I came across this press release and it talks about yet another online university attempting to reach out to students worldwide. I really hope they succeed given that many such ventures have not seen the light of the day in the past like Pensare, University Access (later Quisic) and many others like Online Varsity from Aptech in the good old days. These companies of course existed in the .com era and this maybe different with the acceptance of eLearning being more prevalent.
It will be interesting to see if such a model that is purely online scales and succeeds.

Guy Kawasaki is one of the celebrated Venture Capitalists in the world and here he is talking to students on  how to construct a pitch for your company.

I just found this video really interesting and thought this was a great input for pitching to any customer, besides a Venture Capital firm. Hope you guys like it.

Embedded Video

Tags: Pitch, presentation, elevator, overview, venture capital

While it was interesting to discover thedigitalist.net, it was a pleasant surprise to read this article as an introduction to the blog, and even more so to read it on a publisher’s blog.

“One of the key perception shifts that publishers need to make, then, is about the book as ‘product’. Whilst the book continues to be viewed as a definable object within covers, as a singular ‘unit’, publishers will continue to limit their role in its production and distribution, and this is a sure fire way for publishers to write themselves out of the future of content creation and dissemination. There are two areas of activity in the linear progression of a text between author and reader which have previously remained hidden to the reader: the development of the text itself; the writing and editing process, and the sales, marketing and distribution of the text. Readers have traditionally had no role in the former and only a limited role in the latter, through word of mouth recommendations or viral marketing. It is likely that today’s digital natives, who have become ‘prosumers’ (producer / consumers) with alarming speed and perhaps even more alarmingly different levels of proficiency, will expect a great deal more involvement in both of these areas of activity if they are to be engaged by texts. Witness two main stream examples, the Star Wars films and the Harry Potter books and films, both of which have developed massive prosumer (or ‘superfan’) followings, and both of which have seen conflict between the film companies and the fans that are creating content.”: thedigitalist.net » A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century

(Via PersonaNonData.)

Our interest obviously lies in the educational publishing side of the story, which, when you think about it, isn’t any different. (We did talk about this a while ago) In fact, it lends itself, more easily to the thought above. With most publishers setting up custom publishing divisions, it is clear that the consumer is now involved in the structure of the textbook. The next step, as the excerpt above suggests, is for the publisher to explore means and methods for educational prosumers to participate in the content creation and personalisation of the textbook.

The new textbook book becomes a digital loose-leaf offering, and prosumer content is added at will — during and after book production. With specific inputs from the publisher and a guided design approach for instructors and students alike, custom versions of the textbook are possible — Designed for the Institution. What we potentially have, is a non-linear and continuous publishing cycle, with negligible effort for editions.

The book, just became alive.

Sprinkle the right kind of technology, and you have a print-on-demand option, for those of us who would rather have a book on a train than watch the green fields whizzing by.

Through good times and bad, for seven years now, the eight of us have been together building what we love. June 4th 2001, eight people shared their dream with the world.

Many, have been the reason for our success.

A heartfelt thank you to all our customers and partners for helping us convert the dream into the reality. For believing in us and our dream. For encouraging us; for pushing us beyond the ordinary.

A tremendous round of applause from all of us to our wonderful team, for sticking by us — in the same good times and bad — for being our source of strength and keeping the fun alive. For making us proud, always.

And the silent supporters:

Our families, thank you for understanding the late nights, the struggle, the chaos. If you didn’t understand what this was all about, no one would.

Forward.

Excerpts from two posts from the always-wonderful-to-read PersonaNonData blog by Michael Cairns.

First, this one, published, September 17, 2007:

“Recently I mentioned the effort by DK (Penguin) that allows consumers to build their own travel guides using the DK content. Lonely Planet recently launched a program that allows consumers to download (in PDF) only the parts of travel guides they are most interested in. The option to download the entire guide exists, but in many cases a consumer only visits a part of a country and much of a country wide guide is irrelevant. This program solves this issue. “: PersonaNonData: Five Questions with Lonely Planet

(Via Five Questions with Lonely Planet.)

