Viewpoint

Teaching Students in the Information Technology Era – The challenges ahead for teachers: Shri. N.T.Nair

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

OpeningTeaching is a great profession, much above any other. With the arrival of information technology in the education arena,  the teachers are facing new challenges. Students have access to the internet which may enable them to  search the net and come up with lot of advanced information about the topics being taught in the class. But the Net is an ocean with lot of information, some of which are authentic, while some others are erratic or misleading or unreliable. It is in this context that teachers assume greater importance, who could apply their  knowledge  accrued over decades of learning and teaching. The information collected by students need to be authenticated by teachers who have the knowledge and wisdom to do this effectively. In short, teachers should become proficient in IT and also be ready to apply their knowledge to guide the students, who may be misguided by the wrong inputs they may  collect from the Net. The future of teaching profession is really in for a great leap forward in the Internet era.

From the inaugural address at the Workshop on Information technology for teaching held at  VMFT on 27th August 2011

Impressions of a China Visit: Dr. Zahir Bashir

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

These are the impressions of an Indian after a visit to Shanghai.  Everyone has heard about China’s emergence as a power. Even though India is often mentioned in the same breath, Shanghai was mind boggling.  There is nowhere in India that can even remotely match it.   Today Shanghai is the workshop of the world.  Shanghai alone has 50 universities. Shanghai is uniformly developed, and a taxi ride in any direction will prove it.   This amount of high-class construction, over miles and miles, is not seen in any country. I have never seen so many bridges and flyovers. Secondly, it is the people who are impressive – so disciplined and industrious, yet so polite, and without arrogance.   You do not meet the decadence you see in Europe and America today, the junkies with their pierced tongues, tattoos and spiky hair styles.

What is amazing is that China managed a transition from the communist command economy to a mixed economy.   All the other communist countries failed.  Gorbachov launched glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).  The Soviet Union collapsed.   China had acquired military technology from the earlier collaboration with the Soviet Union.  It was Deng Tsiao Ping who started the changes in China.  He realised that they needed to do the economic restructuring first, before liberalisation.  Oddly, it was the Americans (who held a doctrinaire aversion to socialism and communism), who went there first with their capital, to set up factories in China.   The Chinese managed it so successfully that soon everyone was after investing in China.   Now nothing can be produced in the world unless it is made in China !  When Apple made the iphone, it had to be assembled in China.  Many businesses have to shift to China just to survive.  And China is today America’s creditor. (more…)

Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai and Vakkom Abdul Khader Moulavi – Harbingers of Renaissance in Kerala: Dr.N.A.Karim

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

NAKSri. K.Ramakrishna pillai  (1876-1916) from Neyyatinkara and Sri. Mohamed Abdul Khadar (1873-1932) from Vakkom, both places not far away from Thiruvananthapuram the royal seat of the then princely state of Travancore were intrepid, enthusiastic social and political reformers in their own right, even before they later met. The Moulavi was in search of an editor who could give bold and effective expression to the objectives with which he started his first journal Swadeshabhimani  (The Patriot), and Ramakrishna Pillai was sulking after a series of his disappointments in a number of periodicals of which he was editor, a few of them ceased publications and others he had to quit due to differences with the publishers and owners of them. The real reasons for the stoppage of them or his quitting were not known. 

Ramakrishna Pillai was eager to size any journalistic opportunity to give expressions to his social, political, educational ideas at that time when no other popular medium was available. There were occasions when he was concurrently editing more than one periodical with differing objectives- Upadhyan was mainly meant to disseminate among general public ideas regarding education and Keraladarpanam a general purpose periodical in which went all matters of varied interests. On the other hand Abdul Khader Moulavi”s first journal Swadeshabhimani was mainly political and social in its character. The editorial declaration in the first number unequivocally stated that the objective of the publication was the well being of the people in the promotion of which the publishers would not be deterred by fear of any consequences that might befall them.Swadeshabhimani lived up to this solemn policy statement till the very end.  (more…)