Winning With Web

The Seven Acts on the Web: ACT -1 :Entering and Establishing Web Presence

2011-04-19T15:16:00.009+05:30

The world wide web (WWW) or simply called Web is the best thing that has happened to us and our students. Although online population is expected to reach 2.2 billion, compared the world's whole population, it still represents a fraction. The early part of this blog is meant for those who have not yet enter the world of web. However the later and most part of the blog is for anyone who cares to integrate web into her personal and professional life and harness it for personal, professional and social benefits.

Web is a new reality and it comes with its own terms and conditions. The current and future role that web is expected to play in our life is but growing. Web is walloping into every traditional human endeavors and many of them are moving them to web platform. e.g. Traditional education is become online education. The choice for most of us is not whether or not to plunge into web but how soon. Having said that, in this blog I would like to list the most common seven acts a user will perform on the web. These acts not essentially sequential and some user may not carry one or more act at all. ( for instance starting a blog ).

Act 1: Establishing Identity on the web:

Although it is possible to use web without actually migrating into it , using search engine etc, any longer plan to integrate web into one's scheme of things begins by establishing an online identify for an individual or business user. The following are the 3 ways in which one can do that

creating an email id
creating a blog
creating a own web site

I can explain the above as follows.

Creating an email id is like staying in a PG in new town when you move there for the first time. Staying in a PG gives an address so that people can reach you. Email account creates serves exactly the same purpose on the web: it provides user an address so that others can reach her on the web. ravindra.dastikop@gmail.com is my web identity. It is the least a new web user needs to start exploring the web. Practically having email is has become a necessity. Almost all systems such as online examination expect user to provide her email id as part of registration process. Some of the well know e-mail providers include hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo many more
Creaing a blog represents a next stage of establishing web presence. Among other things, blogs help user to establish presence by means of publishing. A blog not only identifies the author but also about his his voice among the online crowd. Two of the most famous blogging service providers are blogger, wordpress.

Creating web-site is the ultimate self-identification act. Usually enterprises and serious net users and professional buy a domain name and build a site on that. There are free site services such as Google Sites. However the standard practice is to get a paid domain name ans establish web site.

In the following blog, I shall be covering the following acts
ACT-2 Communicating on the web
ACT-3 Discovering Resources
ACT-4 : Publishing and Sharing
ACT-5 Collaboration
ACT-6 : Networking
ACT-7 : Professional Presence

Mindtree ties up with educational institutions for government projects - Business news

2010-11-20T12:58:00.000+05:30

Mindtree ties up with educational institutions for government projects - Business news

Personal Branding: Branding Yourself

2010-11-15T09:39:00.000+05:30

Branding is a process of make yourself standout in a crowd. It is a process of making u r self visible in a group. Personal branding is a essential activity each one of us must be engaged in on a continual basis. here is an interesting article on that

Personal Branding

National Conference at VJTI

2010-11-12T16:16:00.001+05:30

Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute via kwout

contact : B B Meshram

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Winning With Web Tools Objective: To Teach

7 Sites for Free, Legal Images for Your Blog | Social Media Today

2010-11-11T08:43:00.000+05:30

7 Sites for Free, Legal Images for Your Blog | Social Media Today

Millennials: Social Media and the Idea Web | Social Media Today

2010-11-11T08:37:00.000+05:30

Millennials: Social Media and the Idea Web | Social Media Today

Blogging Platforms Used By Top U.S. Interactive Agencies | Social Media Today

2010-11-06T11:53:00.000+05:30

Blogging Platforms Used By Top U.S. Interactive Agencies | Social Media Today

Developing a Teacher’s Linkbase

2010-10-31T13:10:00.000+05:30

The teacher in a linked world must establish a web presence and make it known to all concerned. A Teacher’s web presence can be as simple as an email id or blog or even a web site or a faculty page on institutional web site. Irrespective of its types, teacher must publish it on the web so that each current student and alumni is aware of it and encourage them to get connected to it. Students, alumni, colleagues and even former classmates can get connected to your web presence such as blog by becoming a follower or subscriber. Once they start coming to teacher’s web interface, he can then direct them to appropriate or rest of his web presences. These could include his course home pages, or specific blogs he is running and so on.

Here is my web presence.

My Home Blog: http://dastikop.blogspot.com

A searchable interface: http://dastikopsearch.blogspot.com

Link Base: You Are What Your Links Are.

