Can you imagine a world without exams?

We could be headed to a tomorrow where the much feared exam system is edged out by adaptive learning technology that will allow students to learn at their own pace and also assess their progress. Gwyn D'Mello finds out more

Exams are a big deal in India. Every year, like clockwork, our newspapers, websites and news channels will blow up with coverage, whether about toppers, pass and fail trends, paper leaks  or even suicides. But software designers over the world, and some in India too, are looking at a  way we can get rid of standardised testing. In the near future, your child might have two  teachers -- and only one of them will be human.

Adaptive learning is not a new concept; it’s been around since at least 2011. But developments  in the field have been slow, particularly because of technological limitations. Simply put,  adaptive learning uses software to help students study. They’re given study material in the form  of a video or a presentation interspersed with informal quizzing. This way, the software can  gauge how well the student understands a certain topic, whether he or she is struggling in a  particular area or subject, and even how that can be tackled before moving on to more challenging  ideas or topics. This allows students to learn at their own pace, instead of being forcibly dragged along  with the rest of the class. 

The real question is whether adaptive learning is an efficient model for the future or just a  passing fad. Avnita Bir, principal of Mumbai’s R.N. Podar School, says they’re currently beta  testing an adaptive learning programme. But, no matter how smart the software, she believes it  will be more efficient as a teaching aid than a replacement for teachers. “Machines may give us  data, but a lot more is needed to teach a child… Human involvement is absolutely essential.”

Dr Samir Dalwai, a developmental pediatrician with the New Horizons Foundation, is also of  the view that adaptive learning can be beneficial in the right circumstances. Exam-time stress,  for instance, is completely dependent on the child’s and the parents’ mindset. “Failure to progress at the  same pace as everyone else doesn’t breed stress; that happens because of competitiveness,” he  insists. He believes that adaptive learning systems will help motivate student since it’s the disconnect between the average class comprehension level and the student’s comprehension that discourages them.

So what if we do away with exams altogether? Wouldn’t that help root out the negative strain of  competitiveness and let students study in a rhythm they’re attuned to? While that is technically possible  if adaptive learning is widely implemented, Avnita Bir says that she doesn’t see it happening soon.  “We’ve got an exam-centric system that involves objective question assessments and the like. It will be  at least another two years before we can hope to see exams done away with, as students progress with  adaptive learning instead.”

As far as data is concerned, the obvious question is how accurate is adaptive learning software? Lohit  Sahu, the man behind R.N. Podar School’s software, is creator of the school’s new learning platform DEFY, has some answers. 

His team shoots educational videos in top-of-the-line film studios, and then has the children watch them at home. Between each section of the video, the students are asked multiple choice questions, which serve the dual purpose of letting the teacher know which students haven’t watched the video and also where each student is having difficulty.

Sahu, who is also director of Phyzok, a company offering adaptive learning solutions, says DEFY can give the teacher specific details --which parts of the video each student watched, how many times they watched it, even going so far as to suggest a question for the struggling student that might help jog an interaction in class the next day. “Even parents are put at ease. With only exams as a testing system, parents would only know of their child’s difficulties at the end of the year, when it’s too late to change anything. Our software, however, offers an accurate prediction of the student’s expected exam score, based on their progress in class,” he explains.

Phyzok is just one company offering adaptive learning solutions. So far, all its endeavours are “proof of concept” projects, including at schools in Mumbai, Delhi and a couple of rural Tier II and III schools. The company has been receiving only positive results from the experiment so far. And it’s not at all hard to implement. “It takes me about half an hour to add a school to our system,” Sahu says. “If we were to get the go ahead, I could have all the Tier II schools (over 100 of them) in the country using adaptive learning within three and a half years.” Your move, government.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 31 July 2015

Why are books in these libraries chained?

Source | http://onlineepaper.asianage.com/articledetailpage.aspx?id=3356717#

Don’t force students to buy textbooks by pvt publishers: CBSE

All schools affiliated to CBSE have to follow a syllabi prescribed by the NCERT up to the middle class level (class VIII) and syllabi prescribed by CBSE board from class IX to class XII.