And then, more recently, on February 11, 2008, this one, very much like what iTunes have done to music.

“The WSJ (via Reuters) is reporting that Random House will begin experimenting with the sale of chapters from their web site. The report suggests this is not a wholesale effort merely that they will ‘test selling individual chapters of a popular book to gauge reader demand.’”: PersonaNonData: Random House to Sell Chapters

(Via Random House to Sell Chapters.)

So we may soon be in a time when a student, for example, can actually create her own textbook, or an instructor can customise a book for his students. When you consider the ability to embed other digital content and assessments products within this content, the opportunities for publishers multiply.

Before that, a quick look into iTunes, who perhaps started this trend of granular sales.

iTunes has proved that this strategy of granular sale works. Apple sold 67.4 million iPods as of Sept 06 with 1.5 billion songs sold via iTunes, however, according to a report by NYT, “The numbers suggest that iPods are not driving iTunes sales as much as early supporters may have expected.” (NYT Article Link and an interesting counter-argument.)

Coming back to the granular sale experiment now taken up by publishers, it will be interesting to watch the strategies they adopt to deliver this content. Unlike iTunes downloads, which is linked to a specific device, a chapter can be delivered in various formats. There is of course the print-on-demand option, the ubiquitous browser and a host of eBook readers and other mobile devices. All with good options for protecting content. Also, publishers, at least education publishers, will focus on institutional selling than retail. This allows greater flexibility and control for the publisher in selling granular and custom content.

The $2.99 chapter is definitely something to look forward to!

Google has launched OpenSocial, opening the way to do a lot more in the social networking space. It is interesting to see that LinkedIn is a one of the global members, and even more interesting to see salesforce.com in the list of early adopters.

From the post at the Google blog:

It’s good for developers because it makes it easier for them to focus on making their web apps better; they get lots of distribution with a lot less work. It’s good for websites, because they can tap into the creativity of the largest possible developer community (and no longer have to compete with one another for developer attention). And finally, it’s good for users, because they get more applications in more places.

From and education and eLearning perspective it would be interesting to see ELGG sign up. More so, when you consider that Google Gears was launched five months ago to make the web accessible offline.

LearningMate has its own network on Ning, and we are already experiencing a few gadgets built using OpenSocial. No doubt, given the kind of partners who have joined in, we will (hopefully) soon see some serious integration between various services.

John Chambers, Cisco Chairman and CEO, talks of “Ushering in a New Era of Collaboration“

Once upon a time, e-commerce and e-operations drove the Internet debate, but now it’s clear we have entered the second phase of the Internet. Although collaborative technologies and ‘Web 2.0’ have been around for many years, employing them through entire organizations will be made possible only by the intelligent network.

He ends the post (and the paragraph above) with:

At Cisco, we will drive this evolution with a vengeance. And we are going to help our customers do the same.

Given that some organisations have restrictive Internet access policies, it would would be interesting to see how collaboration proliferates — within organisations or between organisations.

~ Shashank Abhyankar

It was 5.40 a.m. on a Saturday morning and we were excitedly waiting for the last person to join us at Dadar station. Any guesses? Yes, it was the obvious late comer — Sumukh. He does wield the power to make twenty-five people wait. We then finally boarded the 5.58 a.m. local train for Karjat from Dadar. We finally all were there, as planned, an outcome of excellent co-ordination amongst ourselves. In project management language the Excel sheet print with the mobile numbers of all trekkers was the most handy tool we had, to ensure meeting this deadline. Everyone was extremely excited, for there was one thing we all knew, that we were together going to have fun throughout the day. This was the first time in my life that I experienced something like this—an overwhelming response from 42 people from the organisation to join us for a difficult task, the task of completing a difficult trek, without too much convincing and cajoling. Just the thought of going for the trek triggered a chain reaction across those 42 members, all excited to start off on the trek to Rajmachi.

I have read a quote by Henry Drummond on achievement.

Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can.