2010-10-31T13:08:00.000+05:30

We live in a link age The information space unleashed by the computing networks has become our new abode or learning habitat. In this space information is the structural element and is reachable through a hyperlink. It is also called a node. Each hyperlink represents one or more of the following: information element (document, web page); web site, person (email, blog) and many more. Connection or connecting is a process of using hyperlink to reach out to those hyperlinks we are interested or relevant to us. Link is a means that connects to one or more nodes. Becoming a node in the network and establishing links to other nodes becomes an essential pursuit in your existence. The nature, scope and quality of links emerging from your node (email, web site, blog) and converging to it (subscriptions and followings) determine your position in your networks. In effect you are what your links are. The sum total of all your links is your “linkbase” . Example:

At present my linkbase consists of links to (from my email, blogs) to current students and alumni and professional entities.

The components of my Linkbase

My web presence: http://dastikop.blogspot.com and

Email: ravindra.dot.dastikop.at.gmail.com

Link to students: emails, groups, course homepage

Links to alumni: email and groups, dedicated departmental blogs

Links to professional entities such as subscriptions and RSS feeds.

Living and Learning in Linked Enviornment

2010-10-29T15:58:00.000+05:30

Each age in human history has a name. And this name is derived from the powerful forces that shape it or shaped it. Earlier we had atomic age, plastic age, information age, industrial age and stone age much earlier. Our present age can be called " Link Age". This age is characterized by increasingly growing computing and communication networks. These networks are connecting more and more people and there by creating a new world order. This new world order is called online world, cyber world or many other fancy names.

This online world is characterized by it's ability to to connect people without any regard to time, distance and sometimes even language. And not only people, it can also connect people to resources - information and tools - by use of what is known as hyper-links. These hyper links are "transportation systems " of new age. One can study at home because these hyper links enable you to transport study materials, or one can work-from-home because work can be transported to home or any place of choice. This new " Link-Age" has potential to shape new things and transform everything we know and everything we do.

Webway to Level the disparity: No coaches but there's Youtube

2010-10-26T12:11:00.000+05:30

Here is another interesting example of how web is helping people across the globe to level with rest of the world. As mentioned elsewhere web is a veritable resource. Being distance, time and often language agnostic web resources are helping many people around the world in accessing timely help in shaping their destiny. It is narrowing the gap between developed and developing regions of the world by making the world more "Flatter". Here is an interesting example from the recently concluded CommonWealth Games held in Delhi, India

India's synchronized swimmers - Kavita Kolapkar and Bijal Vasant were for duet event and practiced only for two months. They did not have continuous practice and had no coach at all. Although this was a massive problem, the web has come to their rescue. Both Indian swimmers watched others on YouTube and learnt from them. One of them said that she could not believe that she was sharing the same stage with them.

Some Blogs are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested

2010-08-28T08:27:00.000+05:30

Blogs are increasingly becoming preferred means of publishing for both individual and institutions across the world. As a consequence even for a information seeker blogs have become preferred destination. Since blogs are focused on topics, sometimes they are better sources of information. However with the plethora of blog emerging everyday information seekers are inundated with numerous blog posts throughout the day. A general information seeker on the web needs some kind of guidance to choose best blog among available lists. They need some clear cut criteria. In this context, 10 ways to evaluate a blog comes very handy. It lists 10 criteria for evaluating the “goodness” of a blog. No matter what is your station in life, a student or professional ,blogs are expected to become your main source of information (if not already happened). In addition to above criteria u may also remember old adage from Francis Bacon “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.. This applies to blogs as well.

Personal Learning Environment(PLE): Newest in Learning Ladder

2010-08-04T10:00:00.000+05:30

Periodically emergence of new technologies create new category of learners and new kind of educational institutions. The invention of printing press and resulting ability to produce books in large numbers resulted in University type of education and readers The Class-bound education became the norm. However the advent of web has opened up new possibilities for learner to acquire information and pursue education. Web 2.0 technologies allow students to mash up learning resources, the learning services and learning communities of their choice This combined with blending of contents are resulting in what is known as personal learning environment ( PLE ). PLE may be compared to " study place or room" where a learner brings in all resources to help her study.

Tempalias: Temporary, Anonymous Email Addresses

2010-06-29T09:37:00.000+05:30

Sometime we need an email id for short period of time. Often on the web we are asked by companies to share our email id which once given might be used for spamming or recieve messages that are no more relevant. For such needs, Tempalias provides temporary email id. Its period can be set by the user.

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tempalias - Temporary Email Aliases via kwout

Winning With Web Workshop

2010-02-27T09:21:00.002+05:30

Winning With Web Workshop
Utilizing Web for Professional Productivity

Today we have all resources- information and tools for successful practice of web-based endeavors- entrepreneurial and educational. Creating awareness of and appreciation for range of web resources among educational stake holders- learners, faculty, researchers, and administrators is one of the best ways to prepare ourselves for future. Winning with web seminar cum workshop intends to a general introduction to a range of tools targeted at general and professional audience. It enables participants to know and utilize web resources for personal and professional productivity.

