LIRC@SFIT

MUMBAI: From the next academic year, students who are academically weak may be able to opt for an accelerated learning programme, which will teach them three to four years’ curriculum within one year, and help them catch up with their peers. The principal secretary of the state school education de partment, Nand Kumar, has put forth this proposal to reduce the number of students failing in Class 9 and to arrest the dropout rate in secondary sections. Cur rently, t he state has the highest dropout rate in Class 9- it stands at 8.9% as per the latest U-DISE (Unified District Information System for Education) report. This is much higher than dropout rates for other classes, which range between 1% and 3%. According to officials, schools fail a large number of students in class 9, and as a result the students drop out. This trend has been aggravated with the introduction of the no- f ail policy in 2010, which provides for automatic promotion from class 1 to class 8. “We are studyi...

HAND-HOLDING It gives protection from ragging, stress and offers solace to newbies MUMBAI: Akanksha Yadav, a first-year engineering student in Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), recalls a recent incident. “One of my batch-mates had fared poorly in the Chemistry paper. She was feeling very low. Fortunately, one of our seniors consoled her and talked her out of the phase,” she said. The senior student is one of the ‘mentors’ appointed as part of IIT-B’s Student Mentor Programme (SMP). The decadeold programme, launched with the primary objective of protecting newcomers from ragging, has matured into a larger campus acclimatization initiative. This year the institute has appointed 80 mentors to cater to more than 900 freshers. “This year, we had received around 350 applications from those aspiring to mentor,” said Yamini Bansal, one of the coordinators of SMP. The mentors were selected after a round of interviews. A website launched by the group a few months ago h...

  Vaachan Prerana Diwas (Reading Inspiration Day) was celebrated in St. Francis Institute of Technology (Borivali, Mumbai) to commemorate the birth anniversary (15 October) of Late dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - the Missile Man of India. As part of the celebrations, the Learning and Information Resource Centre (Central Library) initiated a few activities as outlined below: 1) Take Away of Books 2) Sale of withdrawn books 3) Book Exhibition 4) Modification of the overdues 5) Extending Scholar's Card facility to students whose GPA is =/> 8.6. The LIRC witnessed a huge response for the Take Away of books and the Sale of Withdrawn book bank books. More than 150 people visited the library and an odd 100 availed the same. Staff and students alike were happy and all smiles since almost everybody got something to carry with them. Book Exhibition was well organized with a majority of the books on "Wireless Communications". Many faculty members glanced ...

Happy to note that 100 people including staff and students of SFIT availed the "Take Way of books, CDs and magazines! A big thank you for making the " Vaachan Prerana Diwas " ( Reading Inspiration Day) " a success!! Photos will soon follow this post!

GOOD NEWS!! GOOD NEWS !! GOOD NEWS !! Fine Structure has been changed with effect from October 15, 2015 to mark the Celebrations of Vaachan Prerana Diwas. Rupees 2/- per day for the first five days Rupees 5/- per day for the next ten days Rupees 10/- per day subsequently

 Vedantu enables students in remote areas to receive tuition from highly qualified teachers The platform has now completed providing 21,000 hours of live learning to more than 17,000 students through 180 listed teachers. Bengaluru: Its almost 4 pm on a Tuesday afternoon and Vasavi gets ready to take her daily physics lessons for 9th and 10th graders. An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras graduate, Vasavi, on maternity leave from her corporate job, dedicates three hours daily to tutoring students from Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai and remote towns such as Rudrapur in Uttarakhand. In Wani taluk, Yavatmal district in Maharashtra, 9th grader Tanusha M. gets ready for her physics and mathematics class. She takes two classes from highly qualified teachers whose location Tanusha does not know. She only knows them through their qualifications and names. Vasavi and many others like her are teachers by choice and Tanusha is one of the thou...

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 applicat...

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

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 b...

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 engage...

Source: Maharashtra Times dated 11/10/2015

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. REUTERS Productive, 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 be...

Bulbbulapps library, a smartphone and tablet app for children below six years, has garnered more than a million views on YouTube. Merely four months old, Hyderabad-based startup Bulbulapps is available on all platforms is and  is currently among the top apps in iOS India. How Bulbul was conceived A serial entrepreneur, Prakash was always passionate about films and books right from his childhood. “I grew up to become a filmmaker and an artist. Bulbulapps is inspired by this very fundamental need to learn and unlearn. Most importantly. It is meant to unlock the curiosity of every single child. It became even more evident when my child began to ask questions born out of curiosity. They enjoyed reading and learning through the digital platform as it was highly engaging and had a tremendous visual and interesting narration,” says Prakash, founder and CEO, Bulbulapps. Prakash was awed by the curiosity and the questions that every child asks constantly...