Ravindra Dastikop

2011-12-25T11:22:00.001+05:30

My professional mission is to empower people through cloud computing and social media to realize their full potential- personal, professional, entrepreneurial and role-based.

Cloud Computing and Social Media

For Business and IT
For Professional Courses
For Entrepreneurs
For Developers

For Schools and Colleges
Cloud Computing and Social media have a great range of resources that can benefit all stake holders in school and colleges- students, teachers, administrators.

For Business and IT
With concern for cost cutting and productivity mounting in the minds of managers and board members of enterprises- cloud computing model with its inherent cost-effective aspects has become a prime choice.

For Professional Courses
Students and Faculty of professional courses such as engineering, management, medicine stand to gain a lot by learning and adopting cloud computing and social media enabled tools to improve their productivity
For Entrepreneurs

Cloud Computing and social media have become power house and market place for new entrepreneurs

For Developers
Cloud development is rapidly becoming the most favorable opportunity for developers.

2011-11-19T16:45:00.001+05:30

2011-09-10T11:48:00.017+05:30

My mission is to harness Cloud computing and social media resources to enhance the performance of Learning and Teaching .

In 2000, I began My Experiments with Web Teaching Tools. By 2006, "Integrating Web Resources into Teaching Life Cycle" become my professional mission. Since then, my experiment has grown in many directions-exploring and integrating the existing and emerging tools into my teaching and learning process.

A lot has changed since the use of only web resource available then - e-mail ; Today web has become more pervasive and resourceful and many innovations - social networks and wiki and more have appeared. But some things haven’t changed- my desire to explore and my dedication to learning and teaching community.

On these pages, you can find more information and links about Web 2.0 and Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning and Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing : A NewFound "Land of Opportunities" for Developers

2011-08-31T12:38:00.001+05:30

Cloud Computing is a newfound "land of opportunities" for software developers. Cloud computing is an innovative and exciting style of programming and developing newer genera of applications. Cloud computing is also innovative in how to use computers. It creates tremendous opportunities for software developers: cloud computing provides a new platform for building new kinds applications called " services". With the advent of cloud computing developers have arrived and living in one of the most happening times of software developments.

A Taxonomic Approach to Cloud Computing

2011-08-15T10:47:00.021+05:30

The Importance of Cloud Computing

In less than 5 years since the term cloud computing was introduced (Cloud Computing: Looking back and Looking Forward) , it has grown into one of the most discussed, debated and more importantly widely deployed technologies of our times. Enterprises such as Google, Facebook and cause driven initiatives such as Wikipedia are but living illustrations of cloud computing at work. In fact cloud computing has assumed a state of phenomena and affecting and benefiting more and more people, processes, businesses , government and more. Cloud computing is the most dynamic and powerful agent in today's social, political and business spheres.(see more here)

What is there for me in cloud computing? Here is the answer

Read on

Cloud Computing for a Life Long Learner

The promise of Cloud computing

It is not hype that cloud computing has attracted attention of such as wide and diverse audiences for no or small reason. As one researcher has put " It is result of cloud computing's huge potential for substantiating other technological advances while presenting a superior utilitarian advantage over the currently under-utilized resources deployed at data centers.". In other words, cloud computing is helping us to be more productive with our already invested resources and more innovative with newer investments.

The domain of cloud computing is growing leaps and bounds. The different communities interested in, associated with and working on cloud computing - academic, business, practitioners and research community are evolving new approaches, coining new terms and combining existing and emerging principles and practices in novel and newer ways. A comprehensive understanding of Cloud computing domain demands a common terminology across all these working groups. Hence a taxonomic approach to cloud computing is not only desired but also demanded.

Taxonomy is the science which deals with the study of identifying, grouping, and naming organisms according to their established natural relationship. Applied to cloud computing - A taxonomic approach cloud computing will help students, faculty , business and other communities towards common understanding of the domain and help them converse in meaningful and productive manner. Research scholars and industry leaders have already published a number of approaches towards cloud computing taxonomy. I will be trying to use the as the basis of developing a comprehensive approach in understanding and communicating knowledge, practice and news of cloud computing world to both insiders and outsiders; beginners and veterans. Some of the taxonomic approaches that I have come across include Towards a Unified ontology of cloud Computing - a paper by Lamia Youseff from University of California and Maria Butrico of IBM TJ Watson Research Center. The paper presents a summary of authors assimilation of cloud computing with a classification of its components, and their relationships as well as their dependencies on some other earlier concepts. A Taxonomy and Survey of cloud Computing - by Bhaskar Prasad , Eunmi Choi and Ian Lamb - develops a comprehensive taxonomy for describing cloud computing architecture and uses it to survey several existing cloud computing services.

My approach towards organizing and communicating cloud computing.

Cloud computing Meaning

Cloud computing is service delivery model. It uses the internet as the basis for producing and providing services. The internet is the common point for producer and consumer to meet for delivering and consuming services. The service delivered could an application, information and more.

Cloud computing Definitions

Cloud computing Layers

Cloud computing service models
Cloud computing issues
Cloud computing research

Cloud Computing: Your Journey Begins Here

2011-08-07T12:57:00.015+05:30

For 3 years, Cloud Computing is providing services and products that help people - students, faculty, researchers improve their understanding and cloud computing practices. In addition, othis site has become one of the primary sources for non-commercial cloud computing information available on the Web. Throughout this site you’ll be able to acquire:

Importance of Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing is a powerful phenomenon of our times. It has something to offer to each one of us-

Foundations and Trends
2. Overview
A General Introduction to cloud Computing

3. History
4. Key characteristics of cloud computing
5. Cloud computing layers
5.1 Client
5.2 Application
5.3 Platform
5.4 Infrastructure
5.5 Server
6. Cloud computing models
7. Cloud engineering
8. Cloud storage
9 The Intercloud
10. Cloud computing concerns and issues
11.Cloud computing research

12. Glossary
13. The next step

2011-07-21T13:28:00.017+05:30

Gateway to My Web Resources

Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is an emerging area of common benefit, academic interest and research openings.

Cloud Computing Course Blog
Cloud Computing 101
Cloud Engineering
Amazon AWS
Google App Engine
Currents in Cloud Computing
Microsoft Azure

My other areas of interest include

Aadhaar is an emerging opportunity for Indian developer.

Web Tools for Learning and Teaching is an expanding resource for teachers and students

Search Across all My Blogs

BSTStudent”, a cloud based platform, for Engineering Students

2011-07-14T10:48:00.003+05:30

Cloud Computing Platform for Engineering Students

We are company based out of Pune and we have released our product “BSTStudent”, a cloud based platform, for Engineering Students. BSTStudent aims to bridge the gap between Industry and Academia by bringing students, industry and mentors on the same platform. Industry can post their project on the platform for Students and Students can apply for these projects. These projects can be remotely executed by students under the guidance of mentors. Below are some of the video links to give you an idea about the problem we are trying to address For more details visit here

Update: Cloud Computing Projects for Engineering Students

2011-07-02T10:38:00.000+05:30

This is an updated version of a blog that I posted about an year and a half back. At that time, only few students were interested in cloud computing projects and now their numbers are increasing. Hence this update. The new project done since my earlier article are

Socioseacher - a project that links major web services - Facebook, Linkedin

Placement and Training Cell- By Harsha, PES . This project is built using Google resources

IEEE paper based projects

Following my presentation on Cloud Applications at Cloud Computing and Virtualization workshop at NIT, K Surathkal during July 2010, a good number of students from a couple of colleges have approached me requesting to suggest an academic cloud-based project for their degree and diploma courses (thanks to faculty who attended the workshop and carried the message to their students inspired them to consider such projects). Cloud-computing paradigm is catching up business world like a wild-fire and it is natural for students and faculty to thinking in this direction. Here in my college, we started exploring in this direction about a year ago and our students have successfully completed about three projects. Hence, here I wish share some points with those interested which provide them a starting point towards identifying and carrying out a cloud-based project that go towards partial fulfillment of degree and diploma courses.

Understanding Cloud application:

First step towards this goal is to understanding the nature of a cloud-based project or application. Simply put, a cloud-application is like any traditional computer-application except that it is built using cloud-based resources and hosted on a cloud-platform.

For example, a cloud-based ERP application is accessed by a user via web interface and is hosted on service provider’s remote servers. Another cloud-application is Gmail. To know more about nature and types of cloud application kindly go through this presentation Cloud-applications. It includes information about what is a cloud application, examples and resources to build them. There is no limit for kinds of projects that can be made cloud-based and virtually every existing business application can be transformed into cloud-based one. For instance here is an example of cloud-based learning management system. Imagination is the limit and scratch your head or conduct a brainstorm session with other to find a project idea to develop using cloud-based resources.

Cloud-based projects for students

The above examples of cloud-based ERP and Gmail represent industry-strength applications. However a student project need not be that sophisticated. It could be as simple as AlumniMaps, which mashes-up two resources namely users data from facebook on Google maps to produce a very useful and insightful maps that shows current locations of alumni of any given institution. Other examples include X-social and Cloud-based teaching system. (needs adobe flash player to view it ) Projects can also be considered from cloud-security and Virtualization perspective.

Cloud-based resources for student projects:

Unlike traditional application, Cloud-based projects are built using cloud-based resources. Fortunately for all of us, there are number of resources that can be used in our project development. More importantly most of these resources are FREE and some times need a simple one-time registration process. Here I list of some such resources used by my students in earlier projects

API: Application Programming Interface ( API) provide a royal route to use resource created by Internet giants such as Google and Facebook. For instance one can use Google search API to access its search index and customize it to meet her project needs or piggyback on Facebook resources. Kindly go through small presentation on API to get clear picture.
GAE: Google Application Engine: a platform that allows user to host his application for general access. Application can be developed off-line and can be uploaded. You may go through this presentation on GAE to know more about it

In addition there are programming /scripting languages that can be used to varying degrees at different stages of project development. They include PHP, Python, and many more. In addition there are many resources that help you master them and use them in your project work.

Finally you may visit my blog Cloudcomplete which is created to share information with students interested in cloud-based aspects. You may also consider joining the cloud computing group

Hopefully I have shared enough information to inspire you to take up a cloud-based projects. You may also consider enhance the following projects further

For any more information, please post a comment on this blog, I will try find it out for you

Teaching in Turbulent Times.