Versions of Winning with Web seminar has been presented at various venues such as national workshop on e-learning, Infosys webinar and many others.
The floating fund of already available and emerging web resources can broadly be classified as Information tools, communication tools, collaboration tools and entrepreneurial tools. The Winning with web seminar covers representative tools for each category and explains their usage.

Institutions and individual departments may consider arranging Winning with web seminar for the benefits of their students. Some of the suggested occasions where this seminar can be arranged include:

Annual technical events
Commencement of new academic year
Technical seminar

You may have glimpses of the seminar at http://wtlt.blogspot.com

In case you are interested in arranging this seminar in your institution, you may contact me at

Ravindra Dastikop
E-mail: ravindra.dastikop@gmail.com
Blog: http://dastikop.blogspot.com

Establishing Online Presence: Tools

2010-02-25T15:42:00.003+05:30

We live in a connected world which works on 24/7 basis. To succeed in this new world order each person should establish an effective web presence. The tools for establishing online presence range from very simple email to full fledged web sites to social networks. However for most of us establishing a web site is neither necessary nor feasible. In addition, email is a very passive online presence meaning there is no way to know about your email unless you actively share it with others. So one must explore the true nature of web: randomness. On the web when someone browses, either beginning site or next site are randomly chosen. So your active presence on the web improves your chances of being discovered by other net users. One of the tools that you may consider using is Google profiles. An entry in this will help you publish information about you and your credentials to rest of the world. Once created you may either actively share this profile with others- friends, prospective employers and many more. Here is an example of a profile.

2009-12-28T08:17:00.001+05:30

I am experiementing with using web tools in enriching teaching process. Here is a blog where I list my experience http://ping.fm/j2kt7

Typing Text spɹɐʍʞɔɐq puɐ uʍop ǝpısdn [ Upside Down and Backwards]

2009-12-22T11:14:00.006+05:30

Sometimes it may be necessary to type text upside down and backward manner. It may be for fun when you send a message to a friend or more serious application is when answers to quiz can be given in upside down manner.

For instance,

Who is Father of Nation [ Answer: ıɥpuɐƃ ɐɯʇɐɥɐɯ]

You may try this yourself here: writing text upside down and backwards

Web Tools for Today and Tomorrow: Tumblr

2009-12-21T12:54:00.003+05:30

Using web resources and tools is becoming an essential skill in the networked world. Discovering tools and then harnessing them is expected to become a life long learning activity. Here is one tool that I have discovered recently and has started using it.

Web has become publishing destination for individuals and institutions, business and governments. Blogging is the most popular means of publishing available today. While there are many blogging services available on the web, Tumblr is a special one. According to service providers

" Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML."

I have just created a blog on Tumblr and is accessible here.

Web4teachers

XML: Why do we need it?

2009-10-24T17:07:00.003+05:30

XML is invented to overcome Electronic Information exchange challege.

Background:

In computers information is stored in digitized form. Computers are used for different purposes such as word processing, programming etc. Application is the general term used to describe the software that help us get things done on computer. For instance a word processor such as MS WORD helps user to create, edit and print documents. In a similar manner, spreadsheets such as MS Excel help user to store data in tabular form and apply mathematical operations on them such as summation etc. There are plethora of computer applications to do every sort of work. Each applications software stores that data in its own specific format. The format used by an application could be simple text ( as in notepad), or rich text format (as in wordpad) or wave form (as in sound files) etc.

However, there are occasions in which user needs to combine data from different applications ( say user want to use a spreadsheet graphics in a word processor file). This is not directly possible because the underlying format are not the same. In computer terminology, the formats are not compatible.

The need for moving data from one application to another is universal. This need is also called "Electronic information exchange". It is defined as the movement of electronically coded information of one sort or another among software units during the execution of business process

Ocasions for Electronic Information exchange

Intra-application- information movement among the parts of the application- data from a page to another page or from table format to text format or vice verse
Inter-application - information movement between different application within a system - data from payroll application to tax application or from attendance application to examination application
Inter-company or organization- information exchange between companies or organizations - from bank to income tax office or SDMCET to VTU
Inter-system- information exchange between different systems - windows to Linux etc

XML is invented to overcome Electronic Information exchange challenge. XML provides a formatted text with well-defined set of rules for creating and accessing that text

URL and shorter URL

2009-10-04T21:12:00.007+05:30

To publish anything on the web, you need a URL. URL stands for Uniform Resource locator is the address of the published item on the web. When you give URL to someone, he can access the published item by providing that URL to a browser which resolves that URL and access that document and displays it on user screen. Web site address such as http://www.sdmcet.ac.in/ or a directory within a site such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator are examples of URL. Since every items that needs to be published needs a unique URL. cloud computing service providers such as Google Docs use automated procedure to generate a new URL every time user publishes a documents. These machine generated URL to hard to remember and still harder to decipher. For instance, the document I have used to publish my students online submission details is http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvV4EGaQWF8DdE9yeVNxeUpCTGlweFpYbzhVaVRadUE&hl=en. As it can be seen it is too big to handle comfortably.