Restricting its schools from prescribing expensive textbooks by private publishers, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) issued a circular to all its schools to stick to the mandatory National Council of Educational Research and Technology (NCERT) textbooks.

The circular was issued by the board following a series of complaints stating that many schools have been forcing students and parents to buy textbooks other than those prescribed by the NCERT.

It states: “The board has received reports and complaints regarding the pressure exercised in many schools on children and their parents to purchase excessive number of textbooks. It was brought to our notice that parents are being forced to buy textbooks by private publishers, other than NCERT which are not not only costly but voluminous, and unscientifically designed.”

All schools affiliated to CBSE have to follow a syllabi prescribed by the NCERT up to the middle class level (class VIII) and syllabi prescribed by CBSE board from class IX to class XII. Currently the board has 14,000 schools across the country of which over 340 are in Maharashtra.

D T Sudarshan Rao, Joint Secretary (academic & training) CBSE said : “This practice by several schools is jeopardizing the proper teaching – learning activities of the schools and pressurising students. As per the recommendations of Yashpal committee, one of the reforms pertains to reduction in the number of textbooks for different classes.”

Rao said that this has become a matter of grave concern and the board will reiterate its stand, that it will not be acceptable to the board if schools force parents to purchase extra books other than those prescribed by the board and NCERT. “Despite of all the initiative the board had brought in several schools were still found to be prescribing additional books and overburdening students. We have warned the schools against this,” added Rao.

The schools, however, complained that the delay in receiving NCERT books is why some of the subject teachers have been prescribing books by other publishers. “We have not received any complaints from parents yet. If the NCERT books are available on time we will not prescribe books by other publishers. Besides the additional books just help students,” said a principal of a south Mumbai school.

Source | Indian Express | 31 July 2015

Google App now offers instant visual translations in 27 languages

If you have a smartphone camera and need to translate printed text from English to Hindi, all you need to do is open the Google Translate App, click on the camera, and point it at the text. Bingo! Your job is done.

The upgraded version of the app, announced by Google on Thursday, will now allow instant visual translations of printed text in 27 languages, including Hindi.

“It could be anything — a street sign, a hoarding, an ingredient list, an instruction manual, dials on a washing machine or text from a newspaper or book. Users will instantly see the text transform live on their screens into their preferred language,” Google said in statement, adding that no internet connection or cell phone data is required.

The company said the new features come from extensive research to develop so-called “convolutional neural networks”, or using artificial intelligence to recognise letters and words and filter out backgrounds. Google said it is updating the app by expanding the instant visual translation to 20 additional languages (seven are already available), and making real-time voice translations faster and smoother.

The original seven languages are English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. On Thursday, Google added 20 more — Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. Also users can now translate English printed text into Hindi and Thai.

Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate said in a blog post, “The Google Translate App will knock down a few more language barriers, helping users communicate better and get the information they need, real time and without a data connection.”

Source | Business Line | 31 July 2015

Why You Should Put Educational Material on Your Website

It was once the case that websites existed to provide basic information relevant to the company mission, information about products or services offered, and possibly even biographies about company leaders. In the far more cutthroat competition of the modern era, that’s no longer good enough. If you want to stand out from the crowd, make your website the “go to” place for educational information relevant to your niche.

Think of Your Website as a Library, Not a Brochure

When companies first realized that the Internet was an outstanding mechanism for building brand awareness, they started with the basics. They offered a splash page with the company logo, a catchy slogan, and a well-designed image characteristic of the corporate mission. They also featured the mandatory “About” link that visitors could click to learn more about the company, including contact information.

Of course, first wave websites also offered information about various products or services being offered. They acted as digital brochures, used for marketing purposes.

Along came content marketing and leaders in business realized that they needed more than just an online presence that acted as a digital sales rep. They needed to provide useful information to people so they could lasso in potential customers who were searching the web for specific information.