2011-06-30T14:51:00.001+05:30

Web 2.0 is one of the most prominent business models for information systems available today. It brings together technology and social networks, and the interactivity that creates business value. Like business even education can also benefits from it.However, today the ability of educators to use , create content and communicate on the web is limited by complexity and sophistication of the range of web 2.0 tools available. Some of the challenges teachers face in using web 2.0 tools are

Most of teachers find web 2.0 tools confusing and frieghtening
Many tools exists and teachers do not have time nor expertise to discover, identify and use best tools to meet their specific teaching needs. ( Maths teacher needs different tools that the one who teacher social studies)
Most students are well versed with web tools and communication. They use and communicate easily and openly using web 2.0 tools.
There is a technology gap between teachers and students and it is growing .
These web 2.0 tools have pedagogical value and contribution to make towards enhancing teaching and learning experience.
web 2.0 tools enable sharing, communication and knowledge discovery that teachers can use to provide more motivating , engaging, experimental relevant and collaborative environment for students.

With this mind, One can find out that there is a need for

understanding web 2.0 's potential to be used in education
developing a pedagogy for integrating web 2.0 tools into teaching and learning process

I am currently working towards this end.

2011-03-23T12:52:00.000+05:30

Preface

We have accessible today the resources- information, tools and experience needed for the successful practice of cloud computing. But there is probably no mine of human created resources where the always tremendous gap between the awareness and application, knowledge and performance of the leaders and that of average is wider. This blog does not exclude from its aims the advancement of the frontier of resources; it hopes, indeed , to make some contribution to it. But its first aim is to narrow the gap between that can be harnessed and what is being harnessed ,between the leaders in the cloud computing practice and the average.

Though not concerned with techniques this is a practical and "how to" blog.

The Practical Meaning of Cloud computing

It is being published out of many years of experience in using cloud computing resources and working and interacting with cloud computing resource users.

Cloud Computing resources for Teaching and Learning

And it aims at being a guide at people who can and should harness cloud computing resources as part of their personal, professional and institutional endeavorer.

Using Blog as a course home

For younger persons in professional organizations - and students and possibly future entrepreneurs who plan to make cloud computing their career- this blog should provide both vision of what cloud computing is and concrete guidance in knowledge, performance and discipline that are needed to qualify for a major cloud computing roles and positions.

Cloud computing projects for engineering students

Cloud based Teaching System

But this blog is written fully as much for for the common person- layman-citizen without direct participation in cloud computing phenomenon. She, perhaps more than anyone else, needs to know what cloud computing is, what it does and what can rightfully expect from it. For ignorance of the possibilities of cloud computing, of its working, of its standards and its challenges is the most serious weakness of a connected world. For common people here the fist resource to begin cloud computing journey

Cloud Computing Glossary

Cloud computing has eliminated the natural barriers of time, distance and even language and enabled each one of us to be in touch with most active minds of contemporary world. Reader familiar with globally well known resource - wikipedia, will recognize without special reference how much the author owes to this most fruitful of connected world resource; to others a footnote acknowledging the debt would be neither helpful nor meaningful. All readers , I am sure will assume that this blog, like any other, has a long, linked and recurring reference and mixed ancestry.

Cloud Computing: The Cloud Future: 20% of firms will own no IT asse...

2011-03-22T10:29:00.000+05:30

Cloud Computing: The Cloud Future: 20% of firms will own no IT asse...: "Technologies such as 'cloud computing' and virtualisation within the enterprise will result in a fifth of businesses owning no IT assets wha..."

Cloud Computing: TCS unveils cloud-computing solution in Karnataka

2011-03-21T14:01:00.000+05:30

Cloud Computing: TCS unveils cloud-computing solution in Karnataka: " Global software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Friday unveiled cloud-based computing solution iON for small and medium busin..."

Cloud Computing: Cloud Innovation: Here is a cloud start up story

2011-03-21T14:00:00.000+05:30

Cloud Computing: Cloud Innovation: Here is a cloud start up story: "ScaleMP, a Cupertino, CA based company, takes multiple physical machines and turns them into a single virtual image for high performanc..."

Cloud Computing: Cloud Computing Certification course

2011-03-21T13:56:00.000+05:30

Cloud Computing: Cloud Computing Certification course: "'Best New Cloud Computing Certification Training Courses via kwout'"

Cloud Computing: Seminars, Teaching, Workshops

2010-11-30T09:51:00.037+05:30

Ravindra Dastikop's professional mission is to stay in tune with the twin technologies of our times- web and cloud computing and harness their potential in the context of learning, teaching and research. Towards this end, I am actively engaged in

Discovering, building, organizing a corpus of cloud computing knowledge and making it accessible through a dedicate blog Cloud Complete (http://cloudcomplete.blogspot.com)
Designing and teaching a course in cloud computing for an engineering degree course during the academic year 2010-11
Using an assorted set of cloud computing resources in the day-today academic process- Web Tools for Learning and Teaching (http://wtlt.blogspot.com/, http://web-teach.blogspot.com/).

Web Tools for Learning and Teaching Workshop, NK College, Mumbai

I have been sharing my experience with fellow fraternity in national and international forums such as- National Workshop on e-learning, Global Conference on Blended learning to name a few. A Complete list of my presentation may be viewed here.

Cloud Computing Workshop

I am available for conducting seminars and workshop in cloud computing and web tools for learning and teaching for the benefits of teachers and learners in your institutions. I may be contacted using the following form.

Contact Me- Ravindra Dastikop

Any question/ query may be posted here

Ask Dastikop

Contact Details

Ravindra Dastikop, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SDM College of Engineering and Technology, Dharwad,-580 002 India

Cell No: +91 99808 73130

Email: Ravindra.dastikop@gmail.com

Web site: http://dastikop.blogspot.com/

Linkedin Profile: http://linkedin.com/in/ravindradastikop

Google Profile: http://google.com/profiles/ravindra.dastikop

Web for Teaching and Learning: Free maths e-learning with Nokia

2010-11-29T12:55:00.000+05:30

Web for Teaching and Learning: Free maths e-learning with Nokia: "' Free maths e-learning with Nokia: News24: Sci-Tech: News via kwout' Nokia has developed a mathematics learning tool for schools and has r..."

Cloud Complete: What constitutes the Cloud? : The components of t...

2010-11-29T12:52:00.000+05:30

Cloud Complete: What constitutes the Cloud? : The components of t...: "The Cloud refers to the Internet. Since its early days the first servers on the Internet were storage devices for data and applications. The..."

Cloud Complete: Utility Computing: How will it help entrepreneur?

2010-11-28T10:28:00.000+05:30

Cloud Complete: Utility Computing: How will it help entrepreneur?: "How Utility computing helps software developers ? Utility computing refers to using computing resources such as infrastructure, storage, co..."

Cloud Complete: Invited Lecture on Cloud Application at SK College...

2010-11-25T15:06:00.000+05:30

Cloud Complete: Invited Lecture on Cloud Application at SK College...:

Web for Teaching and Learning: Educational use of social networking technology in...

2010-11-22T19:59:00.000+05:30

Web for Teaching and Learning: Educational use of social networking technology in...: "Here is an interesting research article by Hsiu-Ting Hung, Steve Chi-Yin Yuen This study explored how social networking technology can be us..."

Open Teaching Models: A Research Proposal

2010-11-07T11:49:00.002+05:30

Teaching, a process transmitting knowledge, skills and experience from teacher to learners has been in existence since prehistoric days. The nature and scope of this process, and means and methods employed to carry it out have been the reflections of the times and prevailing technologies. In that book-less times of the past, oral method of instructions was in domination and with the arrival of printing press, book-centric education or teaching assumed center stage. The wall-bound class-room model of teaching emerged and exists even today as leading mode of teaching.

The prevailing technologies of the times are WWW. With the arrival of WWW, which is not bounded by time, distance often language and is source of free resources, the nature, scope and challenge of teaching is getting transformed. There is a need to evaluate the existing models of teaching in view of this newly emerged empowering technology and how can be enabled by the use of it. Given the unique nature of WWW, it is also necessary to explore new models of teaching that take teaching beyond the walls of traditional class rooms and learner beyond the traditional sources of knowledge.

This research propose to

investigate the process of teaching in light of this newly emerged technology-enabled environment and

develop effective teaching models that that help us in harnessing the potential of open source

The work of a teacher in linked environments.

2010-11-06T12:27:00.001+05:30

Development of the scope, nature and character of LinkBase becomes the most important preoccupation of teacher ( or professional). There are three dimensions to this development

the present “linkbase” must be made effective
its potential must be identified and realized
it must be made into different “linkbase” for a different future ie differently linked environment

Teaching in Linked environment: Challenges

2010-10-31T20:11:00.002+05:30

The linked environment or WWW is a new territory for teachers. But most noticeable feature about WWW is that it one of the most useful teaching (also learning) resource. The always available resources- information and tools, their variety and volume makes the web a welcome addition to teacher’s repertoire. However for teachers used to captive resource such as college library and physical books, this poses new learning challenge. It also threatens their traditional enjoyed control over resources as these web resources are equally accessible to their students. So two immediate challenges are

How do you make an in-classroom teaching session live and interesting while multi-media learning resources on the web are becoming easily available? The variety of and volume is so that they might be able to meet specific needs of each and every student.
How do you scale up from teaching 60 or so inmates in a bounded classroom at a given hour of day to online, anonymous and often strange learners with differing learning needs.

This challenge is called Teaching in Linked Environment

Teaching in the Linked Environment

2010-10-31T13:18:00.000+05:30

Teaching has a prehistoric origin. And then it has evolved ( evolving.. even now) to meet changing needs of society. Teaching means and purposes are always the functions of contemporary technologies. With the advent of Link Age . the nature of teaching functions and availability resources have changed for the better. So a teacher in this Link age must develop a Link Base and make it accessible to the audience of his world: students, alumni, colleagues and others. .

Winning With Web: Living and Learning in Linked Enviornment

2010-10-29T16:01:00.000+05:30

Winning With Web: Living and Learning in Linked Enviornment: "Each age in human history has a name. And this name is derived from the powerful forces that shape it or shaped it. Earlier we had atomic ag..."

Winning With Web Tools Objective: To Teach

Cloud Complete: Cloud computing courses planned

2010-10-26T11:51:00.000+05:30

Cloud Complete: Cloud computing courses planned: "Cloud computing represents a new paradigm for composing and delivering products and services. While most of the products and services delive..."

