E-Club meeting - 30-10-2009

The lousy weekdays of an IITian come to a halt with Friday evenings, the same time when E-Club organizes its weekly meetings. But the influence of these extremely boring/tiring hours of studies is there on everyone, which was reflected on the club’s meeting too. Alok Arunam of Narmada hostel came up with a presentation on the topic “Amazing changes taking place in education, learning and Social Entrepreneurship based ideas for them”. The theme was education, and being a buzzword for social entrepreneurship, more junta was expected to come. Likewise, around 40 people turned up, all ready for gaining some insights and the knowhow of current path breaking efforts taking place in the educational arena.

The presentation started with Alok giving some new but unheard and thought provoking definitions for education as a learning experience. Contrary to what we think as the activity to be just as an extension of the infamous ‘mugging’, he explained it as an exploration, extraction, enhancement and a journey to enlightenment. The whole issue of better educational facilities popped up in these two decades due to its inclusion in the HDI (Human Development Issue), where each country is ranked (by level of human development) based on various indexes on social and economical fronts, two among which are Combined Gross Enrollment Ratio (CGER) and Adult Literacy Rate. Over the years the literacy rates of UK and the USA have been stable along with the Income per person. But for India and China, the growth was spontaneous that sprang up mainly in the late decades of 20th century.

India stands at an abysmal position juxtaposing with these nations, demanding a paradigm shift in educational policy formulations, one among them that in teaching methodology which accelerates learning and increase the reach of educational facilities among rural children. Still not satisfied of emphasizing the importance of education (not really, but to unfurl the recent activities taking place in this field), Alok started off with some entrepreneurs/organizations that have branched out around the world and eventually into recognized and respectable enterprises. It included OLPC by Nicholas Negroponte, Dr. Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole in Wall’ project, Dr. Mitchel Resnick’s MIT Media Lab, MAD, Jimmy Wales’ own Wikipedia and similar other projects. The latter part of the presentation was mainly focused on the models of learning, and how acquired knowledge is different form actuated knowledge. He further said learning has 3 components – behaviour, construction, and cognition. As the presentation proceeded with VAID (Visually Associative Information Design) and other traumatic words, the freshies (unfortunately) unable to imbibe the concepts were seen dozing off. After that the ppt, gave some interesting information about various techniques based on Information Visualisation, Tree Map, Ride the Byte, Docuburst etc. The various images as the part of the presentation were visually appealing, and were of immense power of comprehending knowledge, which if decoded (the exact word still eludes the reporter) would yield a deluge of information. The presentation concluded by Alok introducing the techniques of Mind Map, and Concept Map.

The next was discussions and questions. Junta were very keen (a slightly ‘over keen’ too…) in posing questions. The need for knowing and replicating innovative models, visualisation and information architecture were dealt in detail by Alok to the questions regarding the feasibility and the requirement of this project. The sample set (that encompassed some ideas laid out in the form of images and collages) can be divided into various sub-topics and can be used as teaching aids for children, continued Alok and went on to the next question. One curious attendee had to know the context, a few smiles appeared and vanished very soon, after seeing the wide range of knowledge that the ‘questioner’ possessed on these matters like ‘wonder wheel’ (a new concept devised by Google for effective search). A few others asked about the software that can be used to develop the charts and other teaching aids. Also the questions on target group intended, an example (similar to the software question) of the application were also pitched at the presenter. The questions were tackled effectively except for some regarding prevailing examples, and applications and demonstrations. Though, he said it’s easy to make a tool with the inputs given in the presentation and following the ‘order, pattern and rhythm’ chronology. The atmosphere altogether at the meeting was fine, except for a communication gap (partly attributed to the fans rotating at 5-speed) that evidently prevented some back-benchers from understanding the information delivered in the meeting. Some were dubious about the impact/outcome of the presentation on the audience, to which the answer is the mode in which Alok conducted the presentation.

From a seemingly abstract ppt (probably a ‘strategic’ plan to forestall information leakage), to speak for almost one and half hours is really incredible and it’s what exactly Alok did (Courtesy: Remarks of a senior). Besides this, there were much more impressed by the sole idea of developing an educational aid for the rural children around the world, particularly in India, let alone the infi amount of creativity involved in the project. The presentation ultimately ended with Alok clarifying the questions that were posed. And, after that, some fundaes about MIT G-Lab from a senior, office bearer of C-TIDES, (to put in black and white, I don’t know his name) as a small hostel work for the junta who turned up, in a gesture of sharing new info and inviting likely responses from them on the any relevant topic.

P.S. Former head of the C-TIDES, consti, spoke to the current C-TIDES team asking to wield a firm friendship between the members and urged to develop a feeling of family (oneness) among the team members. Left for you to introspect….

Secondly, the first meeting to show some videos from TED. Also see more about TED India as TED, a platform for sharing ideas, came to India as well.