Fun in the Fiscal

I strongly believe that the main problem with the teaching of economics in India is the outdated text books.Most of the text books used in colleges across the country are so dull that students lose interest the very moment they see their books.If we can have simple text books very clourful and having a lot of case studies ,students interest in the subject will increase.Apart from new text books we should also encourage our teachers to use multimedia tools in the class rooms.Blogs and You Tube also have become very effective means to make the classroom lively.
The following is a report appeared in the Indian Express today on our efforts to train teachers on new technology.


Textbooks should have crosswords and colour illustrations, and classrooms should have YouTube and multimedia, believes this club of Economics teachers
Ask Economics professor Shashi Paniker what an ideal classroom should be like, and you’ll be surprised that the words ‘chalk’ and ‘blackboard’ don’t figure anywhere in the answer. Instead, you will hear about blogging, the Internet, YouTube and crossword puzzles as a means to teach what is considered by many to be one of the driest subjects in any syllabus — Economics.
It may not be a favourite with anybody apart from the geekiest collegians, but Economics certainly seems to be on a revolutionary path thanks to Paniker and the Economics Club, a voluntary group of Economics teachers who meet once a month at Mulund, and counsel and guide students to find the best way forward in terms of their studies and careers.
“Teachers need to take more interest in their subject and catch up with the young generation. They need to make the subject more interesting and interactive for students,” says Paniker. The club holds workshops around Mumbai to train teachers to use computers, aiding them to become more proficient with the Internet and to use it in their teaching. The workshops, sponsored by the Forum for Free Enterprise, are held for Economics teachers in the city, once every few months.
“We teach teachers to create blog posts and improve their writing skills. Then students can post comments and give feedback about the topic in question,” says Paniker. He also believes that for a subject like Economics, it is important to liven it up in order to get students interested, something that the archaic textbooks don’t do. So, in his lectures, Paniker introduces students to YouTube, plays videos by distinguished economist Ben Bernanke and songs that students of the Columbia Business School have created as a means to show students that Economics can actually be fun.
“The workshops help to familiarise people with the Internet, but we don’t know when they will actually come in use since it is a bit difficult to imagine students and teachers with computers in each classroom. But it is a good source and does benefit teachers,” says Dr Suniti Nagpurkar, Head of the Department of Economics at Swami Vivekananda College, who attended the last workshop held at MMK College earlier this month.
The club has meetings once a month, where the 20-30 people who attend have to speak about an economic issue. “We have discussions about one important topic and everyone gives their opinions,” says Paniker, adding that the last workshop was a huge success. We have computers for each teacher, so as to give them a chance to familiarise themselves with technology,” he says. The club plans to hold a workshop in Malad some time next month.
“Imagine textbooks with crosswords and illustrations and colour. That’s how this subject should be taught, not in books that are thirty years old,” says Paniker.

Randy Pausch-The Teacher !

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who passed away recently. He was recognised as a pioneer in virtual reality research and a gifted teacher and a mentor to many. His ‘never say die’ attitude inspired millions of people who saw his moving "Last Lecture" on YouTube. Go through the article on Randy Pausch in the link given below:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1826574,00.html

A school which provides loving care!

School Offers 'Loving' Home for Kids
In India millions of children are deprived of education since their parents are poor and always on the move looking out for work. A new initiative in China can become an inspiration for many NGOs and concerned citizens.A school set up by a couple there has become a model for helping out children whose parents are poor and always on the move.

I had some great teachers during my school days.My social studies teacher ' Paulose sir' used to tell wonderful stories and learning was great fun for all of us! Once he told us this story of a poor agricultural worker, Ramu who really wanted to go to school and learn.His parents were so poor and they couldn't afford to send him to school.When he grew up he also became an agricultural worker like his parents. But he always wanted to go to school and regularly watch childern going to school.When small children go to school with their schoolbags, laughing and talking loudly he used to think. "I am so unfortunate I couldnot go to school. When I get married and have children, I will definitely send them to the best school". He got married a few years later and the very first day itself he told his wife of his dream."Both of us will work very hard and save all the money we earn so that we can send our children to the best school in our village."Everyday used to dream of his children going to English medium school along with the children of people from the higher castes.The couple had two children ;a boy and a girl .As planned they sent them to the best school in the village.Every day when the children used to read their lessons in English both the parents would listen carefully even though they couldnt understand anything. The Ramu would very often tell his fellow workers about his children's studies.He would proudly tell them "Do you know my children go to English medium school.Your children dont even attend school."