As we move ahead in life, we keep testing our abilities in various areas of life to learn and achieve more. That comes naturally to someone who is ambitious and wants to grow and reach great heights. Height too has different definitions and different interpretations on different occasions. At times it is just the physical measure of length but at times it is a measure of the achievement that you gain. The Rajmachi trek for me was a transition from the first definition to the later. And I surely enjoyed this experience.

We reached the foot of the fort at around 9.00 a.m. The breakfast that supplied us with all the energy was a vada pav, a cutting tea, and our individual ambition to be able to do it. The group was charged to climb. We caught a 60-year old guide who was enough to set fire in the belly of all those who thought that they might not be able to reach the heights. Everyone started walking at a fast pace. We first had to walk through the farms and plain green lands. And while we moved ahead, our target became visible to our naked eyes. We stood there a couple of minutes and looked upward, to see clouds surrounded by walls that looked like a fort. It was difficult to imagine that it was the fort that we had thought of conquering that day. Some of us were singing, some shouting, and some busy clicking photographs, some just gazing and grasping the beauty of the mountains that is just not visible in the busy city areas. The air was too fresh for us to breathe and we obviously had started breathing with some difficulty after sometime. The difficult part of the trek had started. The group that had come together had slowly started breaking into smaller groups of abilities. Every group had 1-2 stronger members and 3-4 weaker members. As we climbed upwards, we started feeling the obvious difficulty of achieving those great heights.

While all of us climbed with reasonable effort, I would surely like to mention names like Smita, her husband Gopal, Sumukh, Supriya N, Ghazala, Jesse, Rashida and Yogesh Hankare who put in significant effort and kept themselves highly motivated to complete the trek with all the physical wear and tear that they went through. The upward journey came to a halt after four and half hours — we had finally reached the top. A small village greeting us with drizzle of rain, wonderful food that one would die for was something that revamped all our excitement and enthusiasm. They were a new source of energy after such a tiring journey.

For some it was climbing the top that was the difficult part and for some it was difficult to come down. It took us around four and half hours more to come down. It had slowly started getting dark as we got down. Thankfully few of us had our mobiles that could be used as a torch and that was the only source of light for us. We reached the foot of the mountain back by 7.00 p.m.. When we looked back up, no one was ready to believe the fact that we had climbed this height and came back too — an unbelievable 3,200 feet.

It took us around nine hours of tireless effort to reach the top and then come back down. It was a real adventure, challenges and obstacles that we overcame, fun, excitement, breath taking views, wonderful food. It was like executing a difficult project but yet very different from just sitting on our chairs and playing with our keyboards. Here it was a test of our physical capabilities and mental strengths. It was about achieving the physical height using our mental strength efficiently. Few, with whom I spoke while climbing and coming down kept saying that they would think twice or may be three times in coming along the next time. When I asked the same question to the same people the next day, all I heard was “I am ready.” The height of achievement had won over the physical height that they were afraid of.

Check the link to view our journey for visual glimpses that we captured in the midst of all the excitement and challenges.

Share the experience further @ http://picasaweb.google.com/shashankabhyankar/

An interesting article appears in the Hindustan Times, on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti. JS Rajput explores the relevance of Gandhian philosophy as applied to education.Bapu was in a class apart- Hindustan Times

In 1939 Gandhiji wrote in Harijan: “Our education has got to be revolutionised. The brain must be educated through the hand… Why should you think that mind is everything and the hands and feelings nothing? Those who do not train their hands, who go through the ordinary rut, lack ‘music’ in their life. All their faculties are not trained. Mere book knowledge does not interest the child so as to hold his attention fully. The brain gets weary of mere words, and the child’s mind begins to wander. The hand does the things it ought not to do, the eyes see things it ought not to see, the ear hears things it ought not to hear, and they do not do see or hear, respectively, what they ought to. They are not taught to make the right choice and so their education often proves their ruin.”

The China comparison is there, an everyday feature in any article today that talks about India, in the context of its growth or the lack of it.