Fortunately for us, services are available to shorten this URL's and make them manageable. Service providers such as http://tinyurl.com/ or http://bit.ly/ allow user to shorten URLs. For example when I used http://tinyurl.com/ and asked for the shortened form for above mentioned student submission details, I got http://preview.tinyurl.com/studentsubmission

J2EE: Know the Technology and Learn it Too

2009-09-21T12:30:00.002+05:30

Today we have plethora of technologies to serve us. J2EE is one such technology Short for Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition. J2EE is a platform-independent, Java-centric environment from Sun for developing, building and deploying Web-based enterprise applications online. The J2EE platform consists of a set of services, APIs, and protocols that provide the functionality for developing multitiered, Web-based applications.

Some of the key features and services of J2EE:

At the client tier, J2EE supports pure HTML, as well as Java applets or applications. It relies on Java Server Pages and servlet code to create HTML or other formatted data for the client.
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) provide another layer where the platform's logic is stored. An EJB server provides functions such as threading, concurrency, security and memory management. These services are transparent to the author.
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), which is the Java equivalent to ODBC, is the standard interface for Java databases.
The Java servlet API enhances consistency for developers without requiring a graphical user interface.

In case interested to know more about J2EE you may use this tutorial http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/

Source: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/J/J2EE.html

Distributed Computing: why do we need it ?

2009-09-21T09:39:00.002+05:30

Distributed computing:
Distributed computing is a computing paradigm that has been designed to solve the following type of challenges.

Suppose there is application in which data is produced in more than one location and it needs to be sent to another location for processing. For example, In VTU, the valuation work is carried out in different places. However, data needs to processed and results to be announced from one central location. This application needs use of a communication network that connects several computers.
Suppose there is service such a email service, (G-mail) that needs to be made available over a large geographical area such a nation or across the globe. In this case use of a single computer would be possible in principle, but the use of a distributed system is beneficial for practical reasons. For example, it may be more cost-efficient to obtain the desired level of performance by using a group of several low-end computers, located in different geographical location in comparison with a single high-end computer.

In such above cases, A distributed system can be more reliable than a non-distributed system, as there is no single point of failure. Moreover, a distributed system may be easier to expand and manage than a monolithic uniprocessor system

For information you may see here.

Cloud Computing and Teaching

2009-07-15T09:47:00.000+05:30

Ever since its inception web has been a veritable resource for teaching community. In its early stages when it was popularly known as Internet academic community was using for communication, community setting and file transfer purposes. With the advent of web technologies and more recently of services such as online docs, wiki and many more the usefulness of web has increased in the context of teaching. There are many examples where in people have been using web tools such blog to conduct courses online or supplement their classroom teaching.

The current trend towards cloud computing is expected to give further boost in this direction making web a even more useful resource for teaching. The cloud computing promises to make web the home of all computing resources and allow user to avail on retail basis. This approach which is already revolutionizing the business world has similar potential to transform teaching. There are already examples where in a teacher has combined cloud resources in creative manner to offer course on the web. As in the case of business, the limits are imposed only our imagination

Cloud Computing = Retail computing

2009-07-14T10:57:00.004+05:30

Cloud computing is a compelling paradigm. Its mission is to make computing available on retail basis. Let me illustrate with an example. Just few years back, commodities such as coconut oil or shampoo were available only in relatively small quantities such as 250mg, or 100gm. It made sense for companies and also a large population to buy them in these quantities. However there are occasions where even these quantities become large. For instance, a traveler in different town for a day may need both coconut oil and shampoo in such a small quantities for that day’s consumption that buying a 250mg pack is not acceptable. This is where the idea of selling in small “sachet” became an interesting proposition. Once its practical importance is realized today every consumer product or service is available in “sachets”. The idea behind sachet is simple: Convenience for buyer and profitable for business. Sell or buy in quantities of you choice, at your location, and affordable prices. Mobile companies today use retail models where recharging is possible in quantities as small as few rupees.

Now imagine if this is also possible in computing. Why do I buy a computer when I use it for only few hours a week? Why do I buy a printer when I need printing occasionally? The answer is yes. And the name of model which is expected make computing available on retail basis is called cloud computing. Cloud computing intends to make the Internet the ultimate home of all computing resources- storage, computations, applications and allow end user to available them in quantities of her choice, location of their preferences, for duration of their liking. In other world web become the provision store for all your computing needs

Cloud Technologies: What are they?

