April 2013 Volume 7, Issue 4

Inspiring Teachers
Driving educational change through excellence in teaching

This month:
Dr Rajeswari Mukesh ...2 Lensoo Create. . 3 Interesting links 4

From the editor

Most of the teachers must be planning for a few weeks of vacation, very shortly. How do you plan to spend your time? How are you going to give your family a nice experience? Some of you may be planning to clear some backlog work like completing your projects or reading for your PhD. We have shared some of our readers ideas with you. This months newsletter is coming out with help from Madhan Kumar of

Infosys. He has interviewed the faculty of the month. He will be sharing his experiences as a corporate trainer in the next issue. I have shared my thoughts on course design. We have our regular interesting links section. This month has been very busy with training and travel. Probably the next couple of months will be also active. Uma Garimella

Updates

A visit to GMRIT to orient towards new ways of curriculum design 19th April Interactive sessions with eight departments at GMRIT for reviewing their III sem courses Sessions at Dr MCRHRD Institute of AP, Hyderabad on time management and stress management

Sessions at Academic Staff College, JNTU on lesson planning, classroom management and technlogy

Upcoming workshops: o o o At NIT Trichy on Perspectives on curriculum April 18th -20th At DRDL, Hyderabad on Pre-retirement planning April 23rd-24th At ITM, DRDO, Mussoori on Building team spirit in scientists, June 24th 27th

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Inspiring Teachers Dr Rajeswari Mukesh

Was becoming a teacher accidental or intentional? I have completed my B.E CSE with University 4th rank from Mepco Schlenk Engineering College affiliated to Madurai Kamaraj University in April 1993. I started working though I wanted to become a software professional, I feel that I am destined for teaching. The passion for teaching has made me to stay in this job for the past two decades. Do you engage them in

Page 2 of 4
making them understand the applications of the subject. Usually 10% of the students in a class will be below average. As I have said above, I make one of the top scorers motivate him and counsel him. How is your typical day? I am in interested in literature. I am a follower of Swami Vivekananda and I read books related to this. A typical day is a day whatever I think would cover everything that's important in my day like satisfactory class room teaching, guiding students in their project or research work, counseling students if required, satisfy my family members requirements as a mother. What is your most memorable event in your career? When I joined an institution in the early days of my career, I was given a tough subject which was not opted by any of the faculty members who were there already in the department. I took it as a challenge and achieved 100% pass percentage in that subject which also got me a Best Teacher Award.

immediately from the next day group work? Yes. I ask the students to do a of my last day in the college. My first job was a teacher in a computer centre. My initial salary was Rs.600 for the month of May 1993. After Dr Rajeswari Mukesh is a professor of Computer Science in Hindustan Institute of Technology in Chennai. Apart from her teaching, she finds time for active research and co-curricular activities. She also makes time for her personal reading. She has about twenty years of experience in teaching and she holds a PhD from JNTU. Read full interview at http://theprofessor.in/rajesw arimukesh.shtml seeing my involvement in the job, the MD of the company doubled my salary to Rs.1200 project in the subject, deliver seminar on a topic on a sharable mode. I usually ask my students to prepare aptitude questions on the subject from the placement point of view. I divide the

from June 1993. Even though I students into groups like hostellers and day scholars got offers from government organizations like ISRO, CDAC, due to family restrictions I was not allowed to go metropolitan cities for and choose one mentor who is thorough in the subject to help other members of the group.

job. I got married in 1995 and I What are the challenges you face from students moved to Chennai. I joined TCS through off campus interview and I worked there only for 6 months. I had to and how do you overcome them or turn them around? Typically, faculty

quit this dream job since I was blames the students not being interested in active posted to Bangalore after training. As my husband was doing business in Chennai I had to stay in Chennai itself. Hence I quit TCS and joined an engineering college as a Lecturer. Since then I have been working as a teacher in engineering colleges. Even learning or that active learning takes longer. Students find the class interesting only when we teach them something beyond the book. There is no reason to blame the students for not being interested unless otherwise we teach them by

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Page 3 of 4 The platform to share your ideas with the world is in your HAND!!

Inspiring Teachers
Vijay Kandiraju

And often, this content is not used due to lack of teachers for demo contact vijay@lensoo com who can promote the use. In the past decade or so, we have a different paradigm. Can Have you heard the latest buzzword in education? MOOCs stands for massive open online courses. e-learning which is the use of computers for learning was initiated as early as 1960 at Stanford and Illinois when students could listen to recorded lectures or could solve math problems. Educators have had a love-hate relationship with technology both at K-12 and university levels. Success stories have been few and far apart, and failures were many. Factors could be lack of infrastructure, lack of trained teachers, lack of the ecosystem to support e-learning and lack of compelling content. These projects were tried by everyone by the governments, by non-profits and by for-profit companies. Millions have been spent on creating digital content. It needs experts in instructional design, experts in technology and experts in creative arts. The returns in terms of revenue are dismal.
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need video cameras and computers. One step in enabling everyone with a computer to create a video is the webcam. Since most laptops come with a webcam, an online video presence has become normal. This can also be extended to teaching. Now an application like Lensoo Create from www.lensoo.com on Android has made even making video sessions possible on a smart phone. If any of you are familiar with www.khanacademy.org you will see what I mean. Khan has become the biggest game changer in education with millions of video lessons for free. Lensoo Create enables you to talk while writing on a whiteboard and then save and publish this video on the Lensoo platform, which is on the cloud. Your lesson is immediately visible to a thriving community of learners in the marketplace. Lensoo Create is not just for teachers, anyone with an android, who has an idea to share can now do it in just 15 minutes! So go ahead, download and try it out.

we create digital content without much effort and cost? Almost all top universities in the west have put their courses online. Important players in this domain are https://www.udacity.com/, https://www.coursera.org/, https://www.edx.org/, https://www.udemy.com/, Most institutes can just record their lectures and seminars and put it on the internet. There are also individuals who have shared their expertise on the internet like cooking, hairstyling and anything under the sun. Now the technology in India too has become affordable and reliable. (see box on next page) Now, smart phones are found almost in every hand. So the elearning has moved to mlearning (mobile learning). Mostly, the users of the content (that is, the learners) can use the mobile to view or listen, the creators of the content are still on traditional platforms. They

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Interesting Links
A nice read from a friend Madhusudan Nagiri

http://www.scribd.com/doc/133356059/Nellore-Fish-Pulusu-with-a-side-ofAadhaar-Card
Articles on Technology

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/03/26/invisibility-cloak-research-moves-forwardat-michigan-tech/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/internet-at-the-speed-of-light/ http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/morning_call/2013/04/hcl-technologiesspearheads-stem-program.html

Survey on e-learning in Commonwealth Asian Countries

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/e_learning_in_Asia
Education Cartoons

http://www.mchumor.com/education_cartoons.html http://www.martybucella.com/college.html
Understanding the brain and learning

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/ Just having content out there does not enable learning. The online ecosystem has to be developed. The learner has to be engaged in the content as well as with other learners as in a classroom. Drawing a parallel with the distance education programs that became huge revenue sources for universities, MOOCs will become popular only when people see value in them in terms of learning, collaboration and certifications. And since such programs offer flexibility for working professionals,
See us at:
www.theprofessor.in www.teachersacademy.co

they need to address the workplace skills and knowledge. I think Lensoo fills this space. --Uma Garimella

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