Thought Garage

Undoubtedly there is a huge gap between what is being taught at Schools and what we need to learn.  More so when it comes to Mathematics. One foundation want to change that and teach Mathematics with computers at the core. computerbasedmath.org is a project to build a completely new math curriculum with computer-based computation at its heart—alongside a campaign to refocus math education away from historical hand-calculating techniques and toward relevant and conceptually interesting topics.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit Lecture Home Page on Carnegie Mellon University or The Last Lecture .

This is one of the BEST videos I have ever watched. Discrimination is the worst form of social cancer and unfortunately all it takes is an unquestioned and unreasoned assumption or perception of something or someone. And what a way to explain the feeling of being discriminated by making them go through it. What an inspiring and life changing lesson.        It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.  -- A Class Divided (PBS, Frontline) Watch all 5 chapters of the video, access the transcript and learn more about it here on the Program Page on PBS . Please do share the link and Spread the message. There is no better link that you can ever share with a friend, family and most importantly your kids.

What is really important to learn to first survive, then compete and ultimately win in this Internet powered Smart Phone driven Flat world ?   Here is a great video that puts this question in the context of learning "Math" at schools. Key question asked in this video is Should we continue to spend a great deal of time in learning how to 'calculate' or should we focus more on conceptualizing and formulating problems and using computers to perform computations. The argument the author makes is that we MUST do the later and at the earliest possible. If you understand the argument, you can easily replace "math" with any thing in the world or any branch of science for that matter. The argument still makes a sound and very important case. In fact, if you realize, this is NOTHING new. We have been redefining continuously what we need to learn and how we learn throughout the period of evolution. The resistance and incredibility are just part of that evolution. J...

Its not unusual for most of us to make resolutions on the New Year’s eve, every year. It’s a great milestone to look back and review ourselves and set our goals for the next year. Technically, I never made any resolutions on a New Year’s eve. Not that I don’t like to make. I just happened to have a different milestone, my birth day, that comes about a week before the New year’s eve. I do it mostly on my Birthday (:-)). The Resolution of 1999 I would like to share about one such resolution that I really enjoyed chasing it. Its about a resolution I made way back in 1999, immediately after joining in my first job. The resolution is about teaching at least  1000 hours in the next 10 years . The inspiration behind this resolution was a teacher I met, a lecturer by name VB (Vijay Balachandran) that taught us English at SMVM Polytechnic, Tanuku. He is undoubtedly, one of the BEST teachers I have ever met and I consider myself to be the luckiest bun...