Every night Ramu would tell his wife "I am so unfortunate I didnt have a chance to go to school". One day he declared "I am going to join a school and start learning".The wife thought that her husband has gone mad.She asked "Which school will admit you at this age.?"But he was determined.Next day he asked his son about the things one should have if he needs to go to school.His son told him innocently that anyone with a schoolbag, tiffin and waterbag can join a school. . That day he did not go to work got school uniforms ready for himself and bought books, waterbottle and other things to join school.Next day morning he went to school along with his children.Both the children were so excited that their Papa is also coming to study in the same school. The father and the children reached the school by 7.00am and he occupied a front seat in one of the classrooms.Seeing this man sitting in the classroom,lot of children gathered and they thought that he is a thief.They started screaming "Chor chor"hearing their screams the peons, teachers and the whole school rushed to the room where the "new student" was sitting.By seeing all this confusion he also got little scared and did not know what to do.When he saw teachers and peons rushing to catch him he started running.The whole schoolalso started running after him screaming"Theif, thief ,Police catch him!" Somehow he reached home and his wife asked him about his school.He said "My school is very nice.It looks like we had a P.T lesson today and I was made to run .But wait and see I will practise all the lessons tonight."In the night he decided to revise his' lessons' after the children slept..He started practising his 'lessons' repetedly " Thief thief, Police catch him!". At this time some people had looted some rich people and were sharing the loot in front of his compound.When they heard someone shouting Police and thought Police had already arrived They left in a hurry leaving all the valuable things there.

Next day Ramu was taking a round in his compound and saw all the wealth left by the thieves.He took everything home and told his wife," It looks like someone has forgotten all these things.Keep them safely and return when they come."But no one came for the wealth left behind and Ramu became the richest man in the village .My teacher used to tell us,"If Ramu studied so sincerely for just one day and became so rich,you can become richer and famous by studying sincerely everyday!".

Education is the best gift we can give our children. An educated and healthy population will be our greatest strength.This report from China is very encouraging.
Larry Abramson/NPR
The entrance to Guan Ai, which means "loving care" in Chinese. A couple opened the school to provide a warm environment for kids left behind by parents who head to big cities for work.

Migrant workers in a tiny rural village in eastern China wanted to make sure that when they left to find work in faraway cities, the kids who stayed behind got a quality education. Rather than leave their children with grandparents, parents issued a plea for a boarding school.
A local couple — both educators — responded, and in 2005, they opened Guan Ai, a private elementary school whose name means "loving care." The school's approach makes Guan Ai a refuge from the highly competitive environment at traditional Chinese schools.
Life at Guan Ai
Guan Ai is located in tiny Houjia village — home to about 500 people in China's Shanxi province. The surrounding fields are planted with asparagus and other crops, and a phalanx of rugged mountains watches over the valley. It's only 100 miles or so from the historic city of Xi'an, a tourist mecca. But economically and culturally, Houjia village is light-years away.
By Western standards, the village is desperately poor. But for rural China, it's considered prosperous. Incomes have been aided in recent years by a migration to China's big cities. Many families have traveled east to open noodle shops or other businesses.
About 200 children attend the first through sixth grades at Guan Ai, and most students live in this former public school.
The school itself is minimalist. The floors of the classrooms are perpetually dirty, as kids track in dust from a bare front yard. There are two water sources: a pair of spigots, which are used for washing everything from dishes to kids' feet.
Hygiene is tough to maintain in a place where everyone depends on the most basic of pit toilets. But hygiene and good nutrition are part of the curriculum here. At mealtimes, students line up in a courtyard to get meals from staff working inside a building that serves as the kitchen.
Against a wall in the courtyard lies "the mountain," the name for a pile of coal used for cooking. After they've eaten, the students squat down next to the outdoor spigots to wash their dishes.
Students eat lunch both outside and in a dilapidated cafeteria. The earthquake that ravaged parts of China in May did not damage the school, but it did put new urgency behind a plan to replace the cafeteria.
The students' diet includes eggs: A nonprofit organization started by a young Chinese-American woman — a former NPR intern — has helped raise the money for a campaign to get kids to eat "an egg a day."
Exploding with Energy .Guan Ali students have formed a band.The music programme is part of the school's effort to encourage interest in the arts.
In typical Chinese public schools, rote memorization is often the order of the day. Guan Ai is different.
Kids are encouraged to work in groups. They perform skits in order to encourage other students to conserve water and take good care of schoolbooks. Teachers are asked to keep journals and record observations about their classes. It's all part of an effort to foster a warmer, friendlier environment than a typical Chinese school offers.
In between classes, the students run around the dirt yard that surrounds the school, playing soccer and rope games.
The energy follows them into class. One minute they are talking excitedly; the next they are singing along with their teacher at a deafening volume. And just as suddenly, they are sitting in rapt attention as a teacher tells a story. A local grandmother comes by to teach them the art of paper cutting, and she seems to magically summon pieces of fruit and animals from scraps of paper. The kids immediately imitate her, and they create their own menagerie.
This private school receives some support from the government, but Guan Ai administrators must constantly search for new sources of funding. Guan Ai has a sister school in Menlo Park, Calif., which contributed books to Guan Ai's small library.
But the chances of these kids making it past ninth grade are not good — that's when mandatory education in China ceases. These Chinese students are more likely to go right to work. Guan Ai is one small effort to instill a more positive attitude toward school, and Guan Ai teachers hope that students who cannot or choose not to continue their formal education will leave this school better equipped to survive in rural China.