Today, the game has changed yet again. While the tried-and-true methods of inbound marketing from the past are certainly welcome and necessary, it’s also good to take that concept a step further by creating a resource section on your website. This is where you define key words and phrases, cite statistics, and even provide case studies that people in your market will find useful. Effectively you segment out a portion of your website so that it’s a veritable Alexandrian Library of information about anything even remotely related to your niche.

Benefits of Providing a Good Education

By providing an information repository on your website, you’re not only helping your visitors, you’re also promoting your brand. Here are several key benefits that you’ll notice:

• People will stay on your pages longer – Because you’re providing information that’s generally used for reference purposes, you can expect visitors to stay on your site longer as they’re “digesting” what you’re presenting.
• Share-worthy content – When you provide in-depth information about a particular subject, you can expect that it will be cited as a reference. Who knows? You might even end up with a link from Wikipedia. That would provide an outstanding boost to your search ranking.
• Improved connection with customers – The more that people in your market use your site, the more they’ll feel connected to your brand.
• A reason to come back – If people know that your site is the “go to” place for reference information, you can expect that they’ll be back when they need to perform similar research in the future.

An Example

Apfelbaum Inc. is the world leader when it comes to stamp collecting and sales. In an effort to further promote its brand, the company created an online philatelic library that serves as a resource for people interested in stamp collecting and/or postal history. The library offers numerous links that cover everything from the basics of stamp collecting to information about postage dating back to 250 B.C.

Source | http://www.chicagonow.com/

Selecting the right Business school

With admissions to MBA colleges in full swing, students would do well to check out various attributes of colleges before zeroing in on the right one.

A good college not only paves way for a great career ahead but also helps shape a person’s character, beliefs, thoughts and a successful life. For choosing the right business school, cross checking following important guidelines will be extremely helpful: 

* Approval: Any institution which is offering MBA should be approved by THE All India Council for Technical Institute (AICTE). There are some institutions which are offering MBA or equivalent courses which are not approved by AICTE. It is an important criterion to undertake a course in AICTE approved institution for national acceptance.

* Affiliation: Institutions are either affiliated to university or are autonomous. Each of the categories has its own advantages and disadvantages. Universities traditionally have a strong foundation and autonomous colleges have the advantage of updating the syllabi as per the need of the industry, on a regular basis.

* Faculty: It is advisable to check out whether the B-School has distinguished full-time, qualified faculty to provide continuous guidance to the students. Try to find out the ratio between the full time faculty members and the visiting faculty members. Have a look at the kind of guest lectures at the institute that you are thinking of joining. Faculty is the prime factor for providing quality education and their continuous support brings out best of the talents in the students. 

* Fee: This is one of the more important criteria and if the institution has a good track record of training and placement, then it brings you the right ROI (Return on Investment). But the fee should not be a make or break criterion for you if the ROI is good. These days, there are numerous banks which offer “education loans” on easy terms that can fulfill the requirements of completing your operating expenses of the course.

* Infrastructure: It is essential to visit the campus at least once as the students have to spend two years in the institute which they join. They should feel safe, secure and comfortable in the institute. Also, there should be right facilities in the classrooms, library, cafeteria, hostel, internet connectivity, Wi-Fi, labs, etc. Campus should be student friendly and have decent ambience to support studies.

* Industry Linkage: The links that that the institue has with the industry will give you the oppurtunity to get industrial exposure and expand practical knowledge during the tenure of your course. Location advantage and industry partnerships help in ensuring that students obtain interesting and knowledge-enhancing internships and live projects with reputed companies. These projects help in obtaining desired jobs in future as well.

* Location: Location of the B-School is an essential factor to be kept in mind. It is very important that the B-School is located in an area which has a proximity to the industry, education hub and policy making bodies. B- Schools on the metro cities are the top choice due to the presence of industrial houses from various sectors.

* Placement: Go through the placement record of the B-School. Check the company profiles, sectors of recruitments, average salary, etc. Do not just have a glance into the numbers but the quality of placements too, such as nature, reputation and variety of companies that come to campus for recruitment. This is because if you wish to specialise in a particular stream and work in that field, such as marketing or finance, then there should be sufficient number of reputed companies from the particular field that have recruited students in the past.