2009-07-14T08:10:00.001+05:30

Cloud Technologies for Education: A Preamble

Cloud computing is a compelling paradigm with immense potential for array of practical applications. The model is expected make computing needs available via web on retail basis and is called cloud computing. Cloud computing intends to make the Internet the ultimate home of all computing resources- storage, computations, applications and allow end user to available them in quantities of her choice, location of their preferences, for duration of their liking. In other world web become the provision store for all your computing needs.

Cloud Technologies: What are they?

2009-07-14T08:10:00.000+05:30

Cloud Technologies for Education: A Preamble

Cloud Technologies for Educaton: A Preamble

2009-07-14T08:08:00.001+05:30

Periodically , technological advances have changed the pace and shape of every human endeavor. Education is no exception. The process of Education has been radically affected and hugely benefited by continuously changing technological advances. For instance, the invention of printing press and the consequent ability to produce books in large numbers created new way of organizing education and determined the structure of university. The ability of network technologies to collect data from anywhere on the net and their ability to deliver the same anywhere on the network has tremendous potential in augmenting the educational or teaching process.Efforts by various agencies both business and otherwise have created wealth of resources on the web that can be exploited for transforming teaching process. Today web has become a blackboard. Web's basic value proposition is connectivity and content, Both of these values have direct implications and immediate uses in teaching. Connectivity allows a teacher to get connected to and retain connections with learners beyond the walls for traditional class rooms. Content of web has an enriching impact and true potential for transforming entire teaching experience. Content on the web can used directly, customised to meet one's class needs or can be augmented. In effect we have today all the resources on the web for successful practice of web-based teaching of e-learning. In this blog paper we present our experience in using cloud Technologies technologies in teaching.

What are cloud technologies?

Cloud Technologies for Educaton: A Preamble

2009-07-14T08:08:00.000+05:30

What are cloud technologies?

Educational Uses of Blog: To create web interface for new service

2009-07-13T17:38:00.002+05:30

Use blog to create web interface for service your institution offers

Whenever an institution offers a new service or resource to its stake holders – students or faculty, it may take sometime before it becomes accessible through institutional web site. Blogs become handy in such circumstances to establish a temporary web interface to such services. It may be advisable to have such kind of web interface even for services that are in the making. Recently when my college established an IPR Cell @ SDM that exactly what we did as seen below

IPR Cell @ SDM CET

SDM IPR via kwout

Educational Uses of Blog: To create Course Home Page

2009-07-13T17:26:00.003+05:30

Management and Entrepreneurship via kwout

"Blogging is a means for publishing one’s productive outputs: ideas, reports, story, article and many more. A Blog is a general purpose tool. It can be used by any of us either at individual, group or institutional level. You can be techie or a freelancer or a teacher and use it for something that is specific to your context. A teacher can use it to publish her time table or techie may use it for publishing an article on some technical aspect. Some of the ways in which I am using blogs are.

Use blog to create course home

A faculty may use blog as course home page. Faculty can post all learning resources or provide link to them on this page. This serves as a general starting point for students to get introduced to your course. It also allows them to know available resources and also course related information such as time table, assessment schedules etc. Last semester, I created such a course home page for the course Management & Entrepreneurship

Educational Uses of Blog: To create web interface for new service

2009-07-13T14:14:00.001+05:30

Use blog to create web interface for service your institution offers

IPR Cell @ SDM CET

Cloud Computing: Making web as the source to meet all IT needs

2009-07-09T10:18:00.009+05:30

Cloud computing intend to meet users all IT needs- infrastructure, product, platform via web. The user need not own any of these but still can use them as and when needed, in scale and quantities of his needs and paying as pay per use model.

More technically speaking "Cloud computing refers to the technology that enables functionality of an IT infrastructure, IT platform or an IT product to be exposed as a set of services in a seamlessly scalable model so that consumers of these services can use what they really want and pay for only those services that they use (pay per use)" (source: www.infosys.com) . In other words Cloud computing is "a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies" ( Source Gartner). Some of forms that cloud computing can take are

SaaS- Software as a Service
IaaS- Infrastructure as a Service
PaaS - Platform as a Service

For information you may see read wikipedia article on Cloud Computing here

E-mail: An essential Tool for all

2009-07-08T19:36:00.005+05:30

E-mail is the first foot print in one's digital life. Until one creates an email account, she is merely a visitor to the web. Email id transforms her into a resident in the digital world. Although one can live without an email account, she can not do it for long. Many of the useful services available on the web require email as first level of identity for the user.

Email serves two purposes. As said earlier email provides a unique identify to an individual on the web so that rest of the world can reach her. In addition email also acts a starting point of one's communication on the web. E-mail as communication medium has been available for decades but only to organizations and its employees. With the advent of web, free web-based email services were extended to general public by companies.

Hotmail, started by an Indian entrepreneur, Sabeer Bhatia was probably the first such freely available web based email service. Launched in 1996, it brought email to the reach of millions of general users.