Education in Finland.

Finland's teens score extraordinarily high on an international test.Am erican educators are trying to figure out why.
This article appeared in the WSJ . educators around the world were fascinated by the performance of the children from Finland. Let's have look at the report that made waves!
By ELLEN GAMERMAN February 29, 2008
Helsinki, Finland
High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.
The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.
The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.
Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.
Fanny Salo in class
Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is a bubbly ninth-grader who loves "Gossip Girl" books, the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.
Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.
At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.
TESTING AROUND THE GLOBE

Every three years, 15-year-olds in 57 countries around the world take a test called the Pisa exam, which measures proficiency in math, science and reading.
• The test: Two sections from the Pisa science test
• Chart: Recent scores for participating countriesDISCUSS

Do you think any of these Finnish methods would work in U.S. schools? What would you change -- if anything -- about the U.S. school system, and the responsibilities that teachers, parents and students are given? Share your thoughts.
Fanny's more rebellious classmates dye their blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks. Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are popular in one clique. Teens sift by style, including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari," or hip-hop, or the confounding "fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short for "Check it on Google, you idiot." Heavy-metal fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.
The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.
Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi
Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."
In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping to learn how Scandinavian educators used technology. Officials from the Education Department, the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith Krueger was less impressed by the technology than by the good teaching he saw. "You kind of wonder how could our country get to that?" says Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of school technology officers that organized the trip.
Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn't translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: " 'Nah. So what'd you do last night?'" she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely "glue this to the poster for an hour," she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.
At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu
Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.
Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don't speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.
Another difference is financial. Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland's high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.
Finnish students have little angstata -- or teen angst -- about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties -- medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don't have the elite status of a Harvard.
Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki
Taking away the competition of getting into the "right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.
Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.
The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, but they, too, worry about falling behind in the shifting global economy. They rely on electronics and telecommunications companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia, along with forest-products and mining industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland needs to fast-track its brightest students the way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at producing more go-getters. Parents also are getting pushier about special attention for their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of the suburban Olari School. "We are more and more aware of American-style parents," he says.
Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus. Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of his school's advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him, instead calling on others. While napping in class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says, "We just have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're learning how to live."
Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com

Face Book Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit.