* International Exposure: Check on the institute credentials as relating to international exchange programmes. These will be of great advantage while looking for career opportunities abroad. International exposure in student programmes will also provide you the right platform to start your career.

* Brand: Brand means a unique distinctiveness, an image or a perception in the minds of the people. A brand is formed over the years when great practices are carried on over and over again for a long tenure and thus creating a rich legacy. A branded B School will create students as per immediate market requirements for ready acceptance in relevant job profile in reputed organisations. So, it’s always recommended to join a ‘branded’ institution with proper industry backup. 

Source | http://www.deccanherald.com

Becoming a Better Public Speaker: Tips From the Greats

Heart thumping so loud I know everyone can hear it. Face and neck flushing red. Sweat beads beginning to sprout and then trickle down my forehead.

No, this is not the moment in front of the crowd and under the spotlights—this comes from just THINKING about that moment! Whether it’s speaking in front of our school faculty, presenting at a local school board meeting, or testifying in front of Congress, many of us feel anxiety about public speaking. So what can we do to be better prepared as public speakers? Here’s a few lessons from some speaking greats.

Embrace the Anxiety

Did you know that Warren Buffett used to be terrified of speaking in public? According to this story in Forbes magazine, he picked out his college courses based on whether he’d have to speak in front of the class, avoiding the ones where he knew he’d be forced to face his fear. He even dropped a public speaking course.

But then he decided he would have to overcome this fear to be in business. And that he did—becoming not only one of the world’s richest people but also a well-respected storyteller.

We can all do the same thing. A fear of public speaking is not just common; it is innate. Our ancestors had to be accepted into social groups in order to survive, instead of standing out and being alone (and then possibly being a predator’s dinner!). We have to acknowledge our fears; don’t try to pretend they’re not there! Instead, harness the jitters and refocus them by thinking of those nerves as positive energy and excitement. If we reframe anxiety as our desire to do our best, it can help us control those feelings.

Connect With Your Audience

Have you ever watched Bill Clinton speak? I recently talked with several people who have, and one thing rang true for them all: He can make connections! Clinton seems to have a way of making people feel like he is connected to them and who they are.

So the lesson here? Don’t talk to people, talk with people. Whether it’s 25 or 250 people, in your head, frame it as a conversation, not a speech. Think of the faces in front of you as your flock. Nurture them and your relationship with them. Make eye contact. Bring them along on the conversational journey.

Be Aware of Your Body Language

This is another homage to Bill Clinton. He smiles during positive points, gestures with his palms for added inflection, and furrows his brows during serious moments. When he is making a point, he uses his index finger to tap the podium in front of him.

This behavior is backed by Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s TED talk and research, which shows that our body language can send just as big of a message as our words. Albert Mehrabian, a UCLA professor who has done extensive research on nonverbal communication, stated in a communication study that, in regards to liking a speaker, seven percent happens in spoken words, 38 percent happens through voice tone, and 55 percent happens through general body language.

This can be hard to focus on while you’re up in front of the masses, so sometimes I need some help. I write messages to myself in the margins to relax. Smile. Have fun. Think about what message my body is sending that I might not be aware of.

Tell a Story

Think about the elements and flow of a great story. What drew you in? What kept you reading or listening? Chip and Dan Heath mention this in the book Made to Stick. The same elements go into a great speech! Paint a picture with your words. When it comes to advocacy, this is especially important. Show the faces of your students and what affects them.

Connect With Your Emotions and Show Passion

Don’t be afraid to be human in front of an audience. There is something great about human connection that builds relationships, even from behind a podium. A great example of this is Rita Pierson, who emits her love and passion through every syllable in her speech “Every Kid Needs a Champion.”

Be Succinct

Think of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Big message, 265 words. I think we sometimes think more is more, but the mantra “less is more” really stands true.

Use Wit

Think of the last line of Socrates’s famous speech, given after he was condemned to death: “But it is now time to depart—for me to die, for you to live. But which of us is going to a better state is unknown to everyone but God.” Now, I wasn’t a literature major, but I am a connoisseur of witty banter and comments. I took that comment as the ultimate example of a witty closing comment (pun intended).

