Newsletter - May 2011

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May 2011 Volume 5, Issue 5

Inspiring Teachers
Driving educational change through excellence in teaching

This month….
Facebook is really useful for gathering tips quickly. Sometime back I asked for creative ideas in making This month:
Deeper Learning Indira Narayan..….2 PSS Raju – Faculty of the month …. . 3 Interesting links …4 Updates on site and ask an expert …..4 Differently abled trainer Shakir …..5

question on our site too and the answer is published in this issue. An article by Indira Narayan on how to engage students in deep learning and the profile of a differently abled trainer Shakir, complemented by work done by Samrita Trust for visually challenged – these are the main reads

this month. Excerpts of Faculty-of-Month, PSS Raju, Results of picture caption contests, humour, interesting links sent by friends and mailing lists are the regulars. Please explore those links and keep contributing too. Have a great vacation, and get refreshed and recharged for the new academic year…

students come to school on time and was happy to see a lively and useful discussion. The school is going to implement one of those ideas posted by FB friends. One of our readers posted a

April-May 2011

Elaborate training needs analysis (TNA) for 100 teachers at NMREC, Hyderabad 25th27th April

College Champions
A unique model of engaging faculty and building a truly distributed team • To make faculty as stakeholders in expanding the reach of TheProfessor.in and SchoolCanvas.com • To help enhance the profile of faculty through consultancy and research options At the end of one year engagement, apart from the performance based cash incentives, the faculty will get visibility in academic and industry circles, expand their horizons and get an impressive profile. For details read: http://theprofessor.in/careers.shtml

Education for Visually Challenged Samrita Trust……6 Picture captions Humour




“Classroom Management”, JNTU Academic Staff College, 26th April Visit to REC Bhalki and interaction with faculty – 6th April



Visit to Nanded and interaction with schools – 11th April



Sessions in a corporate induction training program from – 15th May

• • •

Faculty training from May 15th – NMREC Adult learning and TNA – ESCI – 12th May Sessions for faculty at Kolhapur Institute of Engineering, 25th May

Inspiring Teachers Deeper learning
“Learning which is concerned to extract principles and underlying meanings, to make sense of facts and feelings and to integrate them with previously acquired knowledge. Rather than memorization, it aims to provide greater necessarily mean beautiful) and active presence is sure to catch the interest of the students. Dull and inactive teaching only makes the students feel dull and unenthusiastic.

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Indira Narayan
the underlying principles. The concept can be made clear by giving an example from outside the textbook like ‘Physics in our daily life ‘where do we see this: in our eyes, in the movement or

Communication is an art and a flexing of our fingers or skill which is very important in bending of our knees etc. In the teaching line as much is only when the teacher is very English, the rudiments of sentence structure, how plurals are formed and so on

understanding and therefore class control. This can happen

“Aerobics class a must for teachers”

a deeper meaning” Deeper learning is all about encouraging the skills and knowledge that students will

sound with her subject and can can be made fun by grammar cater to all the queries/ doubts games, jingles, songs all of of her students. In fact deeper learning can take place only if a teacher is willing to be interrupted during her teaching with queries or or simple. In a class where doubts are deemed as silly, which can absorb the students’ interest. Class room activities are the best way of enhancing interest. In the given school curriculum it is to such fun activities. Herein a creative teacher will introduce her lesson by citing something outside the class and the book, or use some novel method, but something definitely about what she has to teach. This may take 5 to 10 minutes but if the concept has been understood she can teach quite a lot in the remaining time. With the interest

March Newsletter picture caption contest Sent by Neelu Vig on facebook.

need to succeed in this fast changing world. It prepares students to master the basics, understand them and be able to apply them whenever required. To understand what deep

doubts, big or small, intelligent difficult to devote much time

learning in its true sense learning is we should look at ceases. This leads to a the other side … which can downhill process of creating be termed as ‘Surface a weak foundation in Learning’ like reading, academics which defeats the memorizing and thereby concept of deep learning. It being successful in fetching good marks. Learning like this may or may not ensure ‘understanding’. can create individuals who may work mechanically referring to book knowledge time and again.

evoked, following the theory In my opinion the important To affect deep learning the will become easy and learning feature required to enable teaching methodology must be ‘deeper learning ‘is the teacher’s persona. A teacher with an attractive (does not made on creating an interest in the subject by understanding will be more effective.