E-mail has now become a very essential communication and user identity tool. Many organizations provide emails to their stake holders such as employees, students, etc. Organizations even ask for prospective stake holder's public email id as first level of point of contact. Admission updates or job offers are now increasingly made through emails. Uses of email for both for an individuals and organizations are practically endless. User can register thier email ids with thier banks to get updates, parents can get information about thier kids via email and so on. Fore more on this click here

Quoting Web Pages is Simple with kwout

2009-07-07T15:38:00.004+05:30

Quoting from other sources is a regular feature in most part of formal and informal writing such as paper or thesis. Quotations as they are generally called are used to strengthen argument a paper or to illustrate a point. Quotations range from textual to picture to photos to video. However with the increasing number of good sources found on the web today, many a time a writer ends up in a situation where he/she has to quote a web page or part of it. This has not an easy task until now. But it is no more a difficult task either. A service made available by kwout makes the entire process of capturing a web page or part of it and storing or publishing it in multiple interfaces such as blogger, social networking sites such as facebook much easier. You may see an example of the snap of this blogger Winning With Web on another web interface blogger Reporting Web

Use this handy service to illuminate your writings

A Tryst with Bing

2009-06-26T11:34:00.005+05:30

It is almost a month since Bing - Microsoft newest entry into web search space made it is public appearance. Since the I have been hearing about its features-USP's through a lot of sources including the one of the blog post by my student. However, it was not until yesterday evening I had any chance to test the Bing personally. After office hours yesterday, I along with some of colleagues made a informal use of search engine. In short we were impressed by this new Microsoft offer. I was very doubtful and skeptical since earlier Microsoft attempts in this space were not up to the mark. Bing has certain features which makes it a compelling choice for any web associated search. For instance, whenever a uses moves mouse over a listed item on result page, it provides additional information about it as snippets. In case of a video search - user can play them just moving a mouse over it. This unlike other search engine options saves a lot of time for user. It saves at least a keystroke for each of output in search result page. Cumulatively it makes a great saving from user perspective. Bing is a good choice to start experimenting.

Times are Upheaval but NOT Unusual

2009-06-22T10:06:00.006+05:30

Business world is in crunch mode and times. Current workforce and graduating students are expected to face the much of the brunt. Started a some time ago, recession, slowdown is taking its toll. Business world is seeing a lot many companies going belly up and others who are still in business are looking for measures to stave off these difficult times and most of it is curb costs by way of reducing work force numbers. True it is a very difficult time for all affected, especially outgoing students. None the less times are not unusual. Historical documents suggests that there is nothing unusual about the state of IT business. The IT industry which is experiencing a slowdown is facing almost the same challenges that once railway industry did about a century and half back around 1847. At that time railway industry had achieved a spectacular growth "boom times" in the previous few years. Then it bust. In fact every new market creating technology undergoes this phase: start off smartly, catches up fast, reaches a very healthy double digit growth, booms and abruptly busts. Some business firms disappear during this bust. But once the dust settles down, industry is ready for long growth and moves towards maturity. Here is an example from history.

After a steady growth, Britain's railway mania collapsed in 1847, and railroad shares plunged by 85% and hundreds of business were closed down. But train traffic in Britain did not decrease very much and in the next two decades grew by 400%

In all probability IT industry is in similar position as railways was in 1847 and has a potential to bounce back into major business sector

Cloud Paradigm: A New Order in Computing

2009-06-17T09:19:00.005+05:30

Computing world is bracing up for a new order termed cloud computing. The promise and potential of this new paradigm is being slowly but surely unsurfaced. Briefly put, cloud computing is all about developing web as the ultimate computing resource- infrastructure, platform and software source and making everyone to move all their computing there. Many of the components needed towards realising this have been already in place- SaaS that uses web means to deliver software service and PaaS that offer platform services from the web. The cloud computing is expected to bring about paradigmatic shift into ways in software being built and services are being offered. Here is an interesting overview by Mache Creeger

Webinization is catching up

2009-05-25T10:08:00.005+05:30

Webinization is a powerful Phenomenon. It is catching up more and more individuals and institutions. Earlier we have described how this potential process of webinization has attracted the attention of political parties, politicians, temples to say few. Now comes a more startling example where Pope, the religious leader of world wide christian community is slowly but surely embracing and falling into the fold of webinization. Some time back Pope Benedict had entered Youtube to reach out church's following. Now Pope has been trying establishing an interface with his followers on social networking web sites such as facebook

