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In what seems like the year of revolutionising the Delhi University, we bring to you the next “big thing” to be added to the plethora of changes already in place. So what is this halla baloo all about?  Well, this time around the University seems to be working around and formulating the proposal for coming up with an Online Museum likely to be introduced with the start of the new session from 23rd July.

The project is directly being spearheaded by the Vice Chancellor; the essence seems to be to make the students aware of the historical significance and the cultural importance of the structures they see around them every day. The University houses some of the magnificent structures from the colonial era and has witnessed some landmark historical events like the Gandhi-Irwin pact and the trial of Bhagat Singh in the Delhi Bomb case. Additionally, it would also benefit the correspondence students who don’t come to college that often. In order to throw light on the same and create an enriching environment for the students of Delhi University, the objective of creating such a museum has been formed. There are also plans of putting screens around the campus as display centers of the portal.

One of the officers  from the University was quoted saying , “We are making the audio visual material, related videos for the portal and hopefully will be able to finish it before the new session starts.” Hence, if multimedia is taken as an educational approach in this case, it might be interesting to see how the project spans out in the end.

But what remains to be seen in the days that follow is the befuddling question that accompanies all these never –ending changes. However well-meaning in their intentions, the effective implementation of these plans still continues to bother  and remain a cause of worry for many.

[via Deccan Herald]

Human beings are nothing if not ingenious. We were born in caves. Then came the axes, spears, wheels, fire and so on (not necessarily in that order). We invented languages, and not just one or two but early 6,500 of them. Then came the scientists, the serious ones, with their electricity and telephones and airplanes. And to top it all, we invented education!

And so the years rolled by with inventions and extinctions. And as man’s inherent need to better himself sharpened, the field of education and knowledge has acquired the importance that cannot even be rivaled, much less outshone, by any other area of interest.

One of the latest developments in the field of education is the introduction of MOOC. For all those who don’t know what they are, MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) is a form of distance learning programs that are completely guided by the Internet. So a person would be admitted online, he gets all his study material online, he interacts with his teachers and colleagues online and learns and betters himself while sitting in front of a 15-inch screen. A lot of educational institutions, including every academic’s Mecca- Harvard, has launched various MOOC’s that reach out to not only a much larger section of people but also at a much smaller price and sometimes, even for free. A lot of times students across age brackets cannot pursue studies because they have to work to earn a living or because they don’t have access to higher education. Distance Learning comes to the rescue then. A student who has to travel hours to listen to a college professor speak can simply sit, switch on his magic screen and learn about practically anything from management to human intelligence. Also, many a times, a student may already be pursuing a particular field and cannot swing two things together. Even in situations like these, he can sign up for an online course and take classes in his free time. Another aspect that works in its favor is that MOOCs primary focus is on spreading knowledge. Much larger number of students can be reached online than in person, in much shorter durations and at a fraction of the cost.

Anyone wanting to pursue on online course just needs to get onto the web and there are courses for almost everything. The most pertinent sites I came across are:

www.mooc-list.com: a highly wide ranging website, it has courses or links in almost all fields across the board.

www.edx.org: a pioneer in the field of online education, this website has associations with universities like Harvard, MIT etc.

www.opencourses.sunstone.in: launched by Sunstone Business School, the course specializes in business and management.

www.code.org: If you are high on learning how to code! The website offers Python, Java, C, C++ along with other programming languages.

(Readers’ inputs)

https://www.coursera.org/: Hugely popular and a combined offering of soft skills as well as professional ones. Can find courses spanning Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business as well as Computer Science.

https://www.udacity.com/: The website offers college courses in interactive format right on the web! Science, Business, Psychology – it all gets broken into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels.

http://ocw.mit.edu/: MIT OCW or MIT Open Course Ware offers MIT lectures and course material on the web for students to learn.

But like almost everything else in this world, MOOCs are not perfect. A lot of times, how well a particular concept is understood by the students has more to do with the teacher’s proficiency than the text book in front of the student. Some things need to be debated upon rather than dictated. Distance learning falls short on all these terms. A MOOC can touch the surface of the subject but cannot fathom the depths of an obscure issue that a classroom teacher can. Another pressing issue is the way a student is evaluated. MOOC generally rely on Multiple Choice and highly objective questions that can be checked by a machine. A lot of times a simple yes/no cannot test if a student has grasped the concept or not.

To sum it up, MOOCs are highly useful when the subjects being taught are easy, non-technical and have more to do with self-understanding. But when the concepts become abstruse, subjective and debatable, a strict, imposing, rod wielding professor is the way to go!

Image Credit: Dale Edwin Murray for Nature Magazine

It might be a little late for writing your obituary, but almost after a week since your demise, the hollowness has just begun to sink in. Dear Google Reader, thanks for being the information aggregator that I always required. Thank you for being there, and specially for being a Google product.

When your daddy wrote this in a blog post, I almost felt that retire could be replaced with kill. The fact that I will never see my subscriptions in the Google Reader interface was just a change one wasn’t used to.

“We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.”

Now that you are gone, its strange that with so many alternatives buzzing in the Internet sphere that people hardly notice a void. They might not be Google, but they still work and surprisingly come packed in intuitive interfaces. And then your demise also created a new category called the ‘Google Reader replacement’ and a huge number of developers willingly went for the kill. Almost dying Digg saw the scope in the market and launched the Digg Reader. Established AOL announced plans of an AOL Reader. Feedly and BlogLovin have already been there since long.

Bread and butter to many and a reader’s paradise, with you RSS had been a companion. It had been there earlier but hadn’t been recognised. You gave the phenomenon visibility, thank you for that.

Like many application based services that come and go in this fast changing web world, you my friend lived a long fruitful life of eight years. In today’s world of social media dominance, I wonder whether RSS is becoming a shrinking market. I shared your loss with a few friends, and well the major response said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Sadly, the past three years of social media dominance have taken over your prowess. Twitter majorly, might be the one to blame. RSS is all about quick and light updates for news and information that matters to you. Twitter, integrated multimedia into the system, subscriptions in the form of accounts you could follow and everything in a constantly updating ‘feed’. I am not referring to it as a complete RSS alternative, it just happens to be doing a lot of damage to RSS’ market.

As a blogger, reader and Internet lover, I will miss you. We shall continue to respect you for what you gave to the Internet. You might leave us as a service, but will continue to stay in our emotional cache and mental history forever and ever. May you rest in peace and ever eternal online glory.