Change is the only constant as said by many learned professionals and moving away from your comfort zone only makes you accept challenges beneficial for your own future.
Face-to-face education is in a quagmire due to large-scale outbreaks of global pandemic COVID 19. The education sector in India is worst affected along with health crises across the country. An estimated 184 million school children are out of formal schooling, examinations are in a halt, evaluation work is postponed, new admission process in all educational instructions are in cold storage. As a country of 1.35 billion population, we must think to engage our school going students, which is 20 million much more than students attending colleges and universities.
Following a directive of the central and state governments, all schools and educational institutions have been required to shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic up till April 14. Most of the exams including board exams, medical and engineering exams have either been postponed/rescheduled or cancelled. The only resort students can turn to in order to continue their education and finish the syllabus is online learning.
Good Bye! I waved blissfully to my school friends with a twinkle in my eyes as I deboarded the bus. Humming away to the notes of ‘let it go…’, I skittled my way to the doorbell, tapping away at everything in sheer glee! Yippee, no exams, holidays begin.
India will be touching a whopping USD 5 trillion economy in the coming years by generating more business within the country, through avenues such as emerging startups, loan through Mudra Scheme and ease of doing business spanning across industries and verticals. However, alarming facts emerged from the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2019 that ranked 117 countries based on hunger; amongst which, India was ranked at the 102nd position and was the lowest-ranked among all the other BRICS nations. GHI rank is calculated based on children who are under 5 years of age and have inadequate weight vis-a-vis their recorded height. There are significant facts supporting the impact of starvation on an education system, wherein underdeveloped minds are unable to access basic education due to the lack of proper infrastructure and brain development. WHO reported that there are 155 million children under the age of five who are underweight for their height and there are around 50 million more, stunted children. Due to their condition and inadequate physical growth they are unable to read till the age of 8 years.
Let’s face it - these are unprecedented times! The past 2 weeks have led India to deep-dive into a digital learning, study-from-home model. While it’s natural for you to feel confused & worried with this rapid escalation, the real test of this model lies with how well you adapt to it! Yes, you reading this piece!
Fashion is an ever-changing ecosystem; what we see in vogue today may not be there tomorrow and then the same trend may re-appear after a few years. There are various factors that affect this semi-gradual change, and thus young aspirants who are interested in working in the fashion industry ought to understand its interlinked, multi-channel processes.
At a time when people are becoming aware of the need to stay away from infected surfaces, the importance of keeping floors clean and infection-free cannot be overemphasized. There is a need to keep the floor tiles as clean as possible. Thankfully tile makers are using advanced technologies to keep the floors clean and microbe free, when hygiene meets beauty and durability.
How safe is your home? We are not talking of external threats but of internal threats like bacteria, algae and other microorganisms. Unlike floors and tabletops, there are several inconvenient and inaccessible surfaces, especially walls within our homes (and offices) that harbor bacteria leading to fomite transmission, that is, transmission of infectious diseases by bacteria left on surfaces.
The nation wide lockdown due to pandemic Covid-19 has initially thrown higher education in deep crisis but the universities and many colleges in India have been able to adopt online teaching from home. It is all the more gratifying that the young students have found online classes both interesting and greatly satisfying, says eminent Academician Prof PB Sharma, vice chancellor of Amity University Gurugram.
As the countries around the globe are battling with an unprecedented crisis that has hit humanity and every facet of human life has taken a hit, including education. To counter this crisis, online classes are being conducted by Amity University that are catering to over 100,000 students live remotely across its campuses around India and across the globe. These measures are being undertaken as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus and to safeguard the health of our students and faculty members.
I remember, when I was preparing for my New York bar exam, I enrolled for an exam preparation course called BARBRI. After I got the course books, I had to go to a learning center, where every morning instead of a real professor walking in to the classroom to teach me, a video would be switched on. An instructor would come on the TV screen and for over 2 hours would instruct us on some nitty-gritty of NY state law. As the course wasn't interactive, the lectures were simple, precise and foolproof. Once every couple of weeks, a living being would walk in to clear doubts. I did pass the exam and never really missed the physical presence of a professor instructing me on the course curriculum.
Genome/gene engineering or editing "is a method that lets scientists change the DNA of many organisms, including plants, bacteria, and animals. Editing DNA can lead to changes in physical traits, like eye color, and disease risk," according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
With school final term and board exams round the corner, students and parents are anxious and nervous about academic performance. Here are three books which offer practical and useful advice on how to prepare for and attain success in school, college and beyond - Mini P.
Every year, lakhs of candidates compete in the RBI Assistant examination. This year applicants are fighting for 926 vacancies making it highly challenging in nature. Due to high competition, time constraint and the difficulty level of the exam, one must utilise their time strategically and ensure consistent efforts for each section.
User Experience (UX) Design -- also known as Human Centered Design -- is a multidisciplinary field that deals with user needs, their working environments, ergonomics, and the trouble-free interaction of user while interacting with the system or a product in either digital or a physical form.