Page 3 of 6

Inspiring Teachers
more at www.theprofessor.in
employment? For students who are willing to utilize them, absolutely. As mentioned earlier I think the biggest problem and probably the sole reason for students not building the wherewithal needed to meet industry expectations, is lack of good delivery and . There is no egg in and not gaps in curriculum eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple itself. Of course, this is only nor pine in pineapple. for students who are willing English muffins weren't invented in England or to utilize such delivery and French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies complement it with while sweetbreads, which proactive self learning. aren't sweet, are meat. We I am more than certain if the find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings above is done, there is a are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea negligible chance that a nor is it a pig. student would be English is a funny language curriculum administration unemployed in the current situation.
Sitarama Raju holds a B. Tech in CSE from Andhra University College of Engineering followed by an M. Tech in CS from University of Hyderabad. A career spanning 9 1/2 years in software industry,and 4 yrs in academics. He is passionate about sharing knowledge & understanding and feels pretty strongly about how a wrong understanding of what is required for an engineering job is adversely affecting quality of graduates coming out of colleges. --fwded by KV Jayakuamr

Excerpts from Faculty of the month the fundamental

be designed to give students understanding of the discipline and lay the platform for him/her to easily adapt to new and myriad tools based on their sound understanding of Are there huge gaps in curriculum compared to what industry expects? No. This seems to be a monstrous myth that is being purported by many very feverishly but I thoroughly disagree. The curriculum of B. Tech course I teach (we follow JNTU Kakinada Syllabus) to me is reasonably good. I feel the goal of a B. Tech program in make students understand the fundamentals of the engineering discipline and help them develop a strong analytical problem solving approach. I can categorically say the curriculum meets that requirement. Many people feel computer science is all about some tools and some programming languages and feel that the syllabus should have the latest tools, to meet industry needs. The reality is any general purpose B. Tech program can and should only Can better delivery & more effective administration of curriculum enhance student’s chances of the fundamentals. Many short-sighted people also recruit for an immediate need and not for long term human resource, which makes this perception develop. Also, there is a total lack of understanding among majority of the academicians about how to interpret and deliver learning of the curriculum. This frustrates industry people when they come for recruitment and interact with academicians, and then these comments like curriculum has gaps come up. Again, maybe this is coming because many academicians have not had exposure to industry. I say may be, because I do not think one needs exposure to industry to develop an awareness of how a concept might be explained in a relevant manner.

Inspiring Teachers
Updates on website


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Most of the archives of newsletter (2007, 2008 and some 2009) have been uploaded on the blog

http://www.theprofessor.in/blog/ ♦ A practical and proven method of engaging students in peer learning An initiative by American Society for Engineering Education – http://www.theprofessor.in/blog/teachers/study-teams/ ♦ http://www.theprofessor.in/blog/student/egfi/ Ask an Expert on website Picture Caption Contest How can we help students weak in English? Abdul Basith 1. If this is a small group of students who are not interested in learning, first try to find out what interests them. Talk about those topics or discuss what they like and why? Develop a personal rapport with them so that then they are willing to listen to you. 2. Put them on some on-line English courses with which they can improve their language. You can see a list of courses here http://www.theprofessor.in/blog/open-education/english-courses/ 3. Make a small group or what we call as buddy system. One friend who is good at studies is teamed up with one weak student (or a few) and they should be asked to talk and communicate in English only. Any subject related discussions can also be made by these groups. Watch this video (in part I and II) to see what they can do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gajJ9huCog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x-kAhh54iw&feature=related

“…and yes students, this chart shows how well you should take good care of your heart, chomp, chomp"... Thechitchat e-magazine on facebook Learning by doing – Divya Nalla, NMREC on facebook

Interesting Links
♦ Big Thinkers: Judy Willis on the Science of Learning. The noted neurologist turned educator talks about the science of boredom, lessons learned from video games, how to capture student attention, and the most important lessons for 21st-century learning.