ITEra 2010: Participating with Colleagues

2010-10-25T14:48:00.001+05:30

The KLE BCA college recently conducted an annual event ITEra 2010 during 22-23 October, 2010. I along with 3 of my departmental colleagues participated in the event as resource persons. I delivered an invited talk on Cloud Computing and Its applications . Vishal Kulkarni, Indira Umarjee and Mayur patil served as judges for paper presentation event

Web is New Learning Habitat

2010-10-20T10:03:00.001+05:30

Web is a new learning Habitat. All teaching activities can happen there. check yourself any one or more ( eg. Course Home

web is new learning habitat via kwout

Web Tools for Learning Workshop, Nagindas College, Malad Mumbai

2010-10-12T12:50:00.000+05:30

Presentation in progress

The Audience: Faculty and Principal Dr. Jose ( First Row, second from left) and Prof. Mona Bhatia, Principal, Self-financed

On 6th October, I conducted a workshop on " Web Tools for Learning for the faculty of Nagindas Khandawala college, Malad, Mumbai. Here are some snaps from there

Networking for Results

2010-09-22T09:11:00.001+05:30

Networks or networking is not new to humans. Every social interaction is in a sense is act towards building a network. Connecting to our neighbor or another person is much appreciated and widely practiced feature of human society. Rolodex is an example. However networks in the past were constrained by time and distance barriers. Today technology enabled networks such as social networks have transformed the range of reach and made the job of networking much easier and brought the privilege of being a part of network to every one's reach.

Technology-enabled networks are here to stay and grow. In fact they are growing exponentially. Facebook, one of such rapidly growing network has over 500 million users - meaning one in every 14 people on the earth is on Facebook. This fact has far reaching implications for each one of us: faculty, students and institutions. As our experience shows, our students who belong to digital natives generation and were born into "another time" are increasingly finding their social and professional homes on these networks. This new reality must be considered while planning our academic and as well as any student related activities. Each one of us must develop a personal and professional plans to harness this new resources. I shall cover this in my next post Networking Tasks.

Don’t; confine u r students into u r learning for they were born in another time

2010-09-14T19:34:00.000+05:30

"Don’t; confine u r students into u r learning for they were born in another time" asserts a old saying. I quoted this in my engineering class and asked my students to identify their “another time” for which they were born into. In other words I asked them to describe the kind of world they are living in now and expected to have during their life time. Times have changed from agrarian to industrial to information times now. Information Times is one in which every activity we do is some way related to information. A small discussion helped us to identify activity generally undertaken by students: They Google to search information, they blog to publish information, they comment ( add info) and they ‘inform “ their status. At that point of time, I provided a small description of the information world we r living in

Today networks have created “an editable information space in which everything is connected to every thing else “ .

My Mtech Seminar via kwout

The another time in which my students are expected “live and experience “ is described above. Preparing them would be making them participate in this information space by publishing, commenting and linking. The publishing provides them a means to share ; commenting makes them to analyze critically and linking makes them to get connected to wider world and be part of a community to which they belong to. Hence an evaluation component of the course requires each student to create a blog, publish and visit another ( see picture above) students blog and comment and connect with blogs of a minimum no of blogs of their class mates

Information Life

2010-09-13T10:13:00.000+05:30

We all intuitively understand the phrases such as working life, professional life, social life, school life and even married life and so on. Each of them refers to a one dimension of our personal life or some time segment of life. What most of us fail to recognize or miss to realize is what we all have another important dimension to our existence Information Life too. Our information life is all about our relation with information or in other words relation with outside world. We live in an information rich (or inundated) world, in which we either produce or consume information. We also act as a conduit in information life cycle. Information work is widely accepted term to describe the nature of information life.

To be successful in our Information life, like in any other dimension of life such as financial or social life, we need to think through and do work with direction, method, and purpose. Information life has to make contribution towards one’s overall life and one must perform here.

What can I contribute? : U set my agenda

2010-09-06T13:19:00.003+05:30

Annual occasions like teachers day give us chance to ponder over important matters such as
a teacher what can I contribute to my students.. Over the years, I have been trying to figure out “what is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of my students and my institutions. With whatever modest exposure I have had, I used it my experimentation such as introducing emerging technologies into academics and projects, introduction of work and performance tools within academic settings and more.

However lot more needs to be and can be done in preparing myself and my community (students and colleagues) for harnessing emerging opportunities in increasingly connected world. My alumni which numbers more than 1500+ and working around the world may help me by suggesting ways and means towards improving my answering to the fundamental challenge on day-in and day-out basis: What can I contribute? The following questions may broadly guide you in knowing my information requirements.

What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of my institutions and students?
What knowledge and skills do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making?
What standards do I have to set myself?

Current students may answer the following

What am I doing that helps u with your learning and work ?
What am I doing hampers you ?
Where do you (students ) need me - not just want but need me?
Where should I concentrate next year so as not only to give best but also to bring most of you ?
What do u expect me to learn to bring the difference ?

Your action points are welcome

Knowledge is the professional

2010-09-04T15:33:00.004+05:30

Knowledge is the professional. Work, assignments, services are only the vehicle for the exchange of professional knowledge against employment and associated aspects such as salary. Business is a human organization, made or broken by the quality of its people. In this knowledge era, the quality of people is nothing but the quality of their knowledge. Knowledge is specifically human resources. Knowledge is not found on the web. Web contains information whereas knowledge is the ability to apply information to specific work and performance. For instance a professional be it a marketing manager or a learner can use web for mining information to carry out her work and improve performance. So every professional today must determine (1) her work and its associated performance expectations before going to web and (2) use web as an information source to support her work and elevate performance level. Web after all is another resource. As we have learnt in our school lessons resources are only means to achieve our work; they don’t do our work. We have to do our work ourselves.

Information Literacy: The Next ‘R` In The Networked World

2010-08-09T09:44:00.002+05:30

The evolved and emerging networks such as the Internet, mobile are ushering a new world order. They are setting up a new playing ground for human endeavors such as business and education. These networks are fundamentally different from the traditional building blocks and infrastructure and are increasingly becoming game-changers. Because of these developments success and even survival in this new networked world order demands new category of skills. These skills are broadly called Information literacy.

Demand for new skill is not strange to human race. Like many other “survived” species humans have acquired a new set of skills at every crucial stage and turn of natural evolution. However, need for a new set of skills for a world order created by human themselves is of recent origin. The invention of printing press and consequent ability of humans to produce books in millions created new institutions such as modern universities and governments. The successful participation in these institutions demanded the acquiring skills of reading and writing. These combined with arithmetic are famously known as 3R’s : wRiting, Reading and aRithemetic. The need for next R- in the range of skills was computeR which in combination with communication technology has created a mammoth world of networks. These networks demand new skill netwoRking. Information literacy covers this.

Organized Learning in Human History: Oral Tradition to Personal Learning Environment ( PLE)

2010-08-06T16:35:00.000+05:30

Education has been a mainstay of many of human societies throughout civlizations. Education is a process of transmiiting of content- knowledge, experience and values from one generation to another. The mode and means of education have been always evolving and are reflection of state of art of technology avaialable to that society at that time. Oral tradition was the chief mode of education for most part of human history. However arrival of new technologies periodically have helped people to find news ways of delivering education. The invention of printing press in 14th century and consequent ability to produce books in large numbers gave impetus to educational process and helped to build modern universities. Liberal education promoted and practiced by universities tried to reach masses and offer education in large scale. Later development such a radio, TV and other made education more accessible. However, education was organized around an institution and all learning happened in the " class room" in real world and physical settings.

The advent of networks - starting from the Internet to the state of the art Web 2.0 have unleashed new possibilities for education and more for learners. Today it is possible for learners to not to depend on resources provided by educational institutions such as teaching, library etc. The access to web resources such as search engines, wikipedia have empowered the learner to oragnize their educational activities on the web. Such arrangements constructed by learners by mashing up an assorted set of resources - blogs, groups, learning networks is called a personal learning enviroments ( PLE).

Technical Teaching For Results

2010-08-01T11:20:00.002+05:30

I teach in an engineering college and I am a technical teacher. Technical teaching is all about making a learner functional and a contributor in the domain of her choice. Technical teaching has a purpose and must get results. Technical teaching for results must be a legitimate concern and a duty of technical teacher Technical teaching is practical and has a thesis Technical performance. Technical performance is the ability of a teacher to put technology into effective use in teaching and in the daily activities of the learner. It is the specific function and the contribution of teacher. and the reason for his existence and employment.

Prateek Shetty(2010): How my final year project landed me in Job

2010-07-27T10:27:00.002+05:30

Hi all,

It gives me immense pleasure to share my experience with all you juniors. Here is a small article on how my final year project helped me get a job! Ravindra Sir had asked me to write this long back, but due to my busy schedule I couldn’t. I believe it’s better late than never, so this is how it goes…

Once you enter your final year the search for the project group starts. And after the group is formed, starts the hunt for the project topic. Can say it as the most vital part of the project. Some think of the marks they are going to score if they take up a particular project and some think of the things they can learn while doing the project. This reminds me of what my friend Rohan Nayak used to say, “It doesn’t matter how much you score in your project, what matters is how much you learn out of it”. And remember, if all you want is to get some marks there are easy ways out. But we chose the hard way and under the guidance of Ravindra Sir and mentorship of Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni from Minglebox, we started our project ‘Social Network Aggregator’.

To say in brief about the project, we wanted to do something that has real world application, a product. We can call it as a WEB 3.0 application that aggregates data from different social networks. We aggregated data from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, through which one can upload his status simultaneously on all three networks. It’s been done using the API’s provided by these networking sites, protocol called OAuth for user authentication, and PHP. They say that getting a job off campus is nut cracking experience. But in reality, if you are good there are always people ready to hire you. I will be always thankful to Ravindra Sir for offering me an opportunity, and I made the best out of it. I proudly tell that I had got offers from two companies!! Out of which I chose InfoBridge Solutions, Pune. I was hired as a PHP developer. Learning experience and exposure a fresher gets in a small company or a startup can never be compared with that of the IT giants!!

That’s all I got to say fellas, all the best for your project and future. Thank you Ravindra Sir, for giving me this opportunity.

Regards,

Prateek Shetty

Jr Software Developer,

InfoBridge Solutions, Pune.

Email: prtek.shetty@gmail.com

I am Cloud 9 : Jeevan Dongre, Jr. Software Developer, Inkorus, Pune

2010-07-14T08:39:00.000+05:30

I am Cloud 9 : Jeevan Dongre, Jr. Software Developer, Inkorus, Pune

I am very keen on sharing my final year project experience with my you all because I do understand the difficulty in choosing the right topics and even I was once in a dilemma like you guys not aware what kind of topics to be chosen for. The final year projects are not just gonna add to your academic brilliance but most of the times decide your career. So the topics for the project must be chosen very very carefully.

I am tech savvy and I had a great appetite for learning and staying updated about the latest and upcoming technologies.Before I decide any thing regarding my final year, I had two objectives that has to be fulfilled by project.Firstly it should be helpful to a group of people or a community like Education, Healthcare etc.Secondly it should possess a strong business objective, so that I should be in a position to promote it has product. Since the word “cloud computing” was in the buzz, I felt this could be one such interesting topic which i could take for my career deciding project. So I and my team approached ‘ happy-to-help-anytime’ Dastikop Sir, who gave us a clarity of the subject.