Lean Learning made possible by web technologies

2009-05-22T12:21:00.009+05:30

Today we have enough number of web technologies to practice lean teaching or learning. Lean learning is a process of acquiring right content for right course and delivering the same in right and a range of formats to meet varying teaching and learning needs. Web technologies enable teachers to assemble contents from diverse sources in adequate quantum, consult sources (references) in required numbers and publish teaching deliverable in a range of expandable and extendable formats. This frees teachers from limits of traditionally available formats of pages, chapters, books and volumes. As such teachers can publish in a range of always accessible (for students) updatable formats ( for teachers and collaborators) to meet varying needs of beginner, intermediate and advanced learners. Here is an example

Memory Unbound: Techno-Empowered Individuals

2009-05-03T12:22:00.008+05:30

We live in an age of new paradigms. Technology is an enabler. It enables humans to do new things or makes us do old things in newer and efficient manner. During industrial age the newly invented steam engine liberated humans from the limitations of muscle power. It made them run faster than any animals (locomotive) and sail faster (steam powered ships) than any wind

In our connected world which is spreading at an astonishing speed, technology is enabling us in radical, revolutionary ways. For the first time human history, computing technologies are liberating us from the limitations of our inherent "memory power". This similar to the way steam engine liberated us from our own muscle power and that of animals we used in our working life ( such as farming). As a consequence an individual today can store information more than the whole humanity did just some years ago. She can also recall and manipulate information in quantities that took score of experts many months to do in the past. Individuals have become omnipresent, memory abound. Now the challenge is how each of us is going to harness it for our personal , professional and societal progress

A service model for Webinized World

2009-04-26T15:43:00.004+05:30

We are living in a world that is becoming increasingly webinized. The webinization process is due to and powered by that fact that we are all endowed with a power to get connected to resources across the globe. Today one can reach out resources anywhere on the web. He can also reach the audiences for his content everywhere on the web. Then what should be the model of service for this webinized world. By model of service we mean the approach we should take to harness web resources and serve people. Personally I have identified the following service models to exploit webinized world.

Global Access and Local Service (GALS): This model explores the entire web with the help of an array to tools to find, locate, procure best of breed contents and tools and organizes them into a useful form say a service or lesson to an identified local community. For instance as a engineering teacher , I can search best academic content, practice anywhere in on the web and deliver it to my class

Local Content and Global Delivery(LCGD): This is a diametrically opposite to above mentioned GALS. A Locally generated content but unique to global community can be published and made access using web as medium. This could be a simple thought, or a best practice.

Webinized Model for Human Endevors

2009-04-17T12:59:00.001+05:30

Web has opened up a new space for human endeavors. This new web space in impregnated with immense potentials and thus has unleashed a new world of possibilities. The spectrum of possibilities range from making web space a new channel for an existing or current activity (selling online) to transforming current activity altogether into to web platform. Just to illustrate this.

The Christian Science Monitor is an award-winning international news organization, founded in 1908 Monitor published news- in-print format for decades. Now it has transformed it self into around-the-clock news service on the Web at CSMonitor.com, once a week in print, and daily via an email news briefing.
Companies such as hotmail, Google, Facebook are some of the expressions of the new world of possibilities opened by web
The education is not fallen behind. Now we have attempts to make web a new Lecture Hall.

Web is a global and multi-lingual translator

2009-04-16T21:02:00.000+05:30

Web is a linguistically sensitive platform. By this we mean that user expected to know the language used by web site owner to understand its contents and use its services. Since web originated in western hemisphere, and in particular in English speaking world, in its earlier days web was meant only for English speaking audiences. However both the English world and as well as non-English speaking population realised the importance of developing web content in native languages of world populations. For English speaking world, ability to publish web in another language would mean reaching another market. For natives, web in their language means reaching its own population in latest technological media. So leaders of web such as Google came out means to translate contents from English to other languages and vice verse. Some of the other useful web translators are

Web Tools for Teaching: Search Engines

2009-04-09T21:03:00.000+05:30

Search engines are the most widely used resource discovery tools on the web. Both general and as well as professional user often depend on search engines for locating information they need. Although there are more than 1000 search engines active on the web, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live are the most widely used ones.

To discover information on the web using a search engine is a simple and straight forward activity. Users have to find a keyword that best describes their information need. For instance, suppose you are searching for information on "curriculum design" using google, you get a result page like this. On this page, it lists millions of links matching the keyword "Curriculum Design" Use can click on the first or any link to gather more information available. As an exercise you may search for key word " lesson plan" using Yahoo. You can compare your search with this

Web Tools For Teaching

2009-04-09T14:50:00.000+05:30

Web is a source of immense resources and tools. Web has a huge repository of general purpose and special purpose tools. Since its inception it is increasingly becoming an attractive resource for teachers. At the same time web is a source of resources and also a platform for communication and collaboration. Teaching with web resources in mind is an advantage. Using web resource for educational purposes has begun since the early days of the web. The fact that web had its beginnings in the educational setting makes it still more relevant to be harnessed for educational purposes in general and teaching purposes in particular

Teaching with web-based resources in mind

2009-04-09T12:09:00.000+05:30

Web-based teaching is an idea whose time has come. Proliferation of web resources and the advent of web 2.0 technologies have encouraged a paradigm shift towards adopting a more open teaching approach. Today we have all the resources on the web for the successful practice of web-based teaching. By web-based teaching we mean the harnessing of web resources for enhancing the entire process of teaching: curriculum design to course content generation to end of the course evaluation.

