Got back yesterday from a short, hectic but sweet trip to India. I had a wonderful time and still have a lot to do to just document all that happened and connect with all the people I met (hopefully over the next few weeks)... but now it is time to get back to fall...
Posts related to: Personal
India’s Silicon Valley
I arrived at Bangalore (now known as Bangaluru) this afternoon. Bangaluru is known as India's Silicon valley and this my first time here. I am here for a conference (as described here). Incidentally, Bangalore is also on its way to becoming a word in the English...
Heading to India
I leave for India tomorrow to participate in a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity being held in Bangalore from the 20th to the 22nd of August. The meeting is organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International...
Digital before his time
A recent story in the NYTimes about Peter Gabriel (An Old Rocker Gets Digital) brought back memories of Peter Gabriel's album covers. It tells you a lot about me that I know album covers better than I know his music! During his time with Genesis and later, when he...
Fear, awe and the algebra of the pendulum
In response to my previous posting titled How artists work, Leigh Wolf pointed out a book (Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist). I had not heard of this book before and a quick google search led me to this page. Edited by John Brockman (the brains behind...
Blogging for the iPhone
I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....
Mirror, mirror
Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass? A recent article in the NYTimes (Mirrors...
Beauty in science
An evocative image from today's NYTimes about our improved understanding of the beautiful phenomena known as the northern lights. You can read the story here, but I would like to quote from the end of the article: The next time you see the northern lights, you’ll be...
How does my browser know I am Indian?
Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically - in particular to my Indian origin. For instance this page (a story about ipods being used by the army) contains a set of banner ads that seek...
Browsing for gender
Just found out about this rather nifty tool that looks at your browser history and estimates your gender. My personal results were as follows: Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 24% Likelihood of you being MALE is 76% Try it out for yourself, or read more about how...
Solzhenitsyn, RIP
Every now and then it happens. The state or the system encounters an individual who, bafflingly, maddeningly, absurdly, cannot be broken -- Christopher Hitchens Alexander Solzhenitsyn is no more. He was not an easy author to read - and the last time I read him was...
Stuff Indian’s Like
After the success of Stuff white people like, can Stuff Indians like be far behind. Check it out... it has the occasional nugget that nails Indians and their behavior.
On embodiment in online learning
Patrick Dickson just forwarded me an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled The Sensuous Classroom: Focusing on the Embodiment of Learning [Subscription required]. In this article Suzanne Kelly, the author, bemoans the absence of the physical body from...
Reading online & off
Nice article in the NYTimes (Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?) about today's generation and how much of their reading happens online (as opposed to reading books). I have seen a change in my reading over time as well. Most of my reading today happens...
sci-Phone
In a previous posting I raised the question about when does a piece of technology become an educational technology? One of the coolest pieces of technology today is the iPhone. Can it function as an educational technology? I have been considering getting one for a...
Guide on the side, the GPS story
People have often argued that digital technologies change the role of teachers from (as it is commonly described) a "sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side." Personally, I have my doubts about this, complicated somewhat by my recent experiences with GPS...
Only one recipe…
I have been catching up on my reading of Slate and came across this gem of an article by Judith Shulevitz titled, The care and feeding of fiction. Shulevitz has written a quasi-review of James Wood's new book How fiction works and makes we want to read the book...
Psychology & torture: A sad mix
Martin Seligman is one of the most eminent psychologists alive today. As his wikipedia page says, "He is well known for his work on the idea of "learned helplessness", and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of Positive Psychology." He has...
PersonalDNA & cool survey tricks
I just created a personalDNA map for myself. Turns out I am a Benevolent Inventor... beats being a benevolent dictator I say! However, this posting is concerned not with what the survey found out about me but rather about what I learned about the survey. Let's get the...
It’s a wonderful world
My 12 year old son, Soham, has never been into music. An MP3 player I bought for him languishes somewhere in his room. So you can imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, he indicated an interest in a song, Louis Armstrong's What a wonderful world. So this posting...
Improv here, there, everywhere…
A few months ago I wrote about Professor R. K. Joshi (here and here). He was, as I said in the piece, maybe the single greatest influence on my role as a teacher. I had mentioned that R.K. loved absurdity and play. I was reminded of this when I read about this group...
Manoranjan ka baap
The Indian Premier League, Twenty20 cricket championship was a great success. I had a chance to watch a few games (including the finals and semi-finals) when I was in india and it was a blast. This posting however is about an extremely creative commercial for the IPL...
A defining moment!
Barack Obama is the democratic nominee for the president of the United States!!! Five months ago, after he had won the Iowa caucuses I had blogged his acceptance speech video (see it here) and had asked a question, "Is this a defining moment of our time?" Today I am...
New Delhi, update
I have been at Delhi for the most part since coming to India, meeting people, developing project ideas, catching up… The only breaks have been a short trip to Nagpur (to visit my in-laws) and, coming up, another short trip to Bhubaneswar (to visit my parents). In...
Photography update
I have continued adding photographs from the trip to my Flickr Site... I had posted about this earlier but I guess it is time for another reminder. There are now 380 photographs on the "Travels in Asia 2008" Flickr-set (and more coming soon). Go to the...
Meeting Sanjaya Mishra
Yesterday I met with Sanjaya Mishra, a scholar and researcher in the area of distance education. Sanjaya and I first met at the Vidyakash conference a bunch of years ago and we clicked almost immediately. I always enjoy meeting up with him when I am in Delhi, though...
Hello Hong Kong, goodbye Hong Kong
A short and sweet trip to Hong Kong, one full day, two nights, fly in fly out. I was a guest of the University of Hong Kong and gave a talk there yesterday, the last in my series of TPACK talks. I had a good audience, the talk went well, though I did not manage my...
Being a tourist in Taipei
I woke up this morning, feeling maybe for the first time in this entire trip, tired and a little homesick. I ascribe the first to the rather hectic schedule I have had the past 10 days so, continually on the move, presentation after presentation, meeting after...
National Sun Yat Sen University & Taipei
National Sun Yat Sen Unversity has one of the most gorgeous campuses you can imagine. Nestled between hills, with wonderful views of the ocean, with little twisty roads that connect departments and buildings, just beautiful. My hotel room had a magnificient view of...
Chiayi, Chung Cheng & on to Kuosheng
I had been looking forward to the high speed rail journey though I had some concerns about navigating through the train station since most of the signs were in Chinese and Waiway (the graduate student who had come to pick me up from the airport) could not come with me...