Education News

Think about how you or the people you work with approach the creation of a blended learning lesson plan. The first steps of coming up with and flushing out your initial idea. Then, scouring the web to find safe, factually accurate sites that are not blocked by your school filters and checking the fine print to make sure the terms of service don’t restrict access to children of a specific age. Then of course there’s learning how to use the site yourself, tailoring your lesson plan and constructing a rubric around the information you find, teaching your students how to use the website in question and finally getting around to actually explaining and assigning the lesson. In these days of mandated testing, pacing charts and state standards who possibly has time for that?

The solution most teachers have come to accept is eliminating or at least significantly limiting these kind of online activities; which acts as a disservice to our students who have become accustomed to process, think and learn through technological means. So what is a teacher to do? The answer is just, simplify.

Let Students Lead The Way

In lesson design, so many of us follow some sort of path similar to the one outlined above with it’s myriad of pitfalls and multiple steps. Consider flipping this process on it’s head, eliminating many of those steps and reverting to an “old way” of doing things. Just design your lesson, create a rubric, and turn the rest over to the students.

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Making the task of choosing an engineering college for admission easier this season, the Madras high court has asked Anna University to publish the pass percentage of every college affiliated to it and a list of colleges with identical names. They should be published on www.annauniv.edu/tnea2014, it said. This would also help call the bluff of private engineering colleges that make false claims about their academic standards. 

Pass percentage and a college’s past academic performance could help engineering aspirants and their parents make an informed choice of colleges, uninfluenced by advertisements of under-performing colleges that make tall claims. Publication of the list of colleges bearing similar-sounding names, along with their counselling code, too would help students distinguish between genuine institutions and their namesakes. 

In a 33-page order on Wednesday, the first bench comprising acting Chief Justice Satish K Agnihotri and Justice M Sathyanarayanan said details pertaining to pass percentage, department-wise academic performance and similar-sounding college names along with their code numbers should be published in Anna University’s official website within two weeks, “on or before the start of counselling process,” whichever is earlier.

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Software has performed the first real-time translation of a dolphin whistle – and better data tools are giving fresh insights into primate communication too

IT was late August 2013 and Denise Herzing was swimming in the Caribbean. The dolphin pod she had been tracking for the past 25 years was playing around her boat. Suddenly, she heard one of them say, “Sargassum”.

“I was like whoa! We have a match. I was stunned,” says Herzing, who is the director of the Wild Dolphin Project. She was wearing a prototype dolphin translator called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT) and it had justtranslated a live dolphin whistle for the first time.

It detected a whistle for sargassum, or seaweed, which she and her team had invented to use when playing with the dolphin pod. They hoped the dolphins would adopt the whistles, which are easy to distinguish from their own natural whistles – and they were not disappointed. When the computer picked up the sargassum whistle, Herzing heard her own recorded voice saying the word into her ear.

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Business is booming in India. Sectors such as information technology, car manufacturing , entertainment and agriculture are becoming more closely integrated with the global economy and defining the country’s place within it. 

With these growing sectors come opportunities for anyone interested in gaining an international degree in business and commerce. As Indian firms in these and other sectors increase their exports in international markets , expand their presence outside India (often via acquisition) and attract foreign direct investment , more and more suitably qualified individuals are required to sustain this growth. 

Students choosing to study in this field, therefore , need to select a programme most likely to deliver the required knowledge and skill-set to succeed and there are plenty of them out there. 

Good business programmes will typically take a multi-disciplinary approach to business education and feature case studies, problem solving, modelling, quantitative skills and often an internship (whether paid or unpaid). Combining analytical and presentation skills with real-world experience, such an education could lead to skills such as drafting a coherent but ambitious business plan linked to expansion in new market, or planning and executing the logistics of getting a product across national borders. Such skills are essential for success in a whole range of areas such as foreign investment, business development, logistics and international marketing. These skills and knowledge can be useful to carve out a career not only in a large multinational company but also in nimble, small and medium businesses, as well as fast-paced start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures. 

