Poetry takes musical route to score high with students

MUMBAI: In an effort to garner interest for poetry among students, the state education department will put the poems in textbooks to music in the voice of popular artists with background scores.

Sur Kavitanche, as the initiative is called, is a brain child of deputy director, Mumbai, B B Chavan. It is slated to kickstart with the launch of an album of poems from the Class V Balbharti textbook in Marathi.

"Children learn movie songs so quickly because they are catchy and interesting. We wanted to do something similar for the poems as well. If the poems have a tune to it, students will be able to sing them and teachers too will be able to teach them better," said Chavan.

The album will be launched at the B N Vaidya Auditorium, Dadar, on October 20. To ensure easy and free access to these recordings, the education department will host them on their website. "We want maximum number of teachers and students to benefit from this. We will also be creating a mobile application to enable students and teachers to download it. We will also create ringtones of these songs," said Chavan.

Various musicians and singers have lent their voice for this album without a fee. "Students need to be given the best opportunities to learn and this is a way we can do our bit for them," said music composer, Sambhaji Bhagat. Sachin Khedekar, Sadhna Sargam, Urmila Dhangar and Rahul Ranade are among the musicians and singers who are part of the initiative.

The curriculum for class V was changed starting the 2015-2016 academic year and is expected to remain the same for the next five years. "We thought it was worth putting in the effort because the same recordings can be used for students in the future batches. We are also planning to do the same thing for other mediums like Hindi, Urdu, English etc," said Chavan. It is also expected to be extended to classes VI, VII and VIII when the syllabus changes.

Source: The Times of India dated 14 October 2015

Visitors to Vaachan Prerana Diwas: Day 1 - Sale of Withdrawn books

CELEBRATION OF “WACHAN PRERANA DIWAS” (READING INSPIRATION DAY) IN THE LIRC

CELEBRATION OF “VAACHAN PRERANA DIWAS” (READING INSPIRATION DAY) IN THE LIRC

To mark the birth anniversary (October 15) of our ex-President, Late

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, WACHAN PRERANA DIWAS (READING INSPIRATION DAY) would be celebrated in the Learning and Information Centre from October 13 to 16, 2015.

Following activities would be organized as a part of the 4- day long celebrations; mark your calendars accordingly:

1) Sale of withdrawn book bank books on 13 October, 2015

2) Take Away of books on 15 October, 2015

3) Book Exhibition on 15 – 16 October, 2015

`No school bag' day on Oct 15 as tribute to Prez Kalam

Instead, schools to line up reading activities that day

As a tribute to our former president APJ Abdul Kalam, the state government has decided to observe October 15, his birth anniversary , as Vaachan Prerna Diwas or `Reading Day'. City schools will celebrate this day as `No School Bag Day'.

The mandate recommends all students, from class three to eight, to take to reading non-academic books on that day . Schools have also been directed to conduct events and activities that inspire students to read such books. The state government has set a budget of about `6 lakhs for the day . Let's take a look at the activities that will be conducted as a part of the celebrations.

CONDUCT A BOOK EXHIBITION

Students can plan and organise a book exhibition; it can include all their favourite books.While organising the same, students can interact with each other about their reading habits and also learn about some of the most popular books in the world.

GIFT-A-BOOK ACTIVITY

It can be any book, other than a textbook. Be it story books, comics, classics, fiction or non-fiction, students are being encouraged to gift each other a book of their choice, which initiate discussions and enhance their understanding.

INVITE AUTHORS

Some schools are also planning to invite famous authors to meet the children and share their expertise and experience. It will be an enriching experience as children will get to know in detail about writing as a profession, understand the nuances of publishing and the steps that go into being a successful author.

LECTURES BY LITERATURE EXPERTS

The intention of conducting lectures by literature and other subject experts is to broaden the perspectives of students, who spend most of their time in studies and other extra curricular activities. These experts will share knowledge that's not usually a part of the syllabus.

READING A BOOK, NOT TEXTBOOK

Since students come across only textbooks and worksheets while schooling, the day will be dedicated to taking them beyond that and reading all kinds of books. This will enhance their academic knowledge and get them grades. An interactive activity , it will introduce children to well-known authors from around the world and enhance their experience. Reading books can help them expand their horizons and learn things beyond textbooks.

