the tea owner balaraj is brewing tea.

“Mommyyyyyyyy’ he yelled in pain when the hot tea fell on his feat. The goat than ran out to wards the opposite house.

‘You idiots why are you scaring that goat like that’ who will pay for the tea ? and who will pay for the burns on my legs ‘  the tea stall owner yelling in pain ran to catch renu who was near by.

‘Hey Run ………’ yelled Govind  ‘he will hit us ………’

Everybody started running away from the tea owner and Renu was so scared that she did not see that the lady walking with a pot of milk on her head. She dashed her and the lady fell down and the pot broke with milk flowing on the street. ‘Are you nuts can’t you see me?  I lost all my milk?  Who will pay for it? I will have to go to your house to collect the money’ yelled the lady who is so upset with this. Renu is now more scared and ran faster. All the friends finally came to a junction and where grasping for breathe since they ran so fast. Meanwhile they saw the goat.

‘This stupid goat brought us this trouble’ Let’s catch it’ said Gopal.

‘No this time we should surround it and then catch it together‘said Pinki

‘Yes let’s do that’ we should silently go all around it and catch it’ said Renu. I ‘m afraid to go home now since I hit that milk lady and my father will be upset with me’ she said angrily looking at the goat.

So they slowly surround the goat and plunge together as Gopal counted 1,2 3

‘THUD……..’ the sound of kids falling on to the ground was heard. The goat is too strong for them to hold on and it just jumped out of their collective hands and ran again.

“My nose……it’s hurting now’  Said Kasyap

‘so my hand too” said Pinki…

‘My knees are hurting’      said Renu.

‘‘This stupid goat made us fall ‘we should never let her go. ‘ said Charan spitting the sand that went into his mouth when he fell down.

‘Yes see all the sand and dust went into my nose …….AAACHIIIIIIIIIII’ Sneezed Gopal.

Now all the friends are furious and they thought they should have a proper plan to catch.

‘See how the goat is looking at us. ‘Pointing her finger Pinki said.

‘Yes it is teasing us we have to catch it’ said Charan.

‘Let get a rope and tie one side as a knot and we catch the goat with her neck in the knot’ what do you say’ said Gopal.

‘Yes let’s do it’. So all friends found a big rope and they made a big knot and they together swirled it towards the goat and finally got her by the neck. But the goat is now scared and know that this kids are not leaving her alone and confused started pulling the thread and the children along with it.

‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh what’s going on this goat is pulling all of us’ pinki yelled.

Hold it,  hold it tight’ yelled Gopal trying to stand on his feet.

‘wooooooooooooooooo  yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  hhheeeeeeeeeeeee’ charan is now on the ground along wth Renu, Pinki and Govind. Kasyap while Gopal tried to stand and they fell down too. Together the goat started pulling them thru the streets and all the villagers are  confused whether the friends are playing or something went wrong with the goat.

‘Hey what the heck are you kids doing’ Leave the goat alone’ shouted a villager’

‘Thud   Dammaaaaaaaaaaaal            DOMMMMMMMMM, MEAWWWWWWWWWWW, BOWBOWBOW’ Dogs got scared and starting barking.

Now the Goat  is hitting the cyclists dogs and cats on the road. The traffic on the road is now running helter skelter and nobody has any clue what’s going on.

“How dare you dashed me’ yelled one villager and hit the cyclist with a stick

‘Are you mad why you hit me? You stupid fellow. The goat made me fell don’t you see that’ and he punches the other guy. The other villager falls on the pots nearby and some of the pots rolled on to the street and broke. Now the pot owner is mad at this man and hits him. They started fighting and some of the fellow people joined them and all went into a fight. Now many more villagers joined the fight and nobody has any clue why they are all fighting each other.

By now the goat has dragged the friends so much they are having injuries and having pain. They left the rope and roll over to the side of the road.

“it hurts me more now. This stupid goat  GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’ yelled Pinki,

‘It’s all your fault with your stupid idea. Gopal’ Yelled  at Renu . Renu hits Gopal.

‘How dare you hit me’ shouted Gopal and hit Renu. Renu escapes and Charan gets the hit.

He falls down and was so furious that he jumps on Gopal and while jumping hits Kasyap.

By now everybody are hitting each other and finally they all got tired and had blood on their faces knees and hands and all have become dirty.

Meanwhile the goat is still around running here and there and everybody of the friends felt like the goat is teasing them a ‘Catch me if you can’………..