“CLOUD BASED TEACHING SYSTEM”(CBTS) was my final year project. The objective of this project is to bring the traditional class room teaching system a new dimension. Utilizing the resources which are already available in web, we are able develop a new product which can be managed effortlessly.By cloud-based teaching-learning system we mean a method of teaching where web is the point of contact between teacher and learner. This system may be used independently or in conjunction with class room teaching.

CBTS harnesses variety of cloud resources to design, develop and deploy teaching courses and delivers them over the web. By end-to-end we CBTS covers all aspects of teaching process such as Course registration, content delivery, monitoring of students progress, assignments, tests and final certification culminating with warding grades to registered students. The CBTS will be accessible to teacher and students at a web-interface and acts as a dashboard.

Suprizingly “Cloud Based Teaching Sytem” is not just our final year project, it is going to be a research activity soon as “Cloud Learning Environment”. People across the world(US/UK/Canada) are showing keen interest.Thanks to Social Networking sites.

I would suggest you to go for upcoming technologies since the industry prefers such projects rather than the conventional age old concepts. Lot many developers and Engineers are already working on traditional systems, to make different identity in the industry, its very important to up with a OUT OF BOX thinking and start working on cutting edge technologies.Finally its your interest all which matters.Prioritize your interests and strengths and do thorough searching before you choose the topic.

I have share my interview experience with you allI must say its first of its kind. It was 6 hours long hard core technical interview. Though our HR was looking for cloud computing(Google App Engine developers) for a long time.I have to mention he is IIT-Mumbai, passed out!

Before I conclude, I have to Thank my Guru and Guide, Prof.Ravindra G Dastikop,formally I am mention we both have very long way to go and also our Mentor Mr.Earlence Fernandes, Softwares Engineer, Accenture, Pune.Who helped us a lot.

Needless to say... with a cloud computing project... I am on CLOUD 9!!

Cheers !!!!

How my project helped me to get my first job” Vijay Sali, Jr. Software Developer, Inkorus, Pune

2010-07-12T13:33:00.000+05:30

Hello,

Its my immense pleasure to share my experience about “ How my project helped me to get my first job”.... Firstly my heartily thanks to Prof.Ravindra Dastikopa, for giving me an opportunity to share my views & experience in getting my first job...

During 7th semester myself with my team were thinking to do something which is new , innovative, and helpful to society , this was our main objectives.... As we approached Professor he suggested his idea's which will be helpful for the education system i.e “CLOUDBASED TEACHING SYSTEM”.

Here started our journey to think in the direction of "CLOUDBASED TEACHING SYSTEM”.... With this in mind we started searching more information with respect to this and during this session lots of brainstorming sessions happened on requirement collection, constraints, and choosing domains (Like java, python and .net)..... Finally we where al set & started our work in this .....

We understood the entire system environment and stepped into executing the plans what we had.. We took java as platform to develop a system. In between we faced lots of errors and constraints , that we fixed it .. And finally done with the project successfully ....Here , I would like to mention one more person Mr. Earlence Fernandes from PUNE , who helped & guided us during the time of project development....

In the entire process i have really learn' t lot many things which polished me to transfer myself from normal student to become a Professional and i'm very happy & satisfied with the work i have done so far ...... A Knowledge gained from our project really helped us to get a job which i'm in now.... Project really made us to enter into the Corporate world that too soon after my engineering without much delay ......

Finally coming to the job, offcourse the most important thing ....

I have applied to the job where I can apply my skills and get more knowledge about the industry.. They called for face to face interview.. I was confident in my work & on myself ...... Interview went nearly 6 Hrs .. It was pure technical session, in that they had asked on some basic concepts of Computer Science field , java and offcourse abt GAE (Google App Engine , i.e , based on my project ) .. And after 2 days of my interview I got my OFFER LETTER to my mail joining was on 5th July .... All this happened and stil our 8th sem results were not announced yet & i had an OFFER LETTER for my FIRST JOB in my hand....

If i just turn back & see, feels like all this happened like a miracle even though there were lots of ups & downs until the completion of my project ..... Finally my project helped me to get near to my destiny.....

by VijayKumar Sali, Jr. Software Developer ,Inkorus Solutions,Pune, India

How my final year Project landed me into my First job: Prathvi Raj Palekar(2010)

2010-07-06T09:43:00.002+05:30

My Project work:

My project Markmelive was a Web Based Application Using API. Basically its a Mashup of Facebook And Google Maps If we go to the logic or working there is no much complication in the project But the domain study which we did to make it work was a lot .

Approaching companies for Job:

So coming to the part of getting a job. I and Dastikop sir we together sent mails to some of the start up companies using our contacts. On the same day iIgot the interview cal and appointment call too.

What company was looking for?

Basically what company look for is like how ready you are . Definately the IDE we used in our project (Eclipse) had a plus point because all most all the development in industries are on IDE . then the technology we used FLEX is a emerging trend in the world . the industry will we definately happy to have some who have the knowledge in the resent trend Then once you have entered you will be working in all most all the domain u might have not imagined :).

Cross posted at SDMWORLD, Ravindra Dastikop, Onwards

Stop Searching and Start using

2010-07-01T12:19:00.001+05:30

Today we have enough information and connections. We are often tempted to procure more information by means of searching and browsing. We are also tempted to make more connections. But if you take a serious look at this phenomenon, we realize that somewhere we should stop searching for more information and bring an end to making more connections. We must ask deeper questions.

What can I do with the information that I already have?
What more uses can I find for this information?
Who in my network might need this info? what is the simplest way to reach them with this?

Thoughts in abundance

2010-05-23T19:49:00.002+05:30

I guess a person becomes wise the moment he realises that every thougt that erupts in mind is not worth capturing- he has to let many of them unnoticed- of many thoughts that he captures - not all them worth chasing- most them have to be discarded at once. Then when he realises that of the thoughts he chose to pursue further only few produce results. Then when he finally notices of all results obtained only few are considered as prized ones. Mind of a person produces about 50,000 thoughts a day.⁮

Working With Web-based Resources in Mind

2010-04-30T10:58:00.000+05:30

Web is a veritable resource. Its resourcefulness is expanding by the moment. These resources are globally accessible and many of them are free and available on 24/7 basis. Web resources today are assuming an stage of what might become a new language. A language is a resource that provides you with a set of means. These could be used for many activities including thinking, communicating to name a few. The means of language include words, phrases, grammar and meaning etc.

Working with language practically means harnessing these resources(means) towards certain ends. Web resources constitute something similar. A language worker- say an essayist, poet or even a teacher rarely invents a new word, but always uses an existing word or any other means to achieve a certain goal. No one ever has been honored for inventing a new word- but honored always for harnessing its potential meaning: story telling or communicating.

Here I use working as a term to denote the primary activity of a person: teaching, professional, learning. The working of a faculty is teaching, that of a student is learning. The web resources- tools and information are aimed at productive enhancement of any work, worker or working situation. Whether a worker is a student, faculty, professional or manager, the existing and emerging web tools can be used to ease the efforts and increase productivity.

Web resources also have a set of means that can be put into production. While new means of production are being always thought and are being built and made available, the scope for productive employment of existing tools is immense. It was never this high in the past. Availability of information in multiple forms- word, text, audio, multimedia and a range of tools that can be used to manipulate them into other useful forms is already exceedingly high and growing exponentially.

What does it mean to people like you and me. It is very simple: Use these resources as building blocks and design new resources, products and services by imaginatively combining them.

The challenge of infinite choices

2010-03-01T07:00:00.000+05:30

These are times of plentiful choices. In fact choices we have are practically infinite. Every bit of information that we get or encounter offers us a “potential” choice. Information is power and hence we are very powerful in this connected world powered by information and communication technologies (ICT). However we know that we are powerless unless we know what choice to consider. We are flooded with information.

We know success comes only through work and work is all about decision making – choosing right ones from a sea of choices. We control our destiny through the choices we make- what gets done and how we do it. Our choices determine our directions and therefore paths we take. So one of the eternal challenges is figuring out which few facts, bits and bytes are critical from all millions of pieces of information swirling around you- all that on a continuous, real-time basis.

Each one us must design her/his own method to tame this information overload and harness it in profitable manner. More is not always better at least in case information. What we need is figuring out RIGHT information sources and a straight forward way to reach it and procure information of relevance there. Winning with information is a step towards this. .

WebLab: A Place for students to explore web resources

2010-02-28T14:59:00.002+05:30

WebLab

New Brave World of Web Resources
Today we have plenty of web resources available. These resources range for simple tools- information, communication, collaboration, networking to entrepreneurial resources such as API. Time has come to help our students explore this new opportunity.

What is a web lab?
WebLab is a place where students can learn and explore web resources- and verify their utilities through variety of activities. These activities may be carried by the teacher or students to explore, to learn, to stimulate interest and develop favorable attitude towards web resources.

Need and purpose of WebLab
Some of the ways in which a WebLab can contribute to the learning and subsequent harnessing of the web resources are:

It provides an opportunity to students to understand and internalize the basic web resources through concrete applications
It enables the students verify or discover several web resources and applications using search and explore techniques
It helps students to build interest and confidence in learning and working with web resources
The WebLab provides an opportunity to exhibit relatedness of web resources with everyday applications
It gives greater scope for individual participation and exploration in the process of learning and becoming autonomous learners
It provides scope for greater involvement of both mind and the hand which facilitates cognition
The laboratory allows and encourages the students to think. Discuss with each other and the teacher and assimilate web resources in a more effective manner.
It enables teacher to demonstrate, explain and reinforce abstract web resources by using concrete examples and uses.

Your comments towards this initiative are welcome.