READ OUT LOUD

Although reading might be practised by students on a regular basis, not many know the benefits of reading out loud. One of the activities lined up for this day is to read out loud, so that you understand each and every word you read, their pronunciations, meaning, the tone in which they are used and the context it is used. Reading out loud also boosts our confidence and generates valuable feedback.

Source: The Times of India dated 13 October, 2015

Why your Facebook account needs to be included in your Will

The Internet has changed the way we live. Technology has taken over our lives in many ways and most of us are a tangled mess of emails, smartphones, iPads and laptops. We use technology for almost everything we do—our morning alarm, daily calendar, correspondence through WhatsApp, emails and SMS, bank accounts and social network accounts. This dependence on the Internet has given us something new to think about—dgital assets. During our lifetimes, they afford us the luxury of being able to do almost everything on-the-go and immediately. But what happens to these assets when we pass away?

Justin Ellsworth died while serving in the US armed forces. His father, appointed personal representative of his estate, sought access to his Yahoo account to make a memorial for him. Yahoo has a policy of not sharing passwords and refused to co-operate.

When Helen and Jay Stassen’s 21-year-old son, Benjamin, committed suicide, the Stassens went searching for answers. They found themselves engaged in a conflict with Facebook and Google. Both companies refused to give them access to their son’s account.

In both these cases, the families had to resort to getting a court order for access to information. These cases highlight the uncertainty about privacy of people’s digital lives in the event of their death.

What are digital assets?

Historically, a person’s estate consisted of a Will, trusts, life insurance policies, and any property that a person owned, including financial accounts. While many people manage their finances, business, and personal lives online, only a few have organised or centralised their online accounts. This can make managing and distributing these assets difficult after the person has died, and can lead to confusion for family members, denial of access, and even an inability to locate the accounts or information in the first place.

What happens to the many posts you made on social networking sites if you die or become incapacitated? What about the emails you stored with various service providers? What happens to the thousands of images you have stored on your Flickr or Instagram accounts? Maybe you run a website or a blog or an online business. What about registered domain names and libraries of movies, digital music and e-books that can be of significant value? Even closely held companies have information that is digital: banking records, documents, spreadsheets, personnel records, domain names.

For the majority of us, these accounts and digital assets are likely to outlive us. And when we die, it is left up to family members and executors of the Will to sort through them all. A digital estate plan is a plan for the succession of your digital assets. It can help your family locate and access any accounts you have online. With the launch of the Digital India campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our daily involvement with the digital world is only going to rise.

What happens to digital assets without any plan?

It’s almost always in the terms of service of every digital company to not share your account information with anyone other than you. Most companies are aware of the trust placed in them, and take their responsibility to protect the privacy of people who use these services seriously. Companies like Google, Twitter and Outlook may provide content from the account on the receipt of relevant documentation but will not provide passwords or other mechanisms that would enable anyone to log in to a user’s account. Google also goes a step further with “Inactive Account Manager,” which is a way to either share or delete the account after a set period of inactivity. Others like LinkedIn will remove the account without transferring data to related family members. Facebook gives you two options—you can either delete your late family member’s account or to memorialise it. It will not transfer the account to anyone.

Making a plan for digital assets

Many states in the US have enacted laws incorporating certain online accounts or information into the probate process and are taking steps to enact specific laws relating to digital assets. In India, however, this seems some time away. A number of online companies have also started which allow you to indicate who can access your online accounts when you are no longer alive.

Given the lack of legal clarity in this area, it just makes practical sense to get organised now and to take care of your digital assets, to the extent possible. So, here is how you can do it:

1. Make a plan for your digital assets; you may wish to back up data in an external hard-drive to store photos, e-mails, documents, and other work product.

2. Take inventory of your digital accounts and assets, assemble a list of passwords.

3.Store details in an easy to reach location.

4.Give trusted family members information, instructions and authority so that they know what you have, where it is located, and how you want to dispose of it.

The truth is that today more and more of our lives are online and this will only increase. It is imperative to understand what you keep online and what will happen to it once you are no longer there. Careful planning and organisation increases the likelihood that digital assets are handled in a manner consistent with your wishes.