They are all slowly stated walking back home and by the time they reached Renu’s house the milk lady and other villagers are waiting for them angry and complaining on them to the parents of Renu.

“why did you all do this’ asked Renu’s father.

‘Uncle My father asked to find the missing goat so we found him and tried to catch it we did not purposely hit the tea stall owner or milk lady. The stupid goat did this. Look how we are all hurt by the goat. “ Sorry”  said kasyap.

Now the villagers know what has happened. Meanwhile Kasyap’s father came looking for him and asked where they went. Kasyap and others told him what happened.

‘But our goat is already in the house. It got lost to our neighbors house that is two houses away from our house. Whose goat are you guys trying to catch? Asked kasyap’s father now confused.

‘That goat there at the junction’ said Charan.

‘No that is not ours ‘ Anyway go home and wash up. You are all dirty and made everybody angry today.

You should all say Sorry  to all the elders’  said Renu’s father.

So the goat is still there confused why some kids are after it and still running around with a rope around its neck. Finally the villagers have to catch and give it back to the owner who is now looking for it.

Corporate Lessons.

Imagine the task of catching a Goat as a project.  Lesson no 1. Don’t rush to start working on the project individually within a team.

Lesson No 2. When Plan B is implemented of catching with a rope, spend time to understand the challenge and come up with a error proof plan otherwise it will lead to Lesson No 3.

Lesson No  3. When Plan B fails all hell breaks loose, project failure looms large and everyone in the project is upset and end up with blame game and looses peace and harmony of collaborative work. This leads to blame game and affected parties not getting a clue of why  or what is happening.

Lesson No 4.  Don’t always plan for complex solutions and end up with huge expenditure, miscommunication, conflicts and lost opportunities. Make sure to pause and cross check the viability of the plan by referring back to what problem you are solving.   Kids plans lead to quarrels and raised tempers in the villagers.

Lesson No 5. “Silence is the Worst kind of feed back” that leads to fruitless efforts and project disasters. Kasyap’s father remained Silent and never informed Kasyap that their Goat is already found.

Agile professionalism

Wrote a blog for employees on how to stay successful  in their career in my linkedin profile. Click on this link for the post

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140924055329-6970802-agile-professionalism

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

Consider this

In our school and college days we have seen how sports are conducted. For example if there is a running race then there are clearly marked paths on which the runners have to run. That means they have a starting point and a finishing point. Without a set path there is a chance that the runners can run from any point and end at any point. That means they have a direction to follow. In life we also need a direction to focus and succeed in whatever we wish to achieve. We also need skills such as determination, right attitude and knowledge. We measure distances with a ruler, time by the ticks of a clock and small steps of progress by tasks scratched off our list. We are judged by others on what we achieved in life not by what you think internally that you can achieve. We judge ourselves based on our assumptions about us. Suppose if you think you can manage in interview without knowing proper English or not having sufficient communication skills you are ruining your chances of succeeding.  Even if luck favors you and you get thru the interview you will get stuck in the career without growth until you acquire skills needed to progress. If you don’t get the habit of preparing well in advance whether for exams or for interview you are no different from a Gambler.

People can definitely succeed if they spend at least some few hours of every day on developing their skills.  If you choose to avoid the hard question to know about your weakness you may loose an opportunity. Those are life changing  moments sometimes.

Remember that we waste lot of time in a day that doesn’t add value to our lives. The fun of mastering some skills  stays with you lifelong.  So obviously you need to focus on the most important skills you need, to become a successful person

What you can do is sit alone and just write down honestly what is your goals or aspirations and what is your weakness (for example not having good communication skills etc) and what it requires you to master that skill. Until you resist the influences of the surroundings and other time wasting activities you cannot make it to the top. The most productive hours of your life should not be wasted. They belong to you and you are the master of your destiny. So your destiny is in your hand. As we strongly believe in god remember god blesses only those who work sincerely towards their intentions and wishes.

Never assume we know it all and Never assume that what we think is correct.

Consider the following.

1) At the top of a blank piece of paper write this heading “I assume that the following points are important” for me to succeed.
2) Then, start a new section with the heading, “These things influence my mind  and divert my attention from achieving success in life” It should include time spent every day on unproductive things that does not add value for you to become successful.

3) Now list all the things that help you to learn the skills needed   Take advice from your parents, Professors, teachers etc  for better results.

4) At the end of this list… “I assume there’s nothing else I could add to this list”
and finally?
5) Right at the very bottom  write the following… “I assume all of the above is true.” You need to focus on what it needs to reach your goals.