When the Delhi government announced its plans of opening India’s first sports university in October 2019, it was a revolutionary decision in the history of education. The idea to include sports in the main curriculum was a much-needed initiative to normalize sports-focused education in India. This gave our youngsters a full-time opportunity to enhance their skills in sports and pursue a career, a move that needed a major mind shift more than anything, across stakeholders including schools and parents.
In engaging with the media, young people explore and learn about themselves and the world around them. Youth involvement in the media spans a wide range of activities – from learning technical, production, writing, and reporting skills to developing and deconstructing media content– and is closely connected to the processes of media education and media literacy. In doing so, they bring their own unique knowledge and perspectives. The praxis in media education is of utmost important especially when we refer to studies in Journalism, Communication, Film, TV and Online. Praxis can be understood “as a social or pedagogical process which enlists human efforts to understand the world more accurately in conjunction with a political will to transform social practices and relations” (Sholle and Denski, 1993). Connecting theory and practice is crucial for the youth while participating in any media or media literacy environment. To this end, the youth has to not only imbibe the practical aspect but also thoroughly absorb the cultural and media theories, as well as engage in scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and philosophy to demonstrate the emergence of new models that seek to blend theory with praxis.
US education secretary John Gardner wrote a great book in the 1960s that asked the question “Can we be equal and excellent?”. Most university leaderships long ago concluded that quantity, quality, and cost cannot co-exist. We’d like to make the case that while this may have been true in the analog world of education, recent progress in technology can enable universities to break the false trade-off. We think technology can be an innovative disruptor of higher education and could be creatively applied in six areas:
2020 is the decade of unprecedented advancements. Looking back at the beginning of the 21st century, technology was not that prominent and half the things we use nowadays did not exist -- iPhone, 4G, Twitter, Facebook, and many such products and services were unheard of. But today we have embraced technology in all aspects of life and 2020 brings the promise of such metamorphic technology advances that will change the way we live, work and socialise.
Close to a decade ago, the term IoT (Internet of Things) started floating around publicly - with an inherent promise to refine and idealise our lives. Fast forward to the present, IoT is already exhibiting its dynamic potential. Thanks to this novel concept, every imaginable object, device and machine is now equipped with smart consoles - connected via multiple network channels and/or Internet providing innovative data collection and communication techniques.
Is your child struggling in his/her studies? Are you afraid that she isn’t motivated enough to make the needed effort? Well, it is common for primary school kids to struggle with learning, social, and emotional problems, so you don’t have to be too worried for now. If you want to help them to live up to their full potential, you really need to identify the obstacles that could be getting in their way.
Passion is at the forefront of anything that you want to do in life. Each of us is blessed with a talent that is unique to us. When you enter a dance studio, you should feel at home; there is a sense of belonging. Passion for dance will come from within and it is this passion that will make you realize that you were born to dance. If you are not passionate about dance, after a while either it will start feeling like a “job” or you will stop enjoying the experience of choreographing, learning and dancing.
As a matter of fact, the students in India are extremely talented when compared to students from other parts of the world. But still, it can be seen from various official figures and informal analysis of students from all over the world that the students in India are lagging behind. The main reason behind this is not a lack of talent, but lack of resources.
After a baby is born, hygiene is the most important factor to be kept in mind. The health of a newborn baby is very critical. Despite its importance, hygiene is the least talked about topic. More lessons on personal hygiene need to be given by parents besides giving shaving lessons to boys and period talk to girls. There is much more to personal hygiene that is even ignored in advertisements. The body spray advertisements showing that it is enough to spray and go off without taking bath is to be blamed first out of all. Here are some modern tips on hygiene and cleanliness which need to be followed.
Psychometric test is a scientific and standard proven method used for measuring a person’s mental conditions, capabilities and behavioural style and functioning. The word psychometric is a term abbreviated for psychological measurement. It is a combination of personality and cognitive tests.
During a pre-flight safety briefing, passengers are reminded that in case of an emergency, they secure their own oxygen masks before they help their children. That’s because only once you know how it’s done, you can do it for your little ones. The same truth applies to mental health as well, and it is something teachers should consider.
A new year, a new decade, and a new disease!! As most of the world was celebrating the imminent arrival of the New Year on 31 December 2019, WHO was alerted to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. It was caused by a previously unknown virus. A week later, in January 7, the new virus had been identified as coronavirus, belonging to a family of viruses that includes viruses such as SARS and MERS. This new virus has been temporarily named “2019-nCoV. As of 26 January 2020, a total of 2,014 confirmed 2019-nCoV cases had been reported globally.
In general, Vitamin D is known to be the nutrient for stronger bones and teeth and is manufactured with the help of sunlight only. The nutrient is divided into Vitamin D(2) and Vitamin D(3) based on the sources. While Vitamin D(2) can be acquired from vitamin D rich food, Vitamin D(3) can be produced when sun rays hit the skin.
Kanishka Agarwal, Senior Measurement, Monitoring and Evaluation Associate, Pratham Education Foundation and Muskan, Research Assoicate at ASER Centre, currently pursuing an MBA at MDI. Almost .....Read More
Women empowerment is more than just a movement—it’s a necessary shift toward a world where every woman has the freedom, opportunities, and rights to thrive. .....Read More