Visit any primary school in China and one would be surprised to see ‘school factory’ products prepared by the children. That is surely a factor that has ensured that China has achieved its universalisation of quality elementary education.

Is ‘assembly line’ education the solution that Gandhi had in mind?

The article ends with an interesting question – about our attitude towards quality education. However, is that only a question of attitude or is it rooted elsewhere? What is your take?

Further, in the context of the changing format and medium of instruction (the Internet), does anything change at all?

~ Rasik Arun Girme, ADM

I have been having been lucky enough all these years to be In Mumbai during Raksha Bandhan along with my sisters Kasturi and Aparna. This year due to my Business visit, I had to be in Orlando to meet with clients. I was very disappointed initially when I left Mumbai in August first week, as I knew that I would not be able to enjoy one of the most cherished festivals which represent rich Indian Culture and tradition. My sister called on the morning of “Raksha Bandhan” and told me how much the family missed me. I just could not express myself to her that how much I missed the Indian festive atmosphere and tears rolled down my eyes. My sister told me that she had packed “Rakhi” into my bag quietly, as she knew I will miss it on this special day.

My family is great believer of capturing moments and has thousand of photos right from my childhood days of each and every festival. I opened the pouch which my sister had given and it had the “Rakhi” and a photo of our childhood days where she was tying the “THREAD OF LOVE, TRUST and RESPECT.

I was thinking how unlucky I was with “Rakhi” in my bag but did not have my sisters around but Fate had some different thoughts for me this year. During this business visit, I made some very close friends and requested them to tie “Rakhi” to me.

They were very excited with the concept of this festival and were curious to know more about the origin or the historical/mythological aspect of it.

We had some great time in the office and I shared some sweets with everybody in office. I explained them that Raksha Bandhan is the festival marked by the tying of a rakhi, or holy thread by the sister on the wrist of her brother. The brother in return offers a gift to his sister and vows to look after her and she keeps reminding of bond every year. We had some interesting discussion over the festival and I tried explaining them it is not necessary that the rakhi can be given only to a brother by birth; any male can be “adopted” as a brother by tying a rakhi on the person that is “blood brothers and sisters”, whether they are cousins or a good friend.

The people in US are fascinated to the deep family ties in which we live. I shared some examples of our Indian history as the festival derives its significance and meaning today from several historical incidents too which is replete with women asking for protection, through rakhi, from men who were neither their brothers, nor Hindus themselves.
They liked the story of Rani Karnavati of Chittor who sent a Rakhi to the Mughal Emperor Humayun when she was threatened by Bahadur Shah of Mewar. Humayun abandoned an ongoing military campaign to ride to her rescue.

The best story which they were impressed was with Alexander. I explained them the oldest anecdote goes back to 300 BC when Alexander of Macedonia invaded the Indian sub-continent with a large and powerful army on horse-back. A major battle with king Puru, ruler of Western India, so unnerved him that his beloved decided to do something about it. She had come to know about the Indian festival of Raksha Bandhan. She sought an audience with the great Indian warrior Puru and begged to be accepted as his sister. Puru in a brotherly gesture extended his hand and the Greek lady put a Rakhi on it. Puru in return promised not to harm Alexander.

India is rightly called “Land of festivals” and today in this busy world I feel though most of the festivals rejuvenate the relationship between family and friends; Raksha Bandhan stands way above the others. I hope in these times of so much hatred, fights, war all around, may God give us the strength to think of some Magic festival or bonds that can tie all us together and there is peace and love in the entire universe.

Now I thank God that I was in this part of the World during Raksha Bandhan. Though I was 10,000 miles away from “Mother India” and missing my Indian friends and family, I realized the real crux and meaning of this festival today.

My mom’s philosophy comes to my mind “Sometimes not getting what you want, and not being where you need to be, is a WONDERFUL stroke of luck”

I now look back at this wonderful photo “Rasik-Orlando” and tears roll down my eyes. I will cherish this moment till I die and thank everyone who participated with me in this special festival. I cannot hold my tears, but this time the tears are sweet!