Quality education at your Doorstep-The potential power of MOOCS and why a country like India is so eager to accept it

I don't want to be so ungrateful as not to thank all you readers for the quite good support that I have received after writing my 1st blog. Inspired by the response, I have set out to write on another interesting blog for you so soon. This time its based on a more significant topic-a topic that can have great impact on your and my life alike. Well, for young readers perhaps 10 or 20 years down the line, you, then perhaps a greatly successful person would be grateful enough to mention this particular blog post that perhaps changed your thoughts on what "education", more specifically learning is.

Being brought up in sub-urban India holds a lot of consequences. One of them is predominantly having this mentality inside you that IIT is the ultimate success line for you. If you can get there, you are successful, otherwise you are DOOMED!!!! And if not doomed, surely that's one of the major failures in your life. A failure story which will perhaps time and again surface in your future potential career guidance sessions to your children and perhaps be one of your last wishes as you lay in your death bed thinking of your bad fortune as you weren't able to share your failure stories with your grandchildren and advise them to fulfill your unsuccessful desires.

Guys, your potential capacity or your success to get into an institute like IIT isn't what defines you. It is moulded into us right from our childhood as if that's the yardstick that the Almighty has recommended to test the talent that He has so kindly bestowed on all persons alike. The so called society in which we grow up makes us measure our talent by that artificial yardstick, not our heart. Why are we always forced to think IN THE BOX, why cant we think OUT OF THE BOX? Is the text book materials and the bookish knowledge that we fantasize ourselves as being deeply engrossed in day and night enough to be successful, to be someone who has very humbly used the talent that God has bestowed on him/her to his/her fullest potential?

Be someone who stands above the crowd, not someone who stands in the crowd. Its that quality in you that will bring the world at your footstep. Make it big. Explore. And for those whose heart is crying out on reading all this because you don't have the means to explore, to think out of the box, let me tell you my dear friends, that opportunities are abundantly available, its just that you should be able to recognize it and utilize it. Such an opportunity that the world's top-most educational institutes are providing worldwide virtually is MOOCS(Massive Online Open Courses).

 For those who believe in gathering knowledge from whatever sources available, this is the perfect place where you can explore the subjects in which you are best interested. The potential power of this type of education system is huge-and although I don't want to debate on this topic, many believe that this will ultimately capsize fully the traditional system of education<http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130428/jsp/7days/story_16836315.jsp#.UefnSpC6ZtQ>

So friends, be a trend-setter. Explore this new ocean of quality educational resources available to you. The esteemed Universities are giving it free of cost with the aim of providing quality education all over the world, chances are galore,only some focus and interests from your side can enable you to set a new standard for yourself. And Indian students are getting smarter and smarter each day. After US, India has the highest number of enrollments in MOOCS. Don't believe it? Check out the next two screenshots from the inaugural week of a typical online course in coursera.com as they showcase the statistics of their class.

Check out the stats:1065/12253 students are from India for this course 2nd only to US. That's a significant number, isn't it? And if we go by the region wise distribution for the same, we would realize that the metro cities have already taken great interests in this virtual courses. And all over India people have enrolled for this specific course showing that people now have actually realized the futility of sole-textbook learning and have started exploring. Modern students now feel it unnecessary to be bounded by the textbook subjects and the syllabus. They want to explore the subject of their liking in detail so that they can have a truly solid foundation in that subject.



And for those who prefer getting certificates rather than gaining knowledge, perhaps some MOOCS has also apprehended your problem(rather your foolish mindset) and so sites like coursera.org and edX.org are also giving credit on completion of courses along with completion of the final exam that takes place. So, this sites are trying to mimic a classroom environment as much as possible.

So, in a country like India where(quality)higher education is still a farce to so many, MOOCS can come to your rescue. And if you are focused, interested and committed and can shell out some time to do these, who knows perhaps some day you will end up earning more bucks(which sadly, according to our society is another yardstick for measuring success in life) than someone who has studied in one of the top IIT institutes and then you will be a shining example to others demonstrating the potential of Exploring and Creative Learning and so in a way, an example of the potential of MOOCS.

So, friends, ready to use MOOCS courses to the fullest potential?

Other External Links:
udacity.com
ocw.mit.edu
khanacademy.org
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses


Note:It has been written specifically keeping in view the Indian culture and way of thinking but you will very much realize that it has got much significance in other places also. If you have anything to say me, please mail me at <rwikdutta@outlook.com>. Any feedback, both +ve or -ve is highly appreciated.

Cheers,
Rwik!

Dropbox's success mantra-KISS!

Being someone of today's generation, I have been quite particular about these two big words that we crave for today-SPEED and SIMPLICITY.  This is what makes Dropbox so near and dear to me and to so many else. The 175Million+ user mark that they have reached is not something that happened by chance, to me its just the result of how well Dropbox have been able to follow its success mantra -KISS(sorry romantic folks, its just an acronym which means "Keep It Simple, Stupid" :P).

But what makes their success story more interesting is something very different. In fact, I have seen this time and again that every or rather most successful people or organization has their own strange methods which makes them a cut above the rest(although sometimes I find their ideas crazy :P). I was just dumb-struck to know that the great Steve Jobs said that it is not the customer's job to know what he/she wants, it's their(Apple's) job to know what they(the customer) wants. In reality this meant that Steve Jobs didn't find the idea of public review of his products to be a great idea. This idea of Jobs is surely freaking crazy to Microsoft, to say the least. Also, the great Warren Buffet, an ever unfading symbol of simplicity and humility besides his enormous wealth and charity track records, has no computers in his personal Berkshire Hathaway Office room. It's something similar with Dropbox too. Dropbox seemed to be doing something that others wont-being reluctant to change with time in the process of trying to be more efficient. As Rajiv Ernaki(Former DB Head of Server Engineering) said, that the early team did

" a lot of things that weren’t efficient but did actually scale for thousands of users.”

And mind you, he started working in DB from the time it had only two thousand users and saw it scaling over to a hundred million users. They are a testimonial of how DB stood the test of time and escalated up to their current position. No doubt, flexibility and simplicity have now rightly become their hall-mark. And guess what, not only did they adore the power of KISS only for the client but also their servers worked on that basis. Their different(rather less-efficient and less sophisticated) techniques actually provided quite a number of advantages to them, including greater flexibility to debug their server side code and run simple queries on user behavior without any need to write extra code.

All this meant they

 “gained tremendous flexibility and scalability.”

Simply speaking, they kept it simple, avoided sophistication(both for the user as well as for themselves) and was quite skeptical about adopting new technology. As I said before, some of this type of ideas I do find strange but nevertheless  there is no denying of the fact that they have made it big using these ideas. Everyone wants to make it big nowadays, isn't it? And all has their own methods for doing so. However in todays world, the bottom-line surely stays simple--------KISS(at least for your client)!

Isn't it?


Cheers,
Rwik
rwikdutta@outlook.com
ON A SIDENOTE, BEING MY FIRST BLOG POST, I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE ANY HONEST AND SINCERE FEEDBACK ABOUT MY BLOG(+VE AS WELL AS -VE) AND I WILL REMAIN EVER GRATEFUL AND DEBTED TO YOU FOR THE SAME!