Mrs Indira Narayan has been an English Teacher in St Ann’s High School, Secunderabad where she is the Academic Head Mistress now and continues to teach.

http://www.edutopia.org/big-thinkers-judy-willis-neuroscience-learning-video

♦ ♦


A talk that touches on a very important issue of childhood stories IISc’s plunge to train school teachers

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/25apr2011/1137.pdf

Good link for communication and team building activities
http://www.community4me.com/

♦ ♦

http://learnwithcomics.blogspot.com

Learn English with comic strips Inside a hard disk drive – see related videos also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdmLvl1n82U

♦ Magazine and website for resources to empower people with the vision and tools to create a healthy planet and vibrant communities.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/for-teachers

Sent by Anil Kumar Challa, LearningNet-India, Nagaswetha Pavuluri, Sofia Stefanidou, Ajit Kumar Atluri

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Shakir – a differently abled trainer
Shakir is the first visuallychallenged MBA from the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. He also holds a masters in English literature. He set rolling “Empower” – a premier HRD Institute in Hyderabad, servicing Corporates, MNCs, engineering colleges – envisioned to empower the human-mind to discover their true-hidden potential. Concurring with the medical findings that humans barely use 5% of their brain’s capacity till their death, the CEO of ‘Empower’ Mr Syed Noor Muhammad Shakir seems the right person around to invigorate us to tap our dormant mental capacities and capabilities. His transcription of Holy Qur’an into English Braille put him in Limca book of records. He has developed amazing memory skills and can recall all the 600 names with respective contact numbers saved in his mobile phone. It’s absolutely fascinating about his 200-plus workshops that

Inspiring Teachers

budding and enabled it flower. Memory skills he encourages can be developed by any individual. He teaches the techniques towards memory development in his seminars as a key ingredient for success. Computer savvy, Shakir browses internet and reads emails with the aid of a ‘Talking Computer’. An avid reader, Shakir considers ‘talking computer’ as a best invention. It disassociates him from crutches of having others read for him given their own time and will constraints. This software has aided him in reading more than a 100 hundred books on personality development. His latest being ‘Awaken the giant within’ by Anthony Robbins. He laments though that the software can read out only English language. Hence, loses independence reading vernacular languages, which include his mother-tongue Urdu, also Telugu and Hindi. Please contact Shakir@9347255325

reverberate the need to inculcate in one’s self, skills to scour the positives out of the negative situations as well as to mould the mind to accept problems as challenges. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and the four metro cities are among the prominent places he conducted the workshops/seminars in. The participants ranged from managers, to technical and administrative staff, at Mitsubishi, ICICIPrudential, Care Hospitals, Maxivisiion, City Cardiac, Ascendas(L&T), Bajaj, Netlife, LIC, Vilan, Keertilal Jewellers to name a few. Students of various engineering, management, postgraduate and graduate educational institutions constitute yet another sector who attend his seminars, where he visits on invitations. Regarding his own memory skills he found in himself the

Shakir with APJ Abdul Kalam

Samrita Trust – Education for Visually Challenged Teacher’s Academy
60 million Indians are blind. There are 2 million blind children in India and
Hyderabad PHONE: 97011 41118 E-MAIL: [email protected]

Audio CDs, MP3 Players, Braille Kits, SAFA software, laptops etc – to help to

competitive examinations to blind candidates appearing for the examinations to get employment in private and More importantly, the trust has worked to affect changes in the government policies to benefit these students with latest technology. Visit the website to learn more and contribute either your services or funds. http://www.samritatrust.org/

only 5 % of them receive any study on their own, the education. Blind persons can learn to live a life of dignity and independence. They can also perform all most all the tasks of a normal person and lead a normal life. Mission of Samrita Trust (estd 2006) is to empower the blind students to become self sufficient, by providing suitable learning devices for their education. The learning devices are perform better in examinations. The Trust is inspired by Louis Braille, inventor of Braille, and indomitable spirit of Helen Keller. Apart from curriculum books for intermediate, degree and some school books, the trust also

subjects in their courses and public sector.

produces and supplies audio samrita/index.aspx books of study materials and http://www.giveindia.org/mmodel papers of various
1008-Samrita-Trust.aspx

Help us reach more people….
See us at:
www.theprofessor.com www.teachersacademy.co

Do read the blog and leave your comments on-line http://www.theprofessor.in/blog/ Click on like http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Professor/203174356365130 Uma Garimella

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