Serendipity and Learning

Coursera is one of those new sites that offer education on the internet - in my view, the best use of the internet is learning and sharing. For an auto-didact , the internet is perhaps the best thing to have happened. Coursera offers the kind of offers, your local university cannot dream of offering. Okay, I take that back. Surely, they can dream of offering - but the way Indian universities are structured and constrained, it is highly unlikely that something like this can come through. Until a few months ago, it was never concern that they will disrupt our well entrenched system. But here it comes. Coursera now offers signature courses - that means, for a fee, you can get a certificate from the university that offers the course. How cool is that? This is a real disruptor to the university - especially those that do not innovate and bring out something new. But the best part is that universities need not fret - they can join the others and offer a course from their area of expert...

Some years back, we were waiting at a train station in Singapore. And all of a sudden, the station erupts in a very catchy announcement tone "Train is coming, train is coming, train is coming..." The kids ears perked up - and it is such an easy to remember tune and wording that they remembered it. And the best part is that this was a safety message - for people to move away from the platform and also to let people know that the train is coming. And then my mind went to our announcements - Platform number chaar ki gaadi etc. etc. Similarly, our flight safety procedures - are said at jet speed with a series of actions - surely there are better ways of doing it. One airline for instance, has a video. And I read somewhere that there are others who do a really cool job of it. So, here is a question. How does one get cab drivers to wear seat belts? Fine or persuasion? Push or pull? They know it is good for them, but they dont wear it. Or how does one get an entire organiz...

Most of us would have faced this question at some point of time or other while we were growing up. What will you become when you grow up? And by and large, have inflicted this torture on many a child we would have met - including our own children. In his speech yesterday, Narendra Modi gave a different spin to it. I loved this riff. He said (not exactly verbatim), "You ask your child what you want to become? Doctor or Engineer?" (Implication is that we put this baggage on the childs heads right from childhood). "This is drilled into the child from 5th standard and somewhere along the way, the child does not clear 12th standard and ends up being a teacher" "The person is not satisfied because all along in his mind, the dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer, is now dissatisfied with being a teacher" "Instead of asking a child what will you become, ask the child what you will do?" ("Kya Karoge instead of Kya Banoge) Ultimately,...

This is the latest speech by Narendra Modi which was delivered yesterday at the India Today Conclave. Much analysis has been carried out on this speech, but here is a different perspective. I have written about Presentation skills - and to me this is a video that touches upon almost all aspects of presentation skills. For someone who wants to learn public speaking, presentation skills this speech is a great example. It is well worth your time, if you want to see presentation skills in action (and the bonus of a great speech). The speech is largely in Hindi, though there are parts in English as well.  Mr. Modi uses a video at the start (which is missing here) - so the speech uses other media as well - surprising the audience - since politicians arent generally given to videos. That initial video has made the audience look forward to more. The speech is extempore - which can only happen when one knows the subject thoroughly. I personally don't know how much Mr. Modi practices...

I finally managed to complete a MOOC. This is the second one I had signed up for – from Coursera. The first one I could not complete. So, what made the difference? Amidst both the MOOC’s, something happened that I fell behind by a week. But in the first instance, the deadline was a hard deadline (much before the end of the course) with no leeway. And having fallen behind once, I lost the enthusiasm to try. In the second instance, all the deadlines were a common deadline towards the end of the course – so having slipped back, it was a matter of completing 2 modules in the space of one. So, I was able to claw back in, just in the nick of time. Some more questions: Was the course good? Both the MOOC’s were good. The first one, I thought was a little more intense than the second one – and I really wish I was able to complete it. How was the content?  Both had really practical content. How much time did I have to spend? In the first one, I had to spend...

This is in continuation to the previous post. Ask anyone in the Indian software industry - who are nowadays in middle or senior management about their entry in their first project ever or second. Or better still, ask them about their early success? They will all tell you that their success came with a great learning. This was in the days before IT companies discovered training. Prior to organized IT, there was a term in vogue for many IT companies - Bodyshopping. In the early years, both bodyshoppers and IT companies had something in common - that was training - rather the lack of it. And this is also something some training companies cashed in on - but that is not the point of this post. Most of these people were thrown into projects - when their knowledge was barely anything. Or they signed up to take up projects without knowing what they might run into. Most of these companies provided very little organized training - and most of the training they provided was rudimentary. After...

A few weeks ago, me and my colleague got an opportunity to put together something for a particular group. I will be hazy on the details, for very obvious reasons, but as you will see that is not necessarily important for this post. When we started off, we really had no clue what we were going after. We read up a bit, met people and put out a few drafts of what the program would look like. We, were obviously, not very satisfied at how that turned out, but we persisted. For a week or so, the presentation went back and forth, but with very little forward movement. As we made progress, we reached a point of self doubt and started looking for back up options. It reflected our own lack of self confidence than anything else. But the back up options that we saw seemed to be no better. Then, a breakthrough happened. While tossing ideas back and forth, something happened that made us re-imagine the entire way we had conceived the program. And at that point, we did not want to take the new...

Not sure what is the point of this ad by Britannia in terms of selling its products, but this is one great video. Especially useful for us in the learning and education field. We learn best when we do...

This is an inspiring video on 'Moonshot Thinking'. Inspired primarily by the premise of taking the man to the moon - but not knowing how to exactly to accomplish it, this video inspires us to take on audacious goals. Indeed, I recall reading how our very own Chandrayaan project could help boost the technical capabilities of the suppliers. We, at work, or in our personal lives have the opportunity of doing so. Whether or not we reach there is kind of immaterial, but the effort itself will take us somewhere which will be forward movement as compared to where we were prior to it...