Toward Web-based Endevours

2010-02-27T14:50:00.003+05:30

Plentiful resources available on the web have created a new experimental and entrepreneurial opportunity: creating of web-based endeavors. A web-based Endeavour can be entrepreneurial or educational in nature. A Web-based endeavor is any project that harnesses a web-based resource in creating an end-user value or utility. For instance

A custom search engine (CSE) eliminates for the end user the drudgery of going through a flood of general search engine outputs by conducting search action within a mentioned list of one or more web sites or resources. Here is an example of CSE that helps students to search for seminar topics.
Search API enables a programmer to select a portion of search engine index and customize its output on a give web page or end-user screen. Here is an example or (example) in which search API is used to screen and filter a particular category of documents to be listed for the end user.
Web API from different service provider can be combined in innovative manner to creative innovative values for intended user. Here is an example in which APIs from a social networking site Facebook and web service provider Google Maps are used to create an AlumniMaps. These maps help administrators such as principal and HOD’s to regularly know about the whereabouts of their alumni

The above examples are simple and straightforward and are used to create unitary end-user value. However innovative combination of web-based resources can make it possible to create industry-strength value proposition and enterprises based on them. Here is an example. and Indian example

Meeting My College Teacher: Update of 20 years

2010-02-23T16:50:00.002+05:30

Last few days I spent attending my ailing mother who was admitted to a hospital in Mysore. One morning while I was on my way to hospital, I saw one saw a person moving slowly. I could faintly remember that face and while I came close to him, I said " Sir are u BMK?" Yes he said. BMK was my chemistry teacher while I doing my graduation in Sarada Vilas College, in Mysore during 82-85. Next few minutes he spent updating me about college, our old teachers and his colleagues. He said Prof. Janardhan Rao is now almost blind and is in Warrangal, with his daughter. Our mathematics teacher Prof Nagaraj Rao and another professor Narendra he said were no more. Prof. Nagarathna, Physics professor has moved to US after one of her son met with an accident. Later I visited college web site and noted that , Prof. Ashok Kumar is current principal and Prof. Nataraj is the vice principal. They taught us Botany and Kannada respectively. Those few minutes with BMK took me to two decades old memories.

Towards Lean Teaching

2010-01-27T10:16:00.006+05:30

Teaching can be seen as a process. It consists of a sequence of steps or functions : such as discovering information to delivering of lecture. Lean thinking aims to eliminate waste from any process. Therefore teaching is good candidate for the application of principles of lean thinking. Teaching is moving teaching what to teaching where. In the past, when schools were less in number and teacher were difficult get, teacher's job consisted of teaching a student "what and how". With the spread of education and advent of web, number of resources that teach you " what or how" are increasing in number and accessible from anywhere. In this context, teaching becomes more of "teaching where" to look for learning resources and how to harness them. Lean teaching is all about linking students to minimum number of learning resources. This must eliminate waste in terms of unsuccessful searches.

Network Proverbs

2010-01-23T12:00:00.003+05:30

With networks sweeping our life, it is time to observe them and crystallise their behaviour into proverbs. Here are two I have formed

You can't crawl the same web twice
On the web every search is a surprise

Informating Learners

2010-01-04T08:18:00.003+05:30

Experts recommend that learner's life at educational institution must be linked to their life outside of it. The learner's life outside of educational institution includes life at home and in community. Linking of learner's life to outside also implies that it must also include institutions where he/she is expected take positions and where his/her participation is required. One such future institution for a technical graduate is obviously industry. At higher education life this also means readying learner for professional life. Experts also recognise that given space, time and freedom,learners generate new knowledge by engaging with information passed on to them by adults: teachers and parents. We have been often told that we live in information age and information is a productive factor. The web has become a growing source of information and one of the necessary skills to be cultivated in learners is to "know where" i.e. ability to locate and procure information that they need for task on hand.

2009-12-28T08:17:00.001+05:30

I am experiementing with using web tools in enriching teaching process. Here is a blog where I list my experience http://ping.fm/j2kt7

Web: Future of Everything

2009-12-26T16:29:00.003+05:30

Web today is resourceful enough to create jobs, sustain careers and build enterprises and may even be able to usher new economic order. Understanding potential of resourceful web and designing a systematic approach to harness it is becoming a necessity. We need a web oriented career planning (WOCP). This planning process must make web central to all our career thinking and help us in determining the true potentail of the web and its far reaching implications in creating new web-based careers and in enriching traditional careers. In addition, this approach also help us in graduating ourself into web based career.

Nibbling for Success

2009-12-13T18:57:00.010+05:30

In this post, I am going list and describe four-step approach for success in any human endeavour. I am calling it a nibble for success since nibble is a computing term for a four-bit aggregation and as a verb it means doing things in small and steady steps. At any stage of our personal , professional or institutional life, we face the following questions.

What to do next ? : This is a fundamental question and answering this is very essential. The answer provides direction to individual or institution. For example. when companies ask this question, it may take form such as " what is our next product?" what is our next market?. When an individual poses this, it may turn out to be " what can I do after B.E? or what is the next position in my career path? Not knowing answer to this crucial questions puts us into a position or disadvantage which experts call " Strategic Gap". In other words we are facing a "strategic gap" or do not know the future direction to take.

How to do that ? Assuming that we have overcome the strategic gap ie we know what to do next, the consequent challenge is to answer the question. How to do that ? ( which was decided in the previous stage). For instance, suppose an IT company decides to enter Chinese market or a engineering students decides to pursue M.Tech, then knowing how to do that is the challenge. Company may enter new market directly on its own or go for joint venture etc. The engineering student may choose to appear for GATE or PGCET. In case you do not know answer to this challenge then you are in position " Knowledge Gap"

Core competence: In this stage, one has to ask what is its/his special strength that can be put into use for achieving the stated objective. In other words what is the area in which you have excellence which can be exploited. For instance, a company may use its search excellence to dominate Internet space while the competitor may use its software strength for the same purpose. A student planning for GATE may identify one or more core subjects ( such as maths, DMS, OS) to focus during his preparation.

Context competence: The last but still important question is how to get it done. For instance, a student may choose to opt for some additional coaching as part of preparation. This is called context competence, because choice of coaching institute is an important step and one has to choose an excellent institute for training. But this is not a core strength because anyone can join that institute.

Freshest Thoughts, Fastest Way

2009-10-24T08:47:00.002+05:30

Humans have some advantages. Through our language use, humans are able to bind time i.e, human beings of one generation have been able to communicate with human beings of other generations. In other words, one generation can learn from the records of knowledge and experience. The inventions in the past such as printing machines have only amplified this process. But learning that books and sharing of experience that records facilitated was of different nature. When you read a book, however recent it is, you are consulting with the "past". past fact, past thought etc

However, the web or the Internet has transformed this bind time into new world of possibilities. With web features such as chat, email, blog etc, you can get connected to and consult with active mind in the "present". This in a sense makes it available to all a kind of " world brain" that they can access in real time.

So what web has done to us is share " Freshest Thoughts, fastest way"

Our Times, Our Opportunities

2009-10-22T16:45:00.002+05:30

Anyone living today is probably living in one of best times of human history. No time in the recorded human history was so opportune for individuals and institutions as it is today. Today's world is full of technology and challenges. It has so many technologies available and so challenges to face that it is very interesting proposition for individuals and institutions alike. You may start with a technology of your choice and choose a problem that can be solved by the use of that technology. Companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro used ICT technologies to create business and generated lakhs of jobs. Companies such as Suzlon are at creating greener and safer world. Hospitals such as Apollo are busy at creating healthier India. So it looks tha all that is needed is find your "call" and go for it. It need not start big, Infosys started with 7 people in 1981 and Suzlon with just 20 people in 1995. So go ahead and find your challenge.

Judy Jade in Rashee's Life

2009-10-06T23:04:00.006+05:30

Sorrow sought no permission or made any advance announcement when it entered Rashee’s life. Of course it is inherent nature of sorrow to be sudden and devastating as we had seen in case of Yelling for Yasmin. And it indeed devastated Rashee’s life. It was this day last year; fate gifted him a Judy Jade in his family. About three months before that he was one day morning woken up to a phone call from josha informing about an operation she had to undergo later in the week. Of course, it was not totally unexpected or surprising. She had been under some kind of medical treatment for about a decade or so and hospital visits were regular. On the day she underwent operation, she spoke to Rashee in rather cheerful manner saying that she is returning home within a week. And she did. Mean while her husband. shashi has hinted some impending health challenge, although very subtly. Rashee’s and his mother went to specialist to seek further medical advice and there waited sorrow to make a sudden entry. All that doctor told was “there is no hope in this case, just let her live as she wishes”. This was very upsetting and troubling news to all: Rashee, his parents. That night, no one could sleep at all in Rashee’s home. Josha was in her husband’s house and was not informed about her dreaded medical condition: she was being gradually conquered by cancer. Most optimistic guesses gave her not more than 3 months of life. Not able to get sleep at all Rashee’s mother got up at around 3 in the morning and told in a very depressive mood “is it right on our part to keep josha in dark about her medical condition, she is just 40 years, and may have something to say about her thinking on her 16 year old daughter,” but this can happen if and only if she is told about her impending end. But should it be told to her at all and if so who should tell this to her. After all, conventional thinking urges you against that. Finally it was Rashee who was chosen to tell this.

Next day, Rashee went to Josha’s house, she was still sleeping. He talked to her 16year old daughter and her father and informed about his decision to “tell the fact to Josha”. Once he entered Josha room, he spoke many other things and finally said “see josha, you have been diagnosed with cancer. But it is in initial stages. Please tell any of your last wishes”. Surprisingly Josha did not react at all. However, she did list 3 of her wishes to be carried out. But in the afternoon when Rashee went to meet her again she asked “Rashee, how serious is my medical condition”. Next three months were the most difficult days for Rashee and his family. Hospital stay was a hell. It was this day last year, 7th October around 4 am, Rashee heard Josha becoming breathless over phone, and later took a train to see her mortal remains and took part in last her rites.

Incidentally, Rashee is none other than me and Josha was my sister who died of cancer at a very young age of 41 on 7.10.2008. Sorry for sharing such a sorrow story.

PS: I had almost forgotten this. But the job of evaluating “creative writing” paper contest held as part of Fiesta surfaced this back into my conscious. The topic given for creative writing was “Today is the last day of my life “and of the 42 papers I read, most of the deaths in those paper were due to cancer. Thanks organizers for choosing me to be a judge.

Interacting for Results

2009-10-01T21:26:00.002+05:30

This is an interactive age. By this, I mean we live in a world of infinite interaction possibilities. In fact as Bill Gates has has noted, we can interact with the world at the speed of our thoughts. In this interactive world, the measure of our efforts and results must be based on quantity and quality of our interactions. Our measure of success is to be based on quality of our interactions. The ability for Initiating, selecting, directing sustaining and eventually successfully concluding interactions is an essential but survival skill for individuals and institutions alike. The chance of success is proportional to the number of and quality of interactions initiated by an individual or institutions. It can be said that “compressing as many interactions as possible in 24 hours” becomes the goal of every success seeking person

What do U say after u say Hello?