This is an article from the Wall Street Journal on how Face Book ignites entrepreneur spirit in the campuses.I thought this article would be a great eye opener for youngsters and pasted here!!
ENTERPRISE http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121124707865805855.html?mod=2_1559_middlebox
Face Book Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit at Harvard
Students, Graduates Start Firms, Using The Site as a Model
By VAUHINI VARA
One day during Trip Adler's sophomore year at Harvard University, he saw fellow undergraduates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz outside their dormitory with suitcases and boxes. When Mr. Adler asked what the two -- who happened to be Facebook Inc.'s co-founders -- were doing, Mr. Moskovitz lightly replied that they were moving from Cambridge, Mass., to Silicon Valley "to make Facebook big."
"I was so jealous," recalls Mr.Adler, now 23 years old. "I thought, 'I've got to find an idea and drop out of Harvard.'"
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Teen jobs: Think Facebook, not pizza delivery. Read Wendy Bounds's post and share your thoughts.
Mr. Adler didn't leave school, but after graduating in 2006, he did start an online document-sharing company. San Francisco-based Scribd Inc., employs 12 people and attracts 11.1 million monthly visitors, according to Web-tracking company comScore Inc. It has raised nearly $3.9 million from Redpoint Ventures and other venture-capital and individual investors.
Mr. Adler is just one of the Harvard students who have caught start-up fever since Facebook, founded when Mr. Zuckerberg was at Harvard in 2004, exploded in popularity. Other recent Harvard-born start-ups include Internet companies Kirkland North Inc., Drop.io Inc. and Labmeeting Inc. And Facebook has become a model for these start-ups on many fronts, from the look of company Web sites to their corporate strategies.
"I would not hesitate for a second to say Facebook's a motivator," says Paul Bottino, director of Harvard's Technology & Entrepreneurship Center. "Facebook creates would-be Facebooks." He says a start-up contest this year attracted 55 entries, up from 10 to 18 for past contests.
'Noticeably Behind'
Facebook isn't the only well-known start-up spawned at Harvard. In the 1970s, Bill Gates dropped out of the school to found Microsoft Corp. But that didn't produce the immediate copycat phenomenon that Facebook is seeing, because start-ups then took more money and time to get off the ground, let alone rise to national prominence. By the time Microsoft became known in the early 1990s, many of Mr. Gates's former classmates were settled in their adult lives and had less inclination to follow in his footsteps than Mr.Zuckerberg's peers do now.
And the idea of a college start-up culture isn't new to Silicon Valley. Stanford University leased land to Hewlett-Packard Co., started by Stanford alums, as far back as the 1950s. Today, Stanford President John Hennessy is a board member at Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc., two companies that began as projects at Stanford. Yahoo also began as a Stanford project.
Harvard, though, has long had a relatively sleepy start-up culture and has shunned a cozy relationship between academics and industry. "Harvard is very noticeably behind," says Paul Graham, a partner at Y Combinator, a Cambridge, Mass., and Mountain View, Calif., company that invests in start-ups, including Scribd and Kirkland North.
Mr. Graham, who earned a doctoral degree at Harvard in 1990, started Viaweb Inc., an online-commerce company that was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. He and others around the university in the 1990s recall few Harvard-born tech start-ups besides Viaweb and LinkExchange, a Web-advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 1998.
Now, Harvard is taking steps to get ahead. In 2000, the university loosened a rule prohibiting students from running companies from dorm rooms, but it still required that start-ups notify the university of their existence and "gain approval." Last year, it discarded the notification-and-approval rule, although some restrictions still exist.
In the past eight years, Harvard has introduced more classes, clubs and contests for entrepreneurs. Mr. Bottino says those decisions weren't directly related to Facebook, but he acknowledges that Facebook's success has given Harvard students a more-entrepreneurial bent.
I Want to Be Like Mark
Indeed, Mr. Zuckerberg has quickly become a Harvard celebrity. Graduate Matthew Siegel remembers a college-holiday ski trip to Colorado that Messrs. Zuckerberg and Moskovitz went on during Facebook's early days. Instead of skiing, Mr. Siegel recalls, the Facebook co-founders spent their days camped in the lobby of a nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel where they went online and worked on Facebook.
"I was like, 'Why are those guys just sitting around working?'" Mr. Siegel recalls. "Now, I'm like, 'Oh. That's why.'"
Over the past few years, privately held Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has grown from a handful of workers to about 550 employees. The social-networking site attracted 109.2 million visitors in March, according to comScore. Last year, Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million, valuing the start-up at $15 billion.
"It's really exciting for me when I hear that people from Harvard or anywhere are building interesting things," says Mr. Zuckerberg, 24. "To think that they were in some way inspired by what we've done is really flattering."
Among them is Mr. Siegel. After graduating from Harvard in 2005, he went to work for a management-consulting firm. Inspired by Messrs. Zuckerberg and Moskovitz, he quit after several months to work on Indaba Media LLC, which lets musicians collaborate online. IndabaMusic.com launched in February 2007.
A month later, Mr. Adler's Scribd opened to the public.
Last August, Sam Lessin, Mr. Siegel's friend and a fellow Harvard grad, left his management-consulting job to work on Drop.io, a file-sharing service. New York-based Drop.io has raised $3.9 million from RRE Ventures, DFJ Gotham and other venture-capital investors.
Doing as Facebook Does
Many of the start-ups avoid comparing themselves to Facebook because they want to be judged on their own merits. Nonetheless, they say Facebook's approach has served as a model in one way or another.
Labmeeting, a community Web site for scientists started by Mr. Adler's college roommate, uses a log-in page that resembles an old Facebook log-in page. Founder Mark Kaganovich, 23, says Labmeeting tries "to move away from the Facebook look and feel" to avoid comparisons but he and others at his company were probably "influenced" by Facebook's design.
Meanwhile, Kirkland North, an online-game company founded this year by three recent Harvard graduates and one Yale University graduate, launched its game at Stanford and now plans on expanding to other colleges before opening publicly -- an approach that allowed Facebook to control its early growth. The Web-based strategy game, called Turf, organizes players into teams based on where they live on a college campus, another idea reminiscent of Facebook, which organizes its users into "networks" based on where they live.
Mr. Adler, for his part, is studying Mr. Zuckerberg himself. Through a Scribd investor, he recently scored a dinner meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg, who advised him to keep control over his "strategic vision," as he has done at Facebook.
"We're just focused on building a good product," Mr.Adler says of Scribd, echoing comments Mr. Zuckerberg often has made publicly.
There is one thing Mr. Adler admits will always set him apart from Messrs. Zuckerberg and Gates: He earned a degree from Harvard. "I can never take it back," he says. "I'll always be a graduate."

Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership

This is an excellent article on Nelson Mandela.
He is the tallest leader in the world whom all the present leaders must emulate. Whether a student, statesman, entrepreneur, educationalist or social worker, everyone can learn valuable lessons from Nelson Mandela. I have pasted this article from 'TIME' for my students to read.

Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership
Time - Wednesday, Jul. 09, 2008
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."

As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
No. 1

Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it.

In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, "Man, I was terrified up there!"
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. "Of course I was afraid!" he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world." But as a leader, you cannot let people know. "You must put up a front."
And that's precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No. 2.

Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind.

Mandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, "Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this."
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotiations with the apartheid government. This was anathema to the African National Congress (ANC). After decades of saying "prisoners cannot negotiate" and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees, he decided that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.
When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985, there were many who thought he had lost it. "We thought he was selling out," says Cyril Ramaphosa, then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. "I went to see him to tell him, What are you doing? It was an unbelievable initiative. He took a massive risk."
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course. His reputation was on the line. He went to each of his comrades in prison, Kathrada remembers, and explained what he was doing. Slowly and deliberately, he brought them along. "You take your support base along with you," says Ramaphosa, who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul. "Once you arrive at the beachhead, then you allow the people to move on. He's not a bubble-gum leader — chew it now and throw it away."
For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.
"He's a historical man," says Ramaphosa. "He was thinking way ahead of us. He has posterity in mind: How will they view what we've done?" Prison gave him the ability to take the long view. It had to; there was no other view possible. He was thinking in terms of not days and weeks but decades. He knew history was on his side, that the result was inevitable; it was just a question of how soon and how it would be achieved. "Things will be better in the long run," he sometimes said. He always played for the long run.
No. 3

Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.

Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. "You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind." He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy.
As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief's job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don't enter the debate too early," he used to say.
During the time I worked with Mandela, he often called meetings of his kitchen cabinet at his home in Houghton, a lovely old suburb of Johannesburg. He would gather half a dozen men, Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki (who is now the South African President) and others around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway. Some of his colleagues would shout at him — to move faster, to be more radical — and Mandela would simply listen. When he finally did speak at those meetings, he slowly and methodically summarized everyone's points of view and then unfurled his own thoughts, subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it. The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. "It is wise," he said, "to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea."
No. 4.

Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport.

As far back as the 1960s, Mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner's worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs.
This was strategic in two senses: by speaking his opponents' language, he might understand their strengths and weaknesses and formulate tactics accordingly. But he would also be ingratiating himself with his enemy. Everyone from ordinary jailers to P.W. Botha was impressed by Mandela's willingness to speak Afrikaans and his knowledge of Afrikaner history. He even brushed up on his knowledge of rugby, the Afrikaners' beloved sport, so he would be able to compare notes on teams and players.
Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common: Afrikaners believed themselves to be Africans as deeply as blacks did. He knew, too, that Afrikaners had been the victims of prejudice themselves: the British government and the white English settlers looked down on them. Afrikaners suffered from a cultural inferiority complex almost as much as blacks did.
Mandela was a lawyer, and in prison he helped the warders with their legal problems. They were far less educated and worldly than he, and it was extraordinary to them that a black man was willing and able to help them. These were "the most ruthless and brutal of the apartheid regime's characters," says Allister Sparks, the great South African historian, and he "realized that even the worst and crudest could be negotiated with."
No. 5.

Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer.

Many of the guests Mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom, he intimated to me, he did not wholly trust. He had them to dinner; he called to consult with them; he flattered them and gave them gifts. Mandela is a man of invincible charm — and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies.
On Robben Island, Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on. One person he became close to was Chris Hani, the fiery chief of staff of the ANC's military wing. There were some who thought Hani was conspiring against Mandela, but Mandela cozied up to him. "It wasn't just Hani," says Ramaphosa. "It was also the big industrialists, the mining families, the opposition. He would pick up the phone and call them on their birthdays. He would go to family funerals. He saw it as an opportunity." When Mandela emerged from prison, he famously included his jailers among his friends and put leaders who had kept him in prison in his first Cabinet. Yet I well knew that he despised some of these men.
There were times he washed his hands of people — and times when, like so many people of great charm, he allowed himself to be charmed. Mandela initially developed a quick rapport with South African President F.W. de Klerk, which is why he later felt so betrayed when De Klerk attacked him in public.
Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them: they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence. He cherished loyalty, but he was never obsessed by it. After all, he used to say, "people act in their own interest." It was simply a fact of human nature, not a flaw or a defect. The flip side of being an optimist — and he is one — is trusting people too much. But Mandela recognized that the way to deal with those he didn't trust was to neutralize them with charm.
No. 6.

Appearances matter — and remember to smile.