Think About Cadence, and Don't Be Afraid of Silence

The perfect example of cadence? Martin Luther King, Jr., in “I Have a Dream.” The intonation, the inflection of his words, the rhythm, and the power of a carefully placed pause. Don’t be afraid of silence—it can be more powerful than any word. I have another trick here: I write notes to myself. “Pause,” written in capital letters, or underlining words to emphasize. I read lines over and over again until the cadence feels right.

Use Repetition as a Golden Thread

Repetition can tie your message together. Think of Winston Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Sweat, and Tears,” where this great orator would weave a phrase through both the beginning and end of a speech. I wouldn’t use this strategy all the time, but it’s a good trick to have in your back pocket.

Relax and Have Fun

I have to remind myself to do this. So at the top of my notes for a speech, I write two words: “Breathe. Relax.” When your adrenaline is pumping and the spotlight is on you, what seems like common sense may slip our mind. A reminder really helps.

Know Your Style

Do you need notes? How much practice do you need until you feel comfortable? How much scaffolding do you need so you are comfortable in the moment? Should you print out your whole speech to have on hand in case panic strikes (yes, this happens.)?

Know yourself and give yourself whatever support you need to be the best “you.” I practice my speech and record it so I can listen, reflect, and refine. I also make sure to time my speeches so I know what content to cut and what needs additional work.

Keep Your Print Large

Twelve-point font is not always helpful under the spotlights, in front of a crowd, and when your heart is thumping like the Energizer Bunny on Red Bull. If you decide to print out your speech and notes, do so with a larger font size that you can easily read when you glance down. Also, highlight the important pieces of your speech so if you go off on a tangent, you make sure to hook back into those key points.

Source | http://www.ap.org

AP makes one million minutes of historical footage available on YouTube

LONDON — The Associated Press and British Movietone, one of the world's most comprehensive newsreel archives, are together bringing more than 1 million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube. Showcasing the moments, people and events that shape the world, it will be the largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date. 

The two channels will act as a view-on-demand visual encyclopedia, offering a unique perspective on the most significant moments of modern history. Available for all to explore, the channels will also be powerful educational tools and a source of inspiration for history enthusiasts and documentary filmmakers.

The YouTube channels will include more than 550,000 video stories dating from 1895 to the present day. For example, viewers can see video from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, exclusive footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marilyn Monroe captured on film in London in the 1950s and Twiggy modeling the fashions of the 1960s.

"The AP archive footage, combined with the British Movietone collection, creates an incredible visual journey of the people and events that have shaped our history," said Alwyn Lindsey, AP's director of international archive. "At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to, and the upload to YouTube means that, for the first time, the public can enjoy some of the oldest and most remarkable moments in history."

Stephen Nuttall, the director of YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, comments: "Making this content available on YouTube is a wonderful initiative from AP and British Movietone that will breathe new life into their footage and no doubt delight our global community - from students researching history projects to curious culture-vultures and the billions in between. It's an historical treasure trove that will give YouTube users around the world a moving window into the past and I can't wait to explore it."

Content on the channels will also include surprising videos from different regions across the UK, fashion through the ages, sporting coups, entertainment, extreme weather, technological innovations, the evolution of eating and drinking habits, political milestones and historical moments. They will be continually refreshed with up-to-date contemporary footage.

Source | http://www.ap.org

HC forms committee to inspect Anna Centenary Library

The Madras High Court has constituted a two-member Advocate Commissioner Committee to conduct an inspection in the Anna Centenary Library at Kotturpuram on Tuesday to check on the basic amenities in the Rs. 179-crore facility.

When a PIL plea by S.T. Manonmani came up for hearing before the First Bench comprising Chief Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Monday, the counsel appearing for the petitioner P. Wilson contended that there was an attempt to gradually close down the library by reducing its amenities.

The Advocate General opposed the contention and produced photographs showing the amenities in the library.

On the submission made by the counsel for the petitioner, the bench named P.T. Asha and M. Sundar as members of the committee to conduct an inspection at the library on Tuesday.