2009-09-28T19:17:00.008+05:30

Understanding the working of our mind has been one of the oldest and long running human pursuit. Religions and scriptures although have given paramount prominence to mind and its roles in shaping personal and social life, they do not have any concrete suggestions and steps to understand it, at least from common man's perspectives. For long, most of human experiences and emotional responses were explained by attributing them to external causes or celestial sources. With the advent of Sigmund Freud, a first attempt was made to understand and explain human mind, its functions and some of human behaviour in a scientific manner. With the introduction of notions such as conscious, unconscious mind, ego, id, superego, Sigmund Freud to certain extent succeeded in unravelling the mystery of mind. For instance, dreams are nothing but the release of emotions during sleep suppressed by the conscious mind while we are awake. We get dreams during sleep because unconscious mind takes over the charge from conscious mind and lets mind to express itself freely without any inhibitions. His Interpretation of dreams published during 1901 remained a great reference for psychologists around the world for many decades. Freud was followed by greats such as Carl Jung. However, most of the insights obtained by the pioneering psychologists were expressed in very technical language making it impossible for common man to read and benefit from those findings.

Advent of simple Tools

For such people came a tool for understanding mind, called transaction analysis. The originator of this simple but very practical tool was Eric Berne. His book " What do you say after you say Hello" was a landmark contribution in helping people understand the working of mind and explain their behaviors.

Aurigo gets Microsoft Dynamics Certified

2009-09-23T17:26:00.006+05:30

Aurigo, a Bangalore based software company has become the first IT company in architecture engineering and construction space to secure certificate for Microsoft Dynamics. The certification - also called CFMD has enabled Aurigo and Microsoft to integrate their respective construction/inspection solution and ERP platform to provide a first-of-its kind software package targetted at construction industry.

Bricks 2009, Aurigo's web based estimation and management application for construction industry, has now become part of Microsoft's ERP solution- Microsoft Project server and Dynamics AX- to cover both general business and construction specific requirements. The package is set to integrate inspection, financial estimation and project management aspects, which would enable projects to be carried out effectively.

Financial Engineering: A Discipline to study and a career option

2009-09-21T10:07:00.006+05:30

Modern day world offer in numerable disciplines to study and to choose a career. Here is one such exciting line to consider.

Financial Engineering is a process that utilizes existing financial instruments to create a new and enhanced product of some type. Just about any combination of financial instruments and products can be used in financial engineering. The process may involve a simple union between two products, or make use of several different products to create a new product that provides benefits that none of the other instruments could manage on their own.

One excellent example of financial engineering is financial reinsurance. Companies that offer reinsurance options essentially provide a way for the ceding insurer to minimize a drain on available resources when a major shift in premium growth or reduction is taking place. In this scenario, the process of financial engineering helps to create a stable environment that will allow the insurer to remain solvent and stable even when extreme conditions exist.

For the consumer, the work of a financial engineer to create new finance product offerings can be a great advantage. In some instances, the new and improved product is simply a repackage of several independent but complimentary products made available at a lower price. For example, the consumer may find that purchasing insurance coverage that provides dental, hospital, and prescription coverage may be significantly less expensive than purchasing individual plans

.
Financial engineering works in other environments as well. The financial theory of offering several existing products under one package has become very common in the telecommunication industry. Many providers today offer bundled service packages that include local phone service, unlimited national long distance, Internet service, and cable or digital satellite television. The end result of this type of arrangement means one lower price to obtain three or more services at significant cost savings to the consumer.

Sometimes known as computational finance, financial engineering relies heavily on mathematically calculating the outcome if various combinations of financial instruments are offered under one umbrella as a package deal. Usually, the calculations indicate that the providers stand to do very well with the new hybrid financial product, as the product holds the potential to attract new consumers who would have foregone use of one or more of the instruments if the only option was to purchase them individually.

source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-financial-engineering.htm
additional resources: http://www.statementofpurpose.com/essayuncq_fineng.html

Balancing of Both Worlds: Kim Clijster Way

2009-09-18T12:26:00.004+05:30

Now a days, there is lot of talks, debates and discussions on how "demanding" professions are becoming. We are told unless one balances his or her professional life with personal life in intelligent ways, it may lead to chaotic situations and invite health and associated challenges. One set of opinions says that it is impossible to have best of both worlds at all. This is more so in case of a woman professionals. Well, that view looks shattered by at least one recent example of Kim Clijsters.

Kim Clijsters, the winner of 2009 US Open seems to have found right balance to enjoy to the fullest extent the best of both worlds: Professional tennis career and fulfilling family life. After winning 2005 US open, she opted out of professional circuit to devote herself for setting up her family. Two year later, after giving birth to kid, she came out of retirement and went on to win the US 2009 women cup.

So the lesson is: The question for a professional is not which of the two worlds to choose, but choosing best from both worlds.

Wipro’s New Innovation Hub

2009-09-14T09:43:00.005+05:30

Innovation is a process of connecting new things and trends into business models. Nurturing innovation is an integral part of any forward looking business. Wipro, a leader in the Indian IT sector has announced the launch of its Technology innovation Hub, Sangam. The purpose of Sangam is to create an integrated Centre of Excellence (CoE) that work across various technologies to develop innovative IT solutions. The centre has active participation by IBM, Microsoft, SAS, Sun Microsystem and Teradata. Located in Wipro’s Bangalore campus, the innovation will be involved in

• Enabling customers to have compelling view of the solutions

• Augmenting the development of strong competencies in technology

• Evaluating emerging tools and technologies and incubate customer specific solutions

EMC's India Strategy

2009-09-13T10:49:00.008+05:30

EMC’s India Growth Plans

Now a day, what is your “India strategy” is a regular question faced by any international company worth the name. Expansion into Indian market and investments in India are now a top priority for many companies. Microsoft TCS Virtualization center is one such example. EMC, a leading provider of information infrastructure solutions will be making an incremental investment to the tune of Rs. 7273 crores in the nextfive years. The quantum of invest is highest for any of EMC’s venture outside of US. The investment focuses on the following key areas

Expansion of research and development ( R & D) infrastructure
Increasing global services capabilities and
Adding more technologies for deeper levels of engagements for local customers and partners
In a new initiative integrates EMC’s four global centers from four separate locations across two cities into one campus to be housed in its newly built employee facility with a capacity to accommodate 3500 employees in Bangalore.

Virtualization: TCS & Microsoft Join Hands

2009-09-13T10:43:00.004+05:30

Virtualization is a process of abstraction of underlying computing resources from the user. Virtualization helps end user to focus on his task while system takes care of providing required resources. Virtualization can be used across all IT architectural layers such as server, machine, application and desktop. It is a value-addition provided by the service providers. Microsoft and TCS have formed a strategic alliance in the form of a Virtualization Centre of excellence (CoE) to be based in Chennai. The aim of CoE is to help customers experience the right approach to applying and managing virtualization process in their business environment. The idea is to leverage best of breed Microsoft technologies: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System centre Virtual Machine manager 2008.

Software is the differentiator in smart phones

2009-09-12T10:03:00.006+05:30

In smart phone market, features such as camera, email access and games are becoming common and commodity. Software is a new “differentiator” in smart phone domains. Developing their own platform allows a smart phone company to offer applications such as social networking sites and software unique to the phone. This help them attracting and retaining customers. Android entry into Indian mobile segment was mentioned in an earlier post: Android makes Indian Debut. One of the software platforms for which smart phone companies are converging is Android by Google. Android operating system specially designed for mobile devices allows smart phone companies to benefit from the brand name and harness the myriad of applications already available. Android’s open-source nature, meaning developers can customize the software to meet their own needs. Currently about 50% of smart phone run on Nokia’s Symbian operating system and research in motion and windows mobile are next two leading choices. Apple’s App Store already has tens of thousands of applications available for users of its iPhone to download.

Patent: A Powerful form of IPR

2009-09-11T11:03:00.002+05:30

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are in vogue. Every knowledge worker, enterprise, economy is realising its importance and role in global environment. Patent, one of the most famous form of IPR is proving to be very powerful means in safeguarding one's creative ideas and expressions. Here is an illustration. The software giant Microsoft has been ordered to pay penalty and stop selling its popular word processing product MS Word for its patent infringement. According to US courts, the Microsoft has been asked to do so because it has violated a patent owned by a another company i4i. The patent is related to XML. Microsoft has used the patented technology without paying license fee to i4i

Discovering New Career Paths

2009-09-09T07:10:00.003+05:30

Ever since IT industry came into lime light in 1990’s and become a desired career destination for technical graduates, they followed a very simple and straight forward career plan: complete degree, get campus recruited, join company and have a “settled” career path with occasional vertical and horizontal moves (promotions, marriages, specialization etc). Fortunately for over a decade or so it has worked very well. Many of my own students have been still serving the company they joined after graduation for nearly twenty years.

Life is a basket of surprises and it pops them very unexpectedly. Like the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that forced European traders to discover alternatives to land routes which they have been used for centuries , the current recession or economic slowdown (circa 2008) has derailed many a career and forcing people to find new career paths. One of the paths that seems to be catching attention is that of pursuing higher education. For instance, the International institute of Information Technology, Bangalore a premier institute offering specialized courses in IT domain has received more than 2000 applications this year for the 120 PG seats at the institute. The VTU, Belgaum has seen a a jump of 300% in the number of applications received this year. Although the above observation exemplify the trend, the rush to higher education is seen everywhere.

Although recent recession has forced many professionals towards academics, higher education always pays in the long run and every one should consider it as a regular option. With the availability of educational loans and scholarships, higher education has become a relatively easier way to follow towards a rewarding professional career. To help you in this direction, we have taken up a small initiative that connects you to available options and creates awareness on possible directions. To know them visit onwards regularly.

Good Luck in your career discovery endeavour

Billion Dollar Company by 2014: MindTree’s approach

2009-09-07T19:51:00.005+05:30

MindTree, a ten year young Indian IT company aspiring to be a billion dollar company in next 5 years (2014) .Given its feat of becoming a 100 million dollar company was achieved in six years, this target seems to be well within its reach. Although global down turn has come out as an unexpected obstacle, it has drawn out the following approach to realize its dream figure.

MindTree started with two engines of growth – IT services and R & services contributing 75% and 25% revenues respectively. MindTree is well aware that it can not reach its dream number unless it expands scope of its business. Hence it has identified six growth engines to develop. It has acquired Aztec Soft from which they have got two more growth engines namely testing and R & D services (Although MindTree already had R & D, Aztec has made it a bigger pie. Now it has created six profit centre namely IT services, Testing, Infrastructure management and technical support ( IMTS), Knowledge services and Product engineering. Each one of them are run as separate business units ( SBU) and expected to make contribution towards its over goal of becoming a billion dollar company 2014. Good Luck MindTree

Walling Wikipedia

2009-09-04T12:07:00.006+05:30

Wikipedia is a well known destination for information seekers on the web. In fact it is one of the 10 top most popular web sites on the web. Founded about 8 years ago, it is built using a simple concept of crowd sourcing where in anyone connected to the net and has something to say can contribute to wikipedia's growing repository. No wonder as online population grew, contributuions grew in number and now wikipedia has more content than traditionally popular encyclopedia such as Britanica and has fast replacing it as a first choice destination for information seekers.