When Mandela was a poor law student in Johannesburg wearing his one threadbare suit, he was taken to see Walter Sisulu. Sisulu was a real estate agent and a young leader of the ANC. Mandela saw a sophisticated and successful black man whom he could emulate. Sisulu saw the future.
Sisulu once told me that his great quest in the 1950s was to turn the ANC into a mass movement; and then one day, he recalled with a smile, "a mass leader walked into my office." Mandela was tall and handsome, an amateur boxer who carried himself with the regal air of a chief's son. And he had a smile that was like the sun coming out on a cloudy day.
We sometimes forget the historical correlation between leadership and physicality. George Washington was the tallest and probably the strongest man in every room he entered. Size and strength have more to do with DNA than with leadership manuals, but Mandela understood how his appearance could advance his cause. As leader of the ANC's underground military wing, he insisted that he be photographed in the proper fatigues and with a beard, and throughout his career he has been concerned about dressing appropriately for his position. George Bizos, his lawyer, remembers that he first met Mandela at an Indian tailor's shop in the 1950s and that Mandela was the first black South African he had ever seen being fitted for a suit. Now Mandela's uniform is a series of exuberant-print shirts that declare him the joyous grandfather of modern Africa.
When Mandela was running for the presidency in 1994, he knew that symbols mattered as much as substance. He was never a great public speaker, and people often tuned out what he was saying after the first few minutes. But it was the iconography that people understood. When he was on a platform, he would always do the toyi-toyi, the township dance that was an emblem of the struggle. But more important was that dazzling, beatific, all-inclusive smile. For white South Africans, the smile symbolized Mandela's lack of bitterness and suggested that he was sympathetic to them. To black voters, it said, I am the happy warrior, and we will triumph. The ubiquitous ANC election poster was simply his smiling face. "The smile," says Ramaphosa, "was the message."
After he emerged from prison, people would say, over and over, It is amazing that he is not bitter. There are a thousand things Nelson Mandela was bitter about, but he knew that more than anything else, he had to project the exact opposite emotion. He always said, "Forget the past" — but I knew he never did.
No. 7.

Nothing is black or white.

When we began our series of interviews, I would often ask Mandela questions like this one: When you decided to suspend the armed struggle, was it because you realized you did not have the strength to overthrow the government or because you knew you could win over international opinion by choosing nonviolence? He would then give me a curious glance and say, "Why not both?"
I did start asking smarter questions, but the message was clear: Life is never either/or. Decisions are complex, and there are always competing factors. To look for simple explanations is the bias of the human brain, but it doesn't correspond to reality. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears.
Mandela is comfortable with contradiction. As a politician, he was a pragmatist who saw the world as infinitely nuanced. Much of this, I believe, came from living as a black man under an apartheid system that offered a daily regimen of excruciating and debilitating moral choices: Do I defer to the white boss to get the job I want and avoid a punishment? Do I carry my pass?
As a statesman, Mandela was uncommonly loyal to Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro. They had helped the ANC when the U.S. still branded Mandela as a terrorist. When I asked him about Gaddafi and Castro, he suggested that Americans tend to see things in black and white, and he would upbraid me for my lack of nuance. Every problem has many causes. While he was indisputably and clearly against apartheid, the causes of apartheid were complex. They were historical, sociological and psychological. Mandela's calculus was always, What is the end that I seek, and what is the most practical way to get there?
No. 8.

Quitting is leading too.

In 1993, Mandela asked me if I knew of any countries where the minimum voting age was under 18. I did some research and presented him with a rather undistinguished list: Indonesia, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Iran. He nodded and uttered his highest praise: "Very good, very good." Two weeks later, Mandela went on South African television and proposed that the voting age be lowered to 14. "He tried to sell us the idea," recalls Ramaphosa, "but he was the only [supporter]. And he had to face the reality that it would not win the day. He accepted it with great humility. He doesn't sulk. That was also a lesson in leadership."
Knowing how to abandon a failed idea, task or relationship is often the most difficult kind of decision a leader has to make. In many ways, Mandela's greatest legacy as President of South Africa is the way he chose to leave it. When he was elected in 1994, Mandela probably could have pressed to be President for life — and there were many who felt that in return for his years in prison, that was the least South Africa could do.
In the history of Africa, there have been only a handful of democratically elected leaders who willingly stood down from office. Mandela was determined to set a precedent for all who followed him — not only in South Africa but across the rest of the continent. He would be the anti-Mugabe, the man who gave birth to his country and refused to hold it hostage. "His job was to set the course," says Ramaphosa, "not to steer the ship." He knows that leaders lead as much by what they choose not to do as what they do.
Ultimately, the key to understanding Mandela is those 27 years in prison. The man who walked onto Robben Island in 1964 was emotional, headstrong, easily stung. The man who emerged was balanced and disciplined. He is not and never has been introspective. I often asked him how the man who emerged from prison differed from the willful young man who had entered it. He hated this question. Finally, in exasperation one day, he said, "I came out mature." There is nothing so rare — or so valuable — as a mature man. Happy birthday, Madiba.

Bending technology to hone economic skills

The workshop on 'Use of Technology for Teaching and Learning of Economics' received excellent response and some good coverage in newspapers. I have pasted below an article that appeared in Yuva today.