Observing that the library was supposed to be “one of the best and of international standard,” the bench said, “We are not commenting or whether it has been permitted to deteriorate deliberately or otherwise as alleged by the petitioner or whether it is maintained in the same condition as submitted by the AG. We would like to have an impartial inspection of the library as the situation prevalent earlier when it was inaugurated.”

During the inspection, a representative each from the petitioner and the respondent sides were permitted to be present and the committee was also directed to file its report by August 24.

This followed claims by the petitioner that there was an attempt to gradually close down the facility

Source | Asian Age | 30 July 2015

While reading, we see words as pictures

As your eyes scan these words, your brain seems to derive their meaning instantaneously. How are we able to recognise and interpret marks on a page so rapidly? A new study confirms that a specialised brain area recognises printed words as pictures rather than by their meaning, reports scientificamerican.com.

Researchers led by neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber of Georgetown University Medical Center scanned the brains of 12 subjects with functional MRI. They focused on a tiny area of the brain known to be involved in recognising words, the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), found on the surface of the brain, behind the left ear.

From face recognition to words

The VWFA’s right hemisphere analogue is the fusiform face area, which allows us to recognise faces. In young children and people who are illiterate, the VWFA region and the fusiform face area both respond to faces. As people learn to read, the VWFA region is co-opted for word recognition.

The researchers presented the subjects with a series of real words and made-up words. The nonsense words elicited responses from a wide pool of neurons in the VWFA, whereas distinct subsets of neurons responded to real words. After subjects were trained to recognise pseudo words, however, neurons responded as they did to real words, according to the paper published in March in the Journal of Neuroscience. Because the nonsense words had no meaning, Riesenhuber deduced that our neurons must respond to words’ orthography — how they look — rather than their meaning. As we become more proficient at reading, then we build up a visual dictionary in the VWFA — much as we accumulate a catalogue of familiar faces on the opposite side of our brain.

We “hear” written words in our head

Sound may have been the original vehicle for language, but writing allows us to create and understand words without it. Yet new research shows that sound remains a critical element of reading.

When people listen to speech, neural activity is correlated with each word’s “sound envelope” — the fluctuation of the audio signal over time corresponds to the fluctuation of neural activity over time. In the new study, Lorenzo Magrassi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pavia in Italy, and his colleagues made electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings from 16 individuals.

The researchers measured neural activity directly from the surface of the language-generating structure known as Broca’s area as subjects read text silently or aloud. (This measurement was made possible by the fact that participants were undergoing brain surgery while awake.)

Their neural activity was correlated with the sound envelope of the text they read, which was generated well before they spoke and even when they were not planning to speak, according to the report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

In other words, Broca’s area responded to silent reading much in the same way auditory neurons respond to text spoken aloud — as if Broca’s area was generating the sound of the words so the readers heard them internally.

The finding speaks to a debate about whether words are encoded in the brain by a neural pattern symbolic of their meaning or if they are encoded via simpler attributes, such as how they sound. The results add to mounting evidence that words are fundamentally processed and catalogued by their basic sounds and shapes.

Source | Asian Age | 30 July 2015

A rare kind of book club

With 50,000 members, the Rare Book Society of India is more than a digital library ­ it's also a forum for discussion and debate

Interest in Indian history is near universal, says Subbiah Yadalam, the founder of the Rare Book Society of India.

Within minutes of his posting details about a new (old) book on the society's vibrant, 50,000-member community page on Facebook, there are views and `likes' from places flung as far apart as Uganda, the US and Slovenia, says Yadalam, who started the society's website and Facebook page to connect with bibliophiles ­ especially those who share his passion for rare, out-ofprint books ­ from all over the world. “There are viewers from 72 countries at any given time,“ says the 52-year-old founder, who is as passionate about the power of sharing and social media as he is about rare books; his goal to make these books accessible to everyone through digitization and free downloads.