To know more Read this news article

IIT Bombay have recently launched its first three MOOC’s as part of its collaboration with EdX.

Sessions for two of the courses — Introduction to Computer Programming (part one) and Thermodynamics — will commence this July, the third course — Introduction to Computer Programming (part two) — will begin in September.

The quality and content will be same as that offered on the campus for all the courses. Different certification options are also available on each course depending on the requirements of the student.

To know more about the course details, read this news article

Technology is playing major role in development of a country and its society. With the positive impact of technology cyber world and internet is coming forward as a challenge to keep check on increasing modern crimes like hacking, pornography, email spoofing, money laundering and much more.

To tackle these challenges the cyber laws were framed to protect civilians and cyber lawyers with a specialization came into being. Cyber law is relatively new in India and requires improvisation, so there is a huge opportunity for fresh talents to grow in this career.

To take Cyber Law as a career one need to have the deep knowledge and understanding of technology as well as law. The increase in use of technology is not the only reason for the simultaneous growing requirement of cyber lawyers. It is also the increasing awareness among people in society and their claims against breach of laws which demands such lawyers in our country.

A person can earn Rs.7.5 lakh-Rs.9 lakh per year as starting salary.

If you have interest in Law and Technology then this is right choice of career for you. To know more about the available courses and top institutes for cyber law read this article.

A recent Euromonitor International report suggests that emerging market economies will grow almost three times faster than developed economies, accounting for an average of 65 percent of global economic growth through 2020. And the new beneficiaries of this growth value education highly.

In particular, middle class households in emerging markets are twice as likely to report that spending on education for household members is one of their top five financial priorities (30 percent vs. 16 percent). The emerging middle class in Indonesia, Mexico and Colombia are especially likely to prioritize education (38 percent to 44 percent). And while the emerging market spotlight has long been focused on the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the report, entitled Reaching the Emerging Middle Classes beyond BRIC, notes that attention is turning to smaller markets. The shift is being driven by the rates of faster economic and demographic growth in many of those markets – factors that are together fueling growth in consumer spending, including highly valued spending areas such as education.

This report gives good insights about emerging economies beyond BRIC as well. Please go through this report published by Euromonitor International to learn more about global economic scenario with respect to emerging economics.

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In December 2013, MBDA(MBDA is a missile developer and manufacturer) signed a sponsorship agreement with the ISAE-SUPAERO(École nationale supérieure de l’aéronautique et de l’espace ®) Foundation and ISAE, thereby setting up the Indian scholarship programme. The Foundation is a French state-approved association with the main mission of supporting the advancement of the international reputation of ISAE, and developing research and the international mobility of students, lecturers and researchers.

In September 2014, the first group of seven Indian students to be awarded scholarships under the MBDA Programme of Excellence, will be attending a two-year master’s programme at the French university Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE) situated in Toulouse, southern France. The students will be awarded an internationally recognized MSc in Aerospace, Mechanics and Avionics.

They will be studying with students from various other countries around the world in a truly international environment. In 2015 and 2016, two more batches of eight students will be selected for the MBDA scholarship programme.

This is a great step taken by the France towards the future of the relationship of France and India.

Know more about the facilities and opportunities provided to the students and the reputation of the institute in this news article.

Have interest in history and maps? Love the open source content? Love Google maps, Google street view, Google satellite, Google Earth and all other such things that allow you to experience the world from the comfort of your computer?

Here is good news for you, new addition to the open source database.

New York Public Library have made available its digital map collection under the Creative Commons license, so you can download 20,000 digitized, high-resolution, historical maps, some even as old as 1600. All this you can download for free and do whatever you like with them.

Here is the news article which explains you how to use and access these maps. Go through this article and a video to get the clear understanding of what can be possible with these maps.

Sport is increasingly becoming a bigger and more diverse business. Organizations need thousands of people to work in sports related areas like management, marketing and event planning. Find out more career avenues in sports world in this news.

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