Bending technology to hone economic skills
SACHIN NIMKAR, MUMBAI
IN today’s world of cut- throat competition, technological innovations like the internet, blog and multimedia have made the process of teaching and learning more interactive. But despite this, alarge number of educational institutions and teachers continue using the conventional chalk and black board. An encouraging initiative in this direction has been taken by two voluntary organisations in the city — the Forum of Free Enterprise (FFE) and the Economics Club (EC). The two organisations have come together to organise aseries of workshops to familiarise economic teachers with the use of technology in classroom. The first workshop was held at KJSomaiya College of Arts and Commerce, Vidyavihar recently. Over 50 teachers from various colleges took part in the workshop. During the workshop, online interactive sessions were held and the teachers were educated about Internet resources for teaching and research. They were also taught how to develop blogs and make effective presentations using PowerPoint. The NGO plans to conduct several more workshops for teachers in the future. Professor Shashi Panikar, coordinator, EC said, “The aim of this workshop is to use of technology in teaching and learning of economics for college teachers in Mumbai. We want to reach out to as many teachers as possible so that quality of education can be improved.” The participating teachers are obviously excited. “Iwasn’t aware that such technologies can be used to teach as well. Iwill now try make a PowerPoint presentation and use other tools like blogs while teaching my students,” averred Professor Sunita Nagpurkar, VES Vivekanand Education Society College, Chembur. “We feel empowered after the workshop. I think every teacher should attend this workshop for their future growth,” said Medha Tapiawala, professor, Guru Nanak College. sachin@ mailyuva. com

Better Late than Never

Congrats to Manmohan Singh for showing his leadership skills at least at the fag end of his prime ministership. For almost four and a half years he has been accused of being a spineless leader who enjoyed little authority.

In the past four years of the UPA rule the Left continued to bully the government and stalled all reform measures. Further the administration was paralysed by the antics of various extra constitutional authorities who wielded power. For instance the septuagenarian HRD Minister, who is supposed to represent the youth which form half of India’s population, spoiled all efforts to reform the outdated education system. If Sam Pitroda had the authority he and his Knowledge Commission could have changed the education sector, the same way as he ushered in a Telecom Revolution in the country through STD Booths.

The greatest challenge before the government is tackling inflation. We cannot blame the soaring prices of all goods on international oil and commodities prices or on global warming (One bureaucrat in Mumbai had the courage to justify the inefficiency of the BMC by blaming global warming :O). Many countries could battle inflation by making the supply system more efficient. Four years have been wasted dancing to whims and tunes of the Left and other coalition partners of the government. Many vital infrastructural projects including the National Highway Project are progressing at snail pace. Perhaps the only exception may be the good efforts put in by the government in the air travel sector.

The nation is craving for reforms and wishes to see the reformer in Manmohan Singh back in full action. Remember we have almost missed the bus… and unless we catch up, we may never get a second chance.

What is wrong with the teaching of Economics?

“An idea whose time has come again: Maybe it will take a little longer than 2040 to fulfil Goldman Sach’s prediction that the world’s ten biggest economies, using market exchange rates, will include Brazil, Russia, Mexico, India and China. But these are arguments about when, not whether, change will happen. And things could speed up…This shift is not as extraordinary as it first seems. A historical perspective shows it to be the restoration of the old order. After all, China and India were the world’s biggest economies until the mid-19th century, when technology and a spirit of freedom enabled the West to leap ahead…. There are weaknesses in some growth stories. China’s population is ageing and India’s schools are rotten….”- The Economist, September 16, 2006.

“A few years ago, I predicted that the time would come when a person’s wages and standard of living would no longer be determined by the country they live in, but instead would be a result of the education they have had. Today we start to see this vision becoming a reality in India. The challenge is to extend progress and opportunity to every section of society and every corner of the nation. If government, business and non-profits continue to work together to bridge the digital divide and enable India to realise its potential to become a creator of intellectual capital. I believe you will truly become a nation where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their potential.” – Bill Gates, Outlook, 21 August 2006.

Both the above quotes show that India definitely has potential to make it to the top, but this depends largely on the quality of education.

The 8% growth-rate has become a way of life for Indians… Reforms have pulled millions out of poverty and misery… If we can achieve a 10% growth-rate in the near future, most of the poverty will vanish… How do we plug in the leakage of 2%??? It’s the crumbling infrastructure and the rotten education system, stupid…

We need to start somewhere… the first step would be to throw away the age-old books. If mid-day meals can do the wonder in rural areas, good books too can do the trick in our schools and colleges! This will surely attract students to read more and to enjoy what they are reading.

Look at our economics textbooks, there is no humour, no pictures, no colour… all you can find is tons and tons of boring statistics and meaningless sentences… How do you expect students to even read them, leave apart learn from them… Well, if anything they can surely work as a remedy for insomnia!!!

Besides they do nothing to satisfy the increased curiosity towards economics throughout the country. A curiosity aroused by the second fastest growing economy in the world suddenly having to face rising inflation and a global slowdown. The Indian economy has been growing at very impressive rates of 7 – 8 % in the last 4 – 5 years. However suddenly it looks like the rising prices would spoil the party. Many people want to read, understand and learn economics. In the classroom too it is always treated as a dry subject dealing with abstract theories. Once we change our old textbooks and the teachers get used to new tools of learning such as Internet and Multimedia, economics can become very interesting.

Now, just take a look at some good books from around the world. Can’t we too use them for learning the subject?