The obsession with rare books started a decade ago when Yadalam came across a book, The Castes and Tribes of Southern In dia, a scholarly and encyclopaedic tome by Edgar Thurston and Kadambi Rangachari published in 1909, at his club library. He found it fascinating and wanted to buy it from the club, which refused to sell it. But Yadalam had tasted blood and started hunting down old, rare titles at bookstores, auctions and online, starting with bibliophile KK Murthy's Select, where serendipity ­ a quality abundant in that most gloriously anarchic of bookstores ­ played a huge role in helping him start his collection.

Today , while his personal collection of rare books on Indian history numbers around 175 titles, Yadalam also sources digitized versions from websites such as Gutenberg.org and Archive.org. The focus of his collection is books on Indian history, and he has created a digital library of hundreds of rare, out-of-copyright books on the subject, meticulously digitized to retain the look and feel of the original volume.

Not just that, they are curated and tagged by subject; so if you are looking for books under the subject, say, `Pallava Expansion', you would find posts on the website related to the topic along with URLs, using which you can download PDF versions of the books. There's also an option to read them online.

“Many of these books could be considered as history , opinion or plain propaganda, but the aim is to show that there is no wasteful source in the study of history, there is only an added perspective,“ says Yadalam. He's proud of the fact that what started off as a group for rare book collectors has been transformed into a forum for history buffs, scholars and “the silent curious.“

Yadalam is fanatical about the need for us to go to primary sources to know more about historical events and personalities and form an objective opinion. The intermediation of historians, who always bring their own biases and slants into the interpretation, often results in a warped idea of history, he believes. “It is time for us to look at the reference sections of books and go read those books ourselves. Research empowers you, it makes you appreciate the fact that there are always many versions to the truth; that there is often no one `definitive version'. We need a society that can see layers and nuances, and this will only happen when we familiarize ourselves with the many versions of history,“ he says.

Source | Times of India | 30 July 2015

AICTE affiliation system needs to end in 10 years, says govt panel

Panel suggests single engineering entrance exam for all schools under AICTE and a single management test for all business schools

A government panel has recommended converting the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) into a statutory constitutional body and suggested ending the affiliation system of technical schools in the next 10 years.

The panel has recommended that the AICTE should evolve as a mentor rather than a “policeman”.

Recognizing the “need for restructuring and strengthening” the AICTE to address challenges, the human resource development ministry set up a review committee led by former education secretary M.K. Kaw in November 2014.

More than 11,000 professional schools, including engineering and management schools, fall under the purview of the AICTE.

The panel’s report called on the regulator to shed the mindset of a licence distributor and suggested some radical steps, including doing away with the affiliation system in a decade, conducting a single engineering entrance exam for all schools under AICTE and a single management test for all business schools.

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) do not fall under the AICTE’s purview.

The government panel’s report said, “AICTE should be recognised as the chief instrument of state policy in order to establish India as the technical education superpower of the world. It should be converted into an apex constitutional authority to promote orderly, integrated and coordinated development of technical education... technical education should be a fundamental right”.

The recommendations hold significance in the face of growing suspicion over the AICTE’s role as a regulator and its conflicting role along with the University Grants Commission. A case is also on in the Supreme Court on whether it qualifies as a technical education regulator at all.

“It has to get converted into a facilitating agency which promotes technical education... through suitable schemes of mentoring and guidance, faculty improvement, development of research and incubation infrastructure, grant of financial assistance to deserving institutions... and so on”, the report said.

On the growing number of new institutions, the panel said, “New institutions should be allowed only if there is substantial unmet demand pertaining to an area of specialisation.”

The panel suggested that third-party ratings should be used as the “fulcrum of regulation” and that “norms shall measure outcomes rather than be obsessed with physical inputs alone”.

It asked the AICTE to improve the functioning of sub-standard institutions with help from “senior faculty drawn from higher technical institutions who will act as mentors and trainers”.

H. Chaturvedi, director of the Birla Institute of Management and Technology in Greater Noida, said he supports the suggestions of making the AICTE a statutory constitutional body like the Election Commission.

He added that instead of the National Board of Accreditation carrying out the accreditation of courses, the government needs to take the help of competent industry bodies for better outcomes.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 29 July 2015