Gautami Gavankar, principal advisor-estate planning, Kotak Mahindra Trusteeship Services Ltd

Source: LiveMint dated 13/10/2015

Placement related Apps

Source: Maharashtra Times dated 11/10/2015

Neglecting science could kill it one day

The deterioration of science education in India should be of greater concern to us than not winning a Nobel Prize

October is that month when institutions in Sweden and Norway, including the Swedish Academy of Sciences, announce the winners of the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics and peace. The awards in physics, chemistry and medicine have a long history and it is probably this long tradition, rather than their monetary value, that gives the Nobel Prize the extraordinary power to influence public perceptions of the scientific profession.

REUTERSProductive, high-quality science requires good infrastructural facilities, good students, expensive instruments and industry-academia linkages. Such facilities are extremely rare in developing countries

A question sometimes asked, though perhaps less often than it should be by Indian politicians and the intelligentsia, is why, despite our much-touted scientific acumen, no Nobel Prize in science has been won by an Indian for work done in India for more than 80 years — as Sir CV Raman won the physics Nobel in 1930. This question is an important one since the teaching and doing of science require substantial resources that come from the tax payer. An obvious answer is that for Indian science to reach such prize-winning calibre we require not just ‘outstanding’ discoveries in science but also what it takes to come up with them and that these requirements have undergone changes beyond recognition since the Raman era. The question we should rather be asking today is what kind of science allows individual excellence to thrive, bring glory to the nation, and deliver tangible benefits to society.

It is important to realise that many Nobel Prize-winning discoveries both in the past and also in more recent times have been innovation-focused. Contrary to common wisdom, top quality curiositydriven research and that which assumes a broader application often go hand in hand. Excellence in applied and basic research synergises each other over long periods of time. Established innovations can often throw up questions whose answers in turn lead to outstanding discoveries.

The discovery of the ammonia synthesis catalyst in the early 20th century is a particularly instructive case in point. It is essential in the manufacture of the most common fertiliser, globally made in billions of tonnes today, and its discoverer Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918. However, while his work revealed how ammonia was made, the question as to why the catalyst works remained unanswered for about 70 years. It was Gerhard Ertl, using modern experimental techniques, who provided the answer and won the Nobel Prize in 2007.

Another relevant example is the Nobel awarded to John Robert Vane in 1982 for providing an answer to why aspirin is an effective pain killer. Although aspirin had been patented in 1900 by the company Bayer, and its medicinal benefits as a pain killer were well established, its mechanism of action was not known. Vane’s answer paved the pathway for the introduction of a new generation of heart drugs.

This year’s Nobel Prize for medicine to Tu Youyou of China for the discovery of artemisinin, an antimalarial drug isolated from Chinese wormwood, is a clear example of how innovation continues to be driven by good science. In China the national project against malaria to discover new therapies was started in 1967, and artemisinin (the active ingredient) isolated by 1972. In other words, it took four decades for the scientific community as a whole to collectively establish and accept the enormous scope and utility of Tu’s work.

Much of Nobel Prize-winning science has been interdisciplinary in character. Many prize-winning discoveries had engineers working with scientists. Carl Bosch and Guilio Natta (one of the Nobel Prize winners for plastic) were chemical engineers who collaborated and shared their Nobels with chemists. In recent times the border lines between physics and chemistry or chemistry and biology are so blurred that chemists often complain that the prizes given for chemistry have little to do with chemistry. In this century four out of the 16 Nobel prizes in chemistry, have been awarded for work related to catalysis, an interdisciplinary area of much industrial relevance.

Productive, high-quality science requires good infrastructural facilities, good students, expensive instruments and industry-academia linkages. Such facilities are extremely rare in developing countries. No wonder many talented scientists from the developing world have looked for professional fulfilment in the West. Aziz Sancar, one of the Nobel Prize winners in chemistry this year, is one more addition to the long list of Nobel laureates in the United States whose primary training in science was in the developing world. Hargobind Khorana and V Ramakrishnan, both Indianorigin scientists and Nobel laureates, also worked in well-funded science laboratories elsewhere.

The future of Indian science as a whole is uncertain and the overall deterioration in science education and research are matters of far greater concern than not winning a Nobel Prize. Science education and research must not be thought of as water falling from a tap that can be closed and opened at will. Neglecting science beyond a point can kill it permanently. In India with less than 1% of GDP allocation to science and the private sector’s complete indifference to long-term industry-academia linkages we are fast approaching that point. Sumit Bhaduri taught at Northwestern University and IIT Bombay The views expressed are personal.

Source: The Hindustan Times dated 12/10/2015