For Beginners…
Microeconomics by Michael Parkin – Addison-Wesley www.econ100.com

Economics – A Complete Course by Dan Moynihan and Brian Titley – Oxford Edition

Undergraduate Level…
(Indian editions are available for all the books given below)

Principles of Economics by N. Gregory Mankiw – Thomson South-Western

Principles of Economics by Robert Frank & Ben Bernanke – McGraw Hill

Economics by Lipsey and Crystal – Oxford Edition

Also the books Microeconomics and Macroeconomics by the same authors (McGraw Hill)

Principles of economics Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair – Prentice Hall

Moving ahead let us look us some books on economics for general reading…

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

(This book has being used as a text-book at leading universities like Berkeley and Purdue!!!)

Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

The World is Flat: A brief history of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman

Happy Reading !!!

Back to the classroom …

Imagine a computer lab turning into a classroom with the students being none other than the teachers themselves! Well this was exactly what happened at K. J. Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce on 28th June, where 42 teachers from economics departments of different colleges from the central suburbs of Mumbai gathered for a workshop on ‘Use of Technology in teaching and learning of Economics.” This workshop was organised jointly by The Economics Club, Mumbai, The Forum of Free Enterprise and K. J. Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce.

Mr. Minoo Shroff, President of the Forum of Free Enterprise, which sponsored the event stressed on the importance of economic education and the responsibility of the teaching community to impart a sound understanding of the economic scenario in the country. He pointed out that globalisation has taken India to the path of high growth. Inspite of this, there are too many misconceptions in the mind of the people and no reform programmes can succeed without the support of the people. There is a need for change in the mindset of Indians including the academicians. If the leadership is really convinced about the benefits of a reforms programme it should package it properly and educate the public about the same. When this is not done disgruntled elements with vested interests take advantage.

There were two interactive sessions in this one-day workshop. The first one was conducted by me as Co-ordinator of The Economics Club, Mumbai. One of the key objectives of our NGO is to spearhead economic awareness and provide free career counselling to students. In his speech at Harvard in 1943 Winston Churchill stated, “Empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” How futuristic was his prediction! Corporates in India are already facing a huge skill shortage. During the workshop I stressed that we can make our youth employable only if we impart knowledge which is practical oriented. The teaching community will have to upgrade themselves with all modern tools of teaching to make learning more student-centric. In the presentation I took the participants through different interactive sessions on internet resources and introduced them to the world of blogging. By the end of the session all the teachers learned how to post information in blogs, comment on posts and even prepared their own blogs! One often hears of learning through the internet and use of technology for teaching; however teachers often don’t know where to start or how to make use of these resources. At this workshop they were shown some of the best resources on the internet for teaching economics and how they could use it in classrooms. Some very interesting economics songs from YouTube were then played. The song ‘Every Breath you take’, on Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairman, was hilarious and informative. On the whole the session showed that learning of economics can be real fun!

The second session was conducted by Mr. Vivek Patki, corporate trainer and visiting faculty at different management institutes. Teachers were familiarised with the basics of PowerPoint and how it could be used to make effective presentations. All the participants made PowerPoint presentations and then discussed ways to improve it.

Dr. Vaidehi Daptardar, Principal, K. J. Somaiya Arts and Commerce College, one of the organisers of the workshop praised the enthusiasm of the teachers and promised full assistance to all such sessions in the future.

The session ended with a vote of thanks by Mr. Divakara, Director-General, Forum of Free Enterprise. He promised to sponsor a number of similar workshops for college students and teachers during the academic year.

The teachers left for the day feeling the empowered and confident!

I have pasted some FEEDBACK we got from teachers…

Prof. Sunita Nagpurkar from V.E.S. (Vivekanand Education Society) College – “Today’s workshop on the use of ICT in teaching economics was one of its kinds for more than one reason. The workshop floor came alive with the spirit of sharing when Prof. Panikar opened not only his treasure of knowledge but also the sources of his knowledge. We feel greatly empowered at this stage. It was always known that so much of knowledge is available on the net but how to access it was a million dollar question, a question which has been answered effectively through this workshop.
The second session that followed was a logical progression – how to effectively use all the knowledge and information is available on the internet for classroom teaching… This was an ice breaking session and now it is upto us to float further in the ocean opened by technology.”

Dr. Medha Tapiawala from Guru Nanak College, “I congratulate the organisers for conducting such a good workshop! The workshop has given us exposure to an ocean of information available in different websites. The interaction with the resource persons has enhanced our knowledge. Even the inaugural lecture and lecture by Mr. Shroff was encouraging. I look forward to many more workshops like this!”

Dr. Sadhana Phadnis, ICL Jhunjhunwala College, “The workshop was very informative, interactive and provided insights into making classroom teaching rewarding…”

Prof. Malathi from K. J. Somaiya College of Science and Commerce, “I was thrilled after attending the workshop. I wish the organisers conduct many such workshops…”