However, allowing anyone or everyone to contribute had led sometimes to situations where in quality of content contributed was shrouded in clouds. As wikipedia is gaining respect as a reliable resource, there is a need to transform its approach of content collection from embrace-the-chaos culture into something more mature and dependable. In other words, wikipedia needs to become a judiciously edited content from current edit-free content publisher.

Wikipedia foundation realises that it has become a "part of modern day infrastrtcture of how people get information" and intends to put the system into effect where in content contributed is subjected to editorial review before it goes public. In other words, Wikipedia is getting walled.

First Android-powered Mobile makes debut in India

2009-09-03T08:13:00.006+05:30

India's first Android-powered mobile phone comes in partnership with Airtel. A tablet-style device, compact and sleek is called HTC Magic. It provides good mobile Internet and multimedia experience. Customers enjoy free data download of 100MB per month for six months. The device feature include a 3.2 inch HVGA touch-screen display,a trackball for easy access and a 3.2 mega-pixel camera.

The Andorid OS offers a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system,middle ware and key mobile applications. It also has features of : Outlook synchronization, smart dialer and an onscreen keyboard with predictive text. Earlier Linux OS was integrated into Nokia mobiles.

Intellectual Property: A New Reality

2009-09-02T10:09:00.001+05:30

New ages bring about new realities. The knowledge era has brought out a new reality called "Intellectual property". The reason for this and rationale for its prominence is that today much of economic and social value creation is through "idea-based" products and services. We are experiencing a "Commoditization " of manufactured products. Making these commodities more attractive to markets is possible only through adding "intelligent" features. The creation and realization of such intelligent features demands new approaches and new ideas. To encourage people to generate new ideas demands motivation. The generators of ideas when convert their ideas into practical application create "intellectual property". Unless community rewards these creative people for their "Intellectual property" one can not expect a sustained flow of new ideas and applications. "Intellectual property rights" is the means that assures the inventor legal ownership while he discloses his invention for public good.

Acquisition of companies

2009-08-31T09:29:00.007+05:30

For a growing company joint venture provides one means to grow in a different product line, sector or different geography. It combines the knowledge of joint venture partners in creating a new business opportunity. However, there are other growth ways open to business. In case a business has enough financial resources, it can buy another company altogether. This is called acquisition. Acquisition is the best way to change the growth pattern as it balances specialization and diversification. It is often the best way to bring new competence and new knowledge into business. Here are some recent examples

Yahoo has bought Maktoob.com which is expected to help Yahoo to accelerate its strategy of expanding in high-growth emerging markets.
Infosys is ready to buy companies in Europe, Latin America, the middle east, Japan and Australia. They are looking at companies serving sectors such as energy and health care
ArcelorMittal and Tata Corus are other two examples

Linux rises up in Nokia World

2009-08-29T12:17:00.006+05:30

Nokia has released a high-end phone running on Linux software. The New N900 model, with cellular connection, touch screen and slide-out keyboard uses a linux version that works well in parallel with symbian in this high-end model. This model uses a processor called ARM's Cortex-A8 processor. Nokia's earlier attempt to use Linux in its "Intenet Tablets" was not able to impress customers.

It represents a great step forward for Linux domain as this shows linux's ability fit into many sizes.

Joint Venture: A need for a growing company

2009-08-28T08:27:00.004+05:30

A growing business needs expansion into new areas. The opportunities for growing business are always plentiful than the means to realise them. Business must decide what opportunities it wants to purse and what are the steps it has to take to realise that selected opportunity. One of the well known business strategies considered in such situation is joint venture.

A join venture, in which two companies combine as partners to found another independent company but jointly-owned third company is often the best way to enter a new market from that of either company. Joint-venture is also a good approach to bring two separate knowledge resources to bear on a new opportunity.

For example, in 1981 Maruti Udyog ( Now Maruti suzuki) was created as a Joint Venture between Indian Government and Suzuki to produce people car in India. The JV produced its first care within 13 months and released to the market. This example shows how technology was brought from another company to serve another market

A more recent example is that of Infosys and MortageFlex systems which have created a new JV. The JV or alliance focuses on support of US loan servicing, loan modification initiatives. Mortageflex systems is a leading origination and servicing technology solution supplier for the US mortgage industry. The right mix of service offerings, experience and technology of partners gives US lenders and servicers an opportunity to eliminate ramp-up fixed costs and staff for relatively short durations.

Learning in the Linked Enviornment

2009-08-27T08:43:00.011+05:30

Learning has been, still is and will always be an important human activity. What needs to be learnt,how to learn, from where to learn may change over time, and they do, but need for learning remains as long as individuals live and human race lasts. Progress in human society, or evolution as some prefer to call, has always necessitate learning new things, in novel ways and in newer environments (hunting in forests, cultivating lands, building forts to name few).

Periodically, the advent of technologies have changed and sometimes altogether altered the very process of learning and have demanded a new category of learning skills. The invention of printing press for instance, made learning from books (as contrast to learning from a teacher in a face to face mode )a possibility in the beginning and a necessity later. A well read man is example of both showing the importance of learning from books and personal achievement.

Contemporary technological developments have again changed the learning landscape. They have transformed learning environment and are posing new learning challenges. They demand new skills (as book did with reading and made literacy a necessity) - network skills to be more specific. Online resources are replacing traditional books and libraries and are becoming more accessible through multiple channels such as web, mobile and even TV. It is a growing experience for many that it is far easier to search on the web than to do the same on one's own desktop or in traditional library.

Learning in the new linked environment-as I cal it demands a new approach and warrants the acquiring of new basic skills. First and most important learning skill needed is ability to search - how and where to find learning resources on the linked environment (web). Second skill is the ability to filter relevant material from heap of results obtained through search and thirdly an ability to read resources online and finally to mark them for future reference. I shall touch of all these in future posts. Mean while you may know your learning styles.

Inventing New: nature may not offer Good Example

2009-08-25T10:04:00.012+05:30

Invention is a welcome activity and creative process. The reason for invention is usually necessity and the result of invention may be anything from a simple solution to altogether paradigm shift in very process of business or life. Invention being a creative process needs motivation, inspiration and even examples. One of the best source of inspiration would be surrounding environment including nature. But some times even nature might not have found a most effective manner of doing things: that is not invented best way.

For instance, when man wanted to fly in the skies, the immediate inspiration came from birds. Early inventors tried to imitate birds, and their wings in building flying objects - i.e aeroplanes. To design new planes, the European inventor Da Vinci tried to have planes with feathers that flapped up and down. But later experiments found limitations of such wings and redesigned the wings that have no similarity with birds feather. The lesson during invention process is to learn from nature but go beyond

Discovery & Invention

2009-06-19T15:38:00.002+05:30

Have you found something that none in the world knows. Then you have made an invention. Did what you found existed already and you are the first person to uncover it. Then you have made discovery. Edison invented electric bulb and Columbus discovered America

New Age Paradigms: General

2009-05-02T14:07:00.009+05:30

Paradigm is a conceptual position about something such as phenomenon. The phenomenon may be natural and man-made. For instance, in astronomy geocentric and heliocentric are two fundamentally different and diametrically opposite paradigms about relative positions of earth and sun. Evolving human minds constantly struggle to find out new paradigms to explain natural or man-made phenomenon such as technology. Newton's laws of motion, Galileo's laws pertaining to pendulum are two paradigmatic views of motion. Once a paradigm is widely accepted and it becomes a standard for practice and behavior. The occasional arrival of new paradigm invalidates the assumption of older paradigms and takes much more time for wider acceptance and practice. The valid assumptions of old paradigms continued to be practiced under new and changed atmosphere out of habit. This prevents total harnessing of new possibility. Such paradigms that have past their time and are no more valid or partially useful are called Paradigms of the past. I shall be listing and discussing some them elsewhere.

Autoponsibility:attendant consequence of Autonomy

2009-05-01T11:59:00.003+05:30

"Person close to action in any human endeavour must have complete freedom of choice" asserts the spirit of autonomy. Autonomy in educational institutions means institution running the course more than the university in general and faculty in particular have freedom to choice. The range of choices to both institutions and faculty range from determining target audience to its courses to designing the finer details of each course. Starting from curriculum design to deciding content and phases and pace a course is left to individual faculty. The assumption is the person in charge is most qualified to make informed decisions and hence must be given freedom to decide.

As we know that every right or freedom comes with its own duties and responsibility. Autonomy is a special kind and higher degree of freedom. So each one of stake holder who have the privilege of autonomy must realise there is equally special responsibility which I call " autoponsibility"

We differ in our Learning Styles- Find out Your way of Learning

2009-04-30T12:49:00.008+05:30

Traditionally we have been told that there is only one way of learning: reading and writing. That is the reason for centuries all academic works revolve around these two activities. However, reading and writing approach to learning works well for most of people, it does not work well for all. Educational experts now agree there are different learning styles and each one of us has to find out our preferred way of learning. There are four distinct learning styles

Visual/Verbal Learning style: Such learners enjoy reading and benefit from written hand outs. They claim to remember by "seeing the words". Such learners enjoy learning on their own and usually excel in traditional exams. Exams provide them a chance to reproduce the words in isolation and independently

Visual/non-verbal Learning style: Such students learn through charts, diagrams of all kinds, including a video. Texts books with text will not be useful for these learners. Books with illustrations, diagrams can help them learn effectively. They learn "pictures". They use mapping techniques and diagrammatic approach
Tactile/Kinaesthetic Learning style: These learner learn by doing. During lab experiments they learn by "hands on" They enjoy school trips to museums, factories. They are not good at note taking. They use sketches, work sheets to help their learning objectives
Auditory/verbal Learning Style: These students learn through listening to "lectures" and recordings. They take part in class room discussions and also debates etc. They learn by "hearing"

The implication is that as a teacher one must be able to classify her students into appropriate groups and meet their learning needs accordingly.

On her part, student must identify her style of learning to maximise returns on learning efforts.

I have been using techniques to help students learn by posting reading materials on the web and also making it available in audio form

Making of N.R Narayana Murthy

2009-04-26T14:29:00.008+05:30

N.R.Narayana Murthy (NRN), one of the founders of IT giant Infosys, has published a book A Better India: A Better World. NRN claims that he never wanted to write a book because books contain intentions of author where as he is always interested in the results generated by the intentions. In other words, he is a doer. However he finally penned the book at the instance of his son. The book contains interesting anecdotes and insights into one of the most successful entrepreneurial minds of our times.

