Book arms students with tools to fight stress

Even though I work hard, the teacher expects more of me. I am disappointed when I don’t do as well as others. I am confident about achieving my plans for the future.

Through a maze of more than hundred such questions aiming to identify the stress levels and ‘psychological self-constructs’ of students, a new book “Stressed... But Not Out”, based on a doctoral thesis, seeks to zero in on stress and tackle it among school students.

Giselle D’Souza, an associate professor at St Teresa’s Institute of Education, surveyed 1,092 Class 10 students over a two-year period for her PhD thesis. These findings, now compiled in a book, contain tools for identifying stress based on a scoring scale alongside suggestions for parents, schools and students.

The book was released last month and is likely to become available through schools from June. D’Souza has already conducted stress management workshops in a few schools.

The study found that stress scores were higher wherever scores for three ‘psychological self-constructs’ were lower: the academic self concept (sense of self-worth in academics), efficacy (sense of ability in performing any task) and locus of control (do you think you control your own life).

“This is the first such tool that has been created for the Indian context,” said D’Souza. The tools will also help zero in on the kind of stress students face: whether exam-related, achievement-related or social stress.

Source: Hindustan Times dated 3 May 2012

Cabinet to take up copyright Bill today - Indian Express

Cabinet to take up copyright Bill today - Indian Express

Anubhuti Vishnoi Posted online: Thu Apr 26 2012, 00:44 hrs

 

New Delhi : The Cabinet is likely to take up long-pending Universities of Innovation Bill and Copyright (Amendment) Bill on Thursday. Both the legislations will come with changes factoring in recommendations by stakeholders and parliamentarians.
While the amendments to the Copyright Bill will drop the controversial statutory licensing clause for radio broadcast, the Innovation Universities Bill will drop the clause to set up 14 such varsities.

The new Cabinet note will allow existing varsities to upgrade to innovation university status if they adhere to required standards. The numerical target of setting up 14 such varsities has been dropped on grounds of non-feasibility and the argument that even a few of them will help serve the purpose of fostering a research eco-system, as aimed. While the Bill, when it first went to Cabinet earlier this year, ran into trouble with 20 ministries/ departments raising red flags over a range of issues, the legislation has passed muster after being vetted by a Committee of Secretaries.

The Universities of Innovation Bill aims at establishment of varsities that will encourage superlative academic quality and research output. These will be set up either by the
government or private entities or through public
private partnerships and offer unmatched academic freedom.

The amendments to the Copyright Act, 1958, on the other hand, aim at according unassignable rights to ‘creative artists’ such as lyricists, playback singers, music directors, film directors, dialogue writers, who will be paid royalty every time the movie they have worked for is aired on a television channel. The Bill has run into a series of difficulties with clauses challenged by the film industry, book publishers and broadcasting industry. The legislation was opposed in Parliament in the last session over the statutory licensing for radio broadcast of literary and musical works.

Google Trains Students With Search Education [Updates]

Google has launched a free tutorial website, Search Education, which will help students learn how to better use Google Search for learning and academic research. The site is aimed at both at teachers and at individual users.

The company knows that while its many tools can be useful, not everyone understands how to use them. Student Education seeks to solve this by providinglive training that anyone can access as well aslesson plans that teachers can use to teach their students about Google’s many services. There are even “A Google A Day” challenges that can be used to reinforce search skills in students.

Teachers will be pleased to find that the lessons plans are comprehensive. They include beginner, intermediate and advanced versions covering five different topics. There are also ten challenges, each of which covers a specific academic topic (such as history, biology and even math).

Individual learners are mainly encouraged to check out the live learning section, which consists of videos (some are hosted on YouTube) designed to guide individual learners through specific tasks. Some of the videos are almost an hour long. The lesson plans could also be used as personal step-by-step training, though they are obviously not perfect for that purpose.

All of the content can be reached by checking out Google’s Search Education site.

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-trains-students-search-education-updates/ (Accessed on 10/05/2012)