My Blog

The Old Man and the Sea is a classic authored by Ernest Hemingway. It's a Novella with nearly 100 pages.  I haven't read any work by Ernest Hemingway earlier. This novella is very impressive. The life of Ernest Hemingway is even more impressive than the novella, from the short biography provided at the beginning of this book. He was a Cub Reporter - Ambulance Driver on the Italian Front - Journalist - Interested in Bullfighting - Deep sea fishing. Wow :) So he doesn't fit into the stereotype that most of us maintain for writers..  As the title says, it is a story of an old fisherman Santiago in Havana, Cuba. Two other characters from the story are a boy named Manolin and a big Marlin fish that Santiago catches in the deep sea. The story begins with the locals calling him the most unlucky person (Salao) as he wasn't able to catch a single fish in the last 84 days. The boy who was helping the Old man was also stopped by his parents citing his lack of luck.  Determined to ...

ICTOODLE 2022: International Conference on Technology Enabled Online and Distance Learning for Education: In the Context of NEP 2020, jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science and Directorate of Distance Education Pondicherry University, was very well received by the participants. Here are some of my observations and take-home points from the Conference: Education in general and Higher Education in particular, is at an exciting phase of metamorphosis. Now we have only two scenarios: a) Higher education institutions adapting the educational technology or b) Educational technology companies adopting higher education. It is a question of relevance and survival for the higher education academia. With the changing learning patterns of the Millenials, we can't stick to outdated modes of content delivery. Non-linear and engaging modes such as Gamification / Game-based learning should be encouraged to keep the learner engaged. Knowing the learners is essential in all modes ...

October 10th is World Mental Health Day.  If you ask, "So what? It is simply one among the hundreds of funny-sounding days that we usually see in our social media feeds, WhatsApp forwards, etc.,".  It is not. After the Covid-19 pandemic, certainly it is not.  A report by World Health Organisation (WHO) says that there is a significant increase in stress perceived by people across the spectrum after the onset of the pandemic. Isn't it obvious?  Every passing day, we meet people who claim they are under stress.. enormous stress... Being a teacher, there are more chances of hearing about or seeing people under stress. When you lend your ears and heart to them, they have their own stories to share. Many with deep cuts and wounds...  (Image Source : https://unsplash.com/photos/fzqxoFJytiE)  Most of us are not trained professionals to provide counseling. However, I strongly believe one can not be a good teacher without being a counselor. What can we do for s...

Me and my daughter were at a fruit shop at ECR, near the University Gate. It was around 9:30 pm. There was a hotel nearby. It was not an expensive one. A normal non-vegetarian hotel that you can see anywhere in Pondicherry and Tamilnadu. I saw a man aged about fifty walking by the road. He was wearing a torn shirt and pants which might have never seen water for a long time. He was untidy and un-bathed. He was looking very dull which was evident from the way he was walking.  As he passed by the Hotel, there was a voice from the hotel,  "Will you eat Briyani?".  This was a voluntary question from the hotel guy.  This person said "Yes".  Shortly they gave him Briyani. It was properly served on a neat and clean plate. This man looked at the quantity of food and he said, "I don't need this much".  The hotel guy encouraged him to eat but the man denied it.  This man insisted to take away a portion of Briyani and give it to another hungry person. When this ma...

Our smartphones have become like an extension of our physical body. Last week in one of my lecture sessions I asked this question to the students,  If you leave to the department without your smartphone, how many of you will go back and get your phone even at the risk of missing sessions or meetings? It wasn't surprising that 100% of them said we will go back and fetch our phone.  When I replaced the phone with an "assignment paper" in the same question, the percentage dropped significantly. What I am trying to derive here is that smartphones have evolved into an unavoidable dependency. In the entire human history, was there any such device or thing on which almost the entire human population was interacting day-in-day-out with utmost attention. I guess the answer is a BIG NO. In this backdrop, it becomes essential to have a basic knowledge about "Do's and Don'ts" on our phones. This post highlights a currently evolving security threat targeting our Andr...

Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere. In our smartphones, e-commerce sites, entertainment apps, e-learning, recommender systems, maps... Literally everywhere.  Imagination and the art associated with it are also now within the boundary of AI. Should we call it Artificial Imagination? Though image construction with algorithms has a proven track record, the recent wave of tools to create artistic images has captured the attention.  With AI-assisted Art winning the first prize in a competition, there is a debate on the role of algorithms in Art. Navigate to this article for more information. (Image is sourced from the linked article page).  There are various tools available for processing and styling images. The following two tools seem to be capturing lots of attention in recent days: MidJourney DALL.E Midjourney Midjourney has a powerful state-of-art algorithm to convert the textual descriptions into beautiful artistic images. You can try a demo with their bot at Discar...

Teachers' Day is always special. Its an opportunity to show gratitude towards all of those Teachers who have played a phenomenal role in shaping our lives.  I wrote a blog post on the same title "One the Eve of Teachers' Day" on 2013.  https://kskuppu.blogspot.com/2013/09/on-eve-of-teachers-day-2013.html It was an attempt to recall the memories associated with all my teachers right from the First standard to Ph.D.  To each batch of students, at least once, I ask this question,  How many of you want to become a teacher? If yes, Why?.  Particularly in subjects such as computer science which is very volatile, a teacher need to posses certain specific qualities. In my opinion, the following are the must have qualities to be a meaningful teacher: Cutting-Edge : The shelf-life of ideas in computer science is very very less. One of the most important requirements is to be updated with whats happening in the Industry. This is essential to make the students get a taste ...

"Tell me who your friends, I will tell you who you are" says a famous Russian Proverb. In the current scenario in which we are inundated with social media this saying can be techified (if there is a word as such.. May the English teachers forgive me..) as, Tell me which Channels you subscribe in YouTube, I will tell you who you are. Social media has evolved as our primary information consumption source. Irrespective of age, educational qualification, social backdrop, most of us are submerged into the sea of YouTube videos. Day in Day out, we are connected with YouTube. No wonder, YouTube has many great resources and many many not so great resources.  Locating the proper channels is what decides whether you procrastinate in YouTube or up-skill yourself. In this post, I thought of sharing two of the YouTube channels, that will assist you in up-skilling your understanding of Mathematical concepts. NumberPhile Numberphile is one of the excellent channels if you are interested in ...

Everything that Begins has to End Some day. That day has come to Edmodo. If you Don't know what is Edmodo, this post is of less relevance. If you are teacher or student using Edmodo then its a shock. Shock is an understatement.  Edmodo is closing its doors on 22, Sep 2022. The official web page has this announcement (screenshot enclosed). For those who don't know what is Edmodo: It is a Learning Management System (LMS). It is great platform to keep in touch with your students, in a simple, neat and clean format. It was a Free Tool. No Hassles.  My association with Edmodo started wayback in 2010-2011. Long long before the recent buzz on remote learning during the recent Covid19 pandemic.  The first batch was Web Technology M.Sc 2010-11.  Data Visualization (2022, M.Tech and MCA) course has become the last in the Edmodo line-up for me: From then with each subject I have utilised Edmodo. My workflow was like this: Create a Class Group for each subject.  Share the C...

Do you like Mathematics ?  If your answer is "Yes" then you may like to read this post. If your answer is "No" then there are more reasons for you to read this post.  This post is about a book titled " The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics. From One to Infinity ". This book is authored by Steven Strogatz. The theme of the book is to introduce rather re-introduce the Mathematical Concepts in a joyful manner. Maths looks difficult to only those who have got introduced to it in a wrong way. Otherwise as the author says,  Maths is everywhere, if you know where to look  This book is organised into Six major parts: Part I : Numbers Part II : Relationships Part III : Shapes Part IV : Change Part V : Data Part VI: Frontiers Before I tell you what these parts are about, let me tell you this first: This is a book that can be read by literally anyone - a school going kid, a college student or someone exploring frontiers of Maths. The only condition is that you n...