Like most young men of every post independent generation in India, NRN was always wondered on why there exists such a inequality in India: poor and rich, urban and rural India and ruling class and ruled. In fact the book recollects a 21-hour long train travel spent by NRN in Europe in early 1970's in answering those questions. At that time he came across three books that he says shaped his personality and inspired him to take the path of entrepreneurship. The books and the lessons he picked from them are as follows.

1. My Experiments with Truth by Gandhi:
Lesson Learnt :Leadership by Example

2. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
Lesson Learnt: Decent and hardworking people have succeeded against all odds everywhere in the world.

3. Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon
Lesson Learnt: Ruling class and Ruled have different rights and responsibility with a huge asymmetry in favour of rulers

NRN calls them three pieces in his development puzzle. Once he assembled them, he started his entrepreneurial experiments and the rest is history

Surviving Information Floods

2009-04-20T19:39:00.004+05:30

We live in a crowded world. Crowded with people. Our world is inundated with information. We all have been experiencing this. You do not have to go anywhere far way to verify this. Just check your INBOX either email or cell. You may be looking for one or two "must read" emails among the heaps of messages crowding messages. And this happens everyday and for some of us every time we open our emails. You are expected to face this daunting task of going through all unwanted emails to find one that is important and relevant. Sometimes, when you are tired, this inundation may also cause you to delete accidentally an important message that you have waiting all along. How do you succeed here?. What is your strategy. Here is a suggestion. Apply the idea of CLEAR for every message that passes through you.

C- is this information connected to my present work?- How is it relevant?

L- List of next steps?- What should I do now that I know this bit of information?

E- Expectation- What is the potential of this information?

A-Ability - what tools and support do I need to use this information?

R- Return What is in it for me? or my work

Apply this to every bit of information that comes across you and may be you stand a better chance of success. Or at least you don't get submerged in the information sea.

Towards Web of Excellence ( WoE)

2009-03-29T16:28:00.016+05:30

Listen to this post

Organizing resources towards realising objectives has been a constant challenge in human endeavours. In pre-industrial age days work was manual and organized around individual members of a family such as farmers or carpenters. With the introduction of machines, work was organized in factory and around production. Division of labour, departmentalization and specialisation were dominant themes around which all organization principles were built upon. Centre of excellence- represented a practically perfect form of organization is to "bring in" the identified best resources-material, machinery and men under one roof and put them into productive work. All organizations followed a similar line of action: determine the purpose, identify relevant resources, bring them "inside" the enterprise and put them into production. In a predominantly material based industry and supported by manual work it did work well and produced wonderful results.

Now we live in information age and a connected world. Excellent information - idea, design, creativity remain outside the enterprise. One can not always bring them "in" let alone identify them. Information is essentially an outside resource. Any information that is brought in into the inside of an enterprise may be stale by the time it comes in. One can not build excellence based on "stale" information. The alternative, or in fact the imperative is to "outlink" to sources of excellent information and having access to right information always instead of picking information that is "right" at the time of capture. So this imperative of being "connected to right information source always" than to " collect" information from there and store it for future use leads to a conclusion that organizing principle for future organization is not "centre of excellence" but "web of excellence". Web of excellence does not bring "in" best instead "outlink" to the best. This demands a paradigm shift in organizational approach from "excellence in storage " to "excellence in search"

Welcome to the Age of Texpression

2009-03-01T08:52:00.006+05:30

We are living in an age where technologies have invaded in all walks of our life. Technology is assuming a status of a language. When humans invented or discovered language, they found a means of expression in it. Once alphabets were determined and words were formed, ability to produce expressions using those words became the differentiator between people and society, Poets or authors are known for their command over language and hence their expression ability.

Today in our technology-enabled and technology-embedded world, we must coin a new term to denote the ability of individual to use tools or technologies to express. My choice is Texpression. Technology today has a potential and is doing today what language did once for human society. It is providing a means to capture one's thought and express it for rest of the world. Texpressions are human expressions enabled by underlying traditional language and wrapped in technology or tools. Blog is an example for Texpression.

Power of language to express and power of printed word to spread expression created a new species of people called authors May be now time has come to Texpress :Using tools to enhance human expressions and reach wider audiences.

Web Technologies for Teachers

2009-02-15T13:35:00.002+05:30

Periodically emergence of new technologies have altered the nature and scope of human endeavors. One such endeavor that has been regularly benefited from new technologies is education. In pre-printing press days education was by and large oral and limited to physical delivery of lesson. The advent of printing press and hence the printed word changed it for ever. The ability to publish books created universities and authors.

With the advent of WWW we have a new power with us. Hyperword. Hyperword is a created in connected environment. Printed word captured the oral knowledge for ever and made it available everywhere in the world. The hyperword goes beyond that. At the same time a hyper word informs reader and also has a potential to another source on informed topic. This twin features of hyperword is the basis of all that is happening and all that can happen in the days to come.

Some of resources available for teaching that exploit hyperword are

The power of hyperword- non-linear jumping potential and having multimedia content can do wonder for teaching world

Build Career before buying..

2009-01-21T10:33:00.003+05:30

One of students who was campus recruited by a MNC has just completed a 3-month in-company training. He told me " On the last day of our training programme we were asked to assemble at one place and we all thought that we would be receiving placement orders in one of the many of MNC's centers across India". Instead they were given 15-days paid holidays. This announcement caught most of the trainees unaware. One by one went into action mode. One of them cancelled her air ticket to home town and instead booked bus ticket. Another one downgraded his ticket from expensive Volvo bus to ordinary bus.

This seemingly insignificant event highlights one of the deeply seated trends in our youth. Tendency to spend rather lavishly even before earning it completely. In general it is good to spend when you start earning. Every spending helps someone in the economy.

The current economic down turn is very genuine and is hurting many. To be sure, it is hurting some of them very severely. But many of them have made themselves more vulnerable because above mentioned trend: committing too much before earning it. Even before they are 3-6 months into firs job, many of them have bought cars, and within an year they gone for apartments with huge EMI commitments.

Of course nothing wrong with this. They have been consciously or unconsciously borrowing a pattern of progress practised by their parental generation. The parental generation believed that the major phases of life are: complete education, find job, marriage and buildi or buy a house. With a guaranteed job for a couple decades (either in government or in a company in protected economy) and with predetermined dates of retirements such a policy made sense and in a sense was in fact necessary. Once into world of work, the system took care of promotions and pensions.

However current industrial jobs do not come with such privileges. But our youngsters presumed that kind of assurance and went ahead of proven path. To certain extent gravity of current problems faced by many of them may be blamed on it.

Our youngsters must realise that today's job world is radically different one. One must consider building career before buying cars or committing for expensive but career limiting commitment on apartment. One must build career all along the path to have any hopes of sustained career. The current career path is not of type " once educated and always progressing "kind of job world. They must spend at least first 3-5 years of career in building competencies to ensure sustained career progress. Ideally you must be the last person to be considered for layoff. That happens only when you have a strong career record- experiences and exposure. That comes only with strategic intent. Do not think that your first job is everlasting or current educational qualification is always sufficient. Consider some investments in higher education and domain expertise. Build strong career cars and apartment will follow.

Teaching Realities

2009-01-01T18:37:00.007+05:30

A couple of decades ago, there was only one place to watch a movie: Film theatre or talkies. You have to wait until the release of movie usually on Friday, go to the theatre, buy ticket and watch the movie. Theatres had fixed and regular times for shows.

About a decade or so ago, things started changing. Introduction of CD allowed people to watch movies at places and timeds of their convenience such as at home and in the evening- provided they can afford CD player. Some time later Cd rental opened up movie watch opportunities ti many more on weekdays- in office- in functions and in bus during travels or in hotels during stay. In other words theatre gradually lost the primary position as the place for watching movies.

Something similar has happened or happening to class room teaching and learning. While I was studying in school during 1970's, it was classroom where most or even all learning and teaching happened. if someone missed class for whatever reason, there was not second chance or any other resources to reply upon except a friendly classmate's notes or help. Things started changing slowly in late 1980's and rapidly in 90's. Learning was never confined to classroom only. Alternatives became available: tuition classes, guides, notes, coaching classes, summer coaching centres and so on. The appeal and popularity of these and other avenues for learning alternatives so much so that most students practically forced to avail or subscribe one and many time more of such services. My daughter who is appearing for X standard exam this year has many resources including exam recokner.

Because of these classroom proceedings today are so boring for students that they hate it.

With such kind of learning environment for well over 12 years or so, today students enter professional courses such as engineering or medicine or management. They find it hard to orient themselves for classroom learning.

Teaching for Results

2008-12-21T13:04:00.003+05:30

Teaching is my profession and it is in a kind of crisis. Indeed, my students struggle with broken learning processes, teachers struggle with defective delivery process. Let me elaborate and provide evidence. In a semester long course though designed for continuous learning students show peak learning efforts during and around 3 IAs and final exams. On the other hand, teachers deliver each class as if students are eagerly waiting for immediate learning. This is a serious synchronization challenges for both students as well as teacher. On student's side, the teacher's delivery becomes a kind of non-stop noise or sahasra nama and for a teacher it is a kind brochure reading in front of a uninterested customer. NO teacher nor the students want any of these situations, but with current teaching/learning processes most of them are unavoidable.

Now I wish to attack this challenge face on. In other words, I wish to synchronise teaching delivery with learning consumption. In this regards, kindly ponder over the following questions and send your answers.

What exactly is learner's problem?

How can teacher solve it completely?

How can teacher minimize student's total efforts of consumption and make it hassle free?

How do I provide exactly what student's want?

How do I deliver vlaue where he wants it?

How do I reduce his efforts to solve his learning probem?

I shall be pondering over these issues for some time. Please do send u r points and pointers.

About this Blog

2008-11-28T08:56:00.006+05:30

I am Ravindra Dastikop, currently working as an assistant professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department of SDM College of Engineering & Technology, Dharwad. I have been working in this institution since 1987 and have worked in different capacities. I started my career in the computer lab which was then part of Electronics and Communication Engineering department. Since early days I have taken fascination into computers and information technology aspects. In the past I have been the first user in my department to many of IT utilities such as emails. I created my first email account on hotmail way back in 1997. Developments in Information technology have always held my attention. In the recent years I have been using tools such as online docs and presentation and custom search engine and more

With the advent of web 2.0 , I have been exploring a new genere of tools unleashed the web. Blogs seems to be the one I am currently attracted most. I have been using blogs extensively within the context of my profession i.e teaching. This is my home blog and from here you may get connected to all my other blogs- teaching, research and speaker.