Why to code and where to learn basic coding

1.     Computers started making they way into life of a common human being some time in late 1970s.

2.     Initial thorough effort toward the growth of computers was dedicated toward development of state of the art hardware like microprocessor, memories, SMPS and basic architecture.

3.     Last two decades have been more deeply focused on development of kind of softwares, which have completely taken the life by a storm.

4.     Life can’t even be imagined without use of latest version of mobile phones carrying softwares  like those of Android or iOS etc.

5.     Even each house hold equipment like Microwave oven, washing machine, air conditioner and car as well need a software to perform some part of its operation.

6.     Development of software means an ability to write a piece of code, which can instruct computer to perform a specific set of actions.

7.     Going by the trends, the way Computers have become a part of human life, a need has emerged out for almost every individual to learn coding.

8.     According to Steve Jobs, great entrepreneur from Apple –

“Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer.. because it teaches you how to think”

9.     Inventor of Windows, Bill Gates wrote his first piece of code at the age of 13. While few others start doing as early as when they are in 2^nd standard.

10. Learning to code is more of a matter of determination.

11. Following three websites help is learning the coding in an easy way –

https://code.org/

www.codeacademy.com

www.codeavengers.com

     

Happy learning and Happy Coding!!

3 simple rules for Electronic Engineers

(Rules)³ for Electronics Engineers

1.     Sir J J Thomson discovered electron in 1897. At that time, nobody had imagined at all, what this new branch of Engineering could do for them.

2.     Just 119 years down into human history and Electronics has brought us at a stage where we can converse with another person in a fraction of second. That is just one example of what technology of today can do for us.

3.     One of the pillars of today’s technology advancement i.e. invention of a Bipolar Junction Transistor happened in 1947.

4.     First Integrated Circuit was developed in 1958 through which engineers came to know that they could pack more and more number of transistors on a single silicon chip.

5.     We got Moore’s law in 1965 coined in by Dr. Gordon Moore ( Former CEO of INTEL) in which he said that density of transistors will keep on doubling every 18 months.

And since then there has been no looking back. Electronics has been following three golden rules stated in an easy language as below –

A.   Make the devices as small as possible no matter whatsoever is the current size of the devices.

B.   Make the devices as power efficient as possible no matter whatsoever power they are currently drawing.

C.    Make the devices as fast as possible, no matter at whatsoever speed those are currently working at.

6.     If one looks around himself, implementation of these three rules could be    easily observed in terms of much faster, power efficient and smaller in size Personal computers, mobile phones and all other electronic gadgets.

7.     Even, each generation of Apple iPhone seems to be following these 3 rules.

God bless engineers and researchers so that they continue to work following these 3 rules for the betterment of humanity.

Is all well with Indian Education system?

Is all well with Indian Education system?

1.     India got its independence from British rule in 1947 after later ruled former for more than two centuries. At the time of Indian Independence, there were only 20 odd universities to cater to a population of about 340 million.

2.     Clear from the number of universities prevailing at that time and size of population, not many people in India used to go for higher education and overall Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in that sector was minimal.

3.     By the year 2006, India had created another 300 plus universities to reach to a number of 355.

4.     As of now, India has more than 750 universities to cater to a population of about 1.25 billion. It indicates that the number of universities in last 10 years has doubled from a number, which was otherwise achieved in 60 years of Indian independence.

5.     GER numbers in higher education sector hover somewhere close to 20 %.

6.    On numbers, it all looks very fine. But, question remains that “Is all well with Indian Education System?

7.     During author’s recent visit to one of the well renowned government professional institute, it was revealed that Student : Teacher ratio was prevailing at about 38 : 1. More than 60 posts of Faculty members were vacant in that institute. This is generally the trend in most of the government institutes in the country where there are hardly any regular teachers to engage the classes.

8.     Most of these institutes are dependent upon contractual staff members who are not able to put in the best of their effort owing to uncertainty involved in the tenure of their jobs.

9.      In contrast to the government institutes, average age of Faculty members in a private institute is not more than 30 years. It means that these Faculty members are so young, immature and inexperienced that at times there is hardly any age gap in the student and teacher. For most of these Faculty members, teaching as a profession had never been their first choice.

10. Most of the private institutes are not very well organized paymasters as well.

11. Regulatory bodies lay down a requirement of having a minimum number of PhD faculty members in any educational institute. Private universities misuse their autonomy and award PhDs to non-deserving candidates. Later these candidates with kind of ‘bogus’ PhDs only become guides and further give rise to poor quality of PhDs.

12. This whole vicious cycle is ultimately deteriorating the quality of education in the country. No wonders, ultimate absorbers of students educated in this way i.e industry usually cry foul to not able to get enough no. of employable candidates.

13. Regulatory bodies are also not able to play their part properly owing to the limited amount of time given to them for inspecting any educational institute.

14. Following can be done to improve the quality of education and institutes in the country –

(i)            Slow down the increase of number of private universities

(ii)    Have a tight quality check on existing number of institutes so as to weed out the corruption completely from such a noble profession

(iii)         Open up the provisions in the budget and try to fill the maximum of the vacancies first before thinking of opening up any new institutes.

(iv)         Motivate the Faculty members to adopt the teaching profession with much more seriousness.

(v)          Organize a large number of sessions for Faculty members / students to awaken them to the involve themselves in better quality research.

MOOCs - How they evolved and what is their current status?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – How they evolved and what is their current status?

1.     Education has been imparted through teacher-student / delivery – acquisition model since ages.

2.     Earlier, chalk, duster and board use to be the major tools used by a teacher to deliver the content and since last about a decade and a half, power point and other multimedia tools have been used enormously.

3.     Since last about 5 years or so, a revolution in terms of imparting online education has been created by players like coursera.org, edx.com, udacity.com, linda.com and khanacademy.com

4.     There has been a constant debate

-       Whether one should pursue courses on these websites

-       Whether the certificates obtained through these websites are honored by the perspective employers or not?

-       Whether the courses provided on these websites provide enough of knowledge to a learner to make him competent enough to fetch him a job

5.     Originally, Cousera created this disruption in ‘learning scenario’ some time in about 2011 when it started offering many new kind of courses on its website being taught by Professors from renowned institutes of the world like Stanford, MIT, Purdue and Harvard.

6.     For sometime in the beginning many of these courses were kept free where a learner was simply supposed to register for these courses on their website, watch some real creative learning videos, complete some highly diligently prepared and challenging assignments and complete the course.

7.     Courses ranged from interest areas like those in Music, Drama, Paining, Literature, Engineering and what not.

8.     If millions of learners registered for these courses, only thousands of them could complete those due to lack of a commitment and sincerity which comes automatically when one is pursuing a regular course in a class.

9.     But, those whole completed the courses really got benefitted.

10. Of late, all these websites in an attempt to scape up their models have made many of the courses as ‘paid’ courses. As a part of which although you can still learn without paying but to get certificates, you may need to pay an amount equivalent to anywhere between $ 20 to $70 or even more.

11. Quality of the courses have suffered as many such instructors have been enrolled who otherwise might not have qualified to be good enough with the standards these websites had set for themselves in their primitive years.

12. From the large number of mid course dropouts, these websites have learn and deadlines for submission of assignments are not longer that strictly imposed.

13. Once, you complete a course with some minimum threshold of points like 65 %, you become eligible for a certificate for which you may need to pay some amount.

14. In case you pay that amount, certificate is highlighted against your name on your social media pages like Facebook or LinkedIn etc.

15. Although, this has been a too good an effort from all these website owners to come up with such and idea and execute it. But, it seems that quality of the courses and learning quotient has definitely suffered somehow.