Educational uses of Web: Early Stages

2009-04-09T06:54:00.000+05:30

Educational community has always been proactive in using tools made available by new technologies. Even before the advent of the WWW, teachers were using tools such as gopher. With the advent of Mosaic browser, which was later given a commercial name Netscape Navigator, web browsing was made a simple and easy task for every one. This opened up a flood gate to a range of resources available to teaching community. In their paper, Advanced Educational Uses of the World-Wide-Web authors indicated two possible scenarios of using web in educational setting. Later in 2001, a paper published in CTDL proposed a new web based paradigm for teaching computer science

Since then there is plethora of efforts in using and integrating web resources in teaching. The advent of web 2.0 has made it only more intense. I shall be covering the same in future posts

Teaching With Web 2.0 Tools: An Experience

2009-04-08T15:47:00.000+05:30

Periodically, technological advances have changed the pace, scope and shape of every human endeavor. Education is no exception. In this essay we report a real world experience in harnessing web resources for enhancing teaching process in an engineering college environment. SDMCET is an engineering college under VTU and offers both UG and PG courses in engineering. The author is a faculty in the department of computer science and engineering. He exploring web resources that can be used in conjunction with teaching and has been adopting them ever since.

Starting in 2000, from email usage for exchanging questions and answers with a class of students, I conducted a couple of experiments and currently using assorted set of web tools to conduct class delivery entirely on the web. I used search engine to discover sources of curriculum design and a custom search engine to pin point course resources. Used Alert services to get updates and Blogs to publish class notes, question bank . We used online docs to prepare and publish learning resources such as presentations and additional reference materials. I also used groups to create a community for class and used it to communicate and make course related announcements. All these resources are joined together at course home page. Recently I also used quiz tools as part of evaluation process and recently discovered lesson plan tools.

Experiment 2: Using Web Tools for conducting Seminar on Project

2009-04-08T15:31:00.000+05:30

Background

Seminar on Project or simply Seminar is an integral part of VIII semester engineering course of VTU. The idea behind this academic activity is to encourage student to come up with an interesting topic connected to academics and make a presentation to the entire class. The entire process of seminar is expected to help student on how to choose a topic; research references to prepare the content for presentation and finally help him get rid of "stage freight" by making presentation to the class.Choosing a topic is one of the most defining moments of seminar process. It is so because there are too many topics to choose from. Additionally for a faculty to see that there is no overlap or duplication of topics is a daunting task. Just imagine class strength of 120 and the process of checking for duplication and even after choosing a topic each student has to come out with an "abstract" of his seminar topic to be approved by the concerned faculty. A seminar abstract to be approved must indicate two or more references consulted during the preparation of the abstract. Until now students were asked to submit the seminar abstract on paper and it was very difficult for a faculty to check all reference.

Our Experiment: For the year 2007-08 we adopted a web-based approach to conduct the entire process of seminar. We asked students to submit seminar abstract along with references via email. We insisted that references must be URL's so that we can verify them at once. Submitted abstracts were read in email form only and references were checked by clicking through them. Duplicate Seminar topics were detected using "search within mail" feature thus reducing the drudgery usually associated with paper based abstract submission. Once the seminar abstracts were accepted students were asked to prepare up to 15 slides using freely available online presentation tool and submit. Faculty went through the presentation and made suggestion if any and asked students to make the final presentation in the class. Thus paper work was eliminated to 100%.

Outcomes: While our approach simplified our work, it also gave our students to learn using email as means of submitting academic work and also learning using presentation software. The database of all such seminar is maintained is the next batch students are using it as reference. see here for detailed student response

EXPERIEMENT No 1: Using email to send questions to students and receive their answers.

2009-04-08T15:06:00.000+05:30

In 2000 we were having a laboratory course titled Basic Skills Lab(BSL), under VTU. The objective of the course was to introduce to and familiarize students with basic and general purpose tools such as word processor-editing, mail merge , spreadsheet, HTML- designing home pages, linking other pages to given page, email- sending and receiving message etc. This was ideal situation for faculty to use email as an instructional medium and also testing means. Faculty used to send some questions to each student separately and students were expected to send their answers by the time they come to lab next week. Remember this was a time when email was not popular among students and our approach provided an excellent exposure to a tool that they might need all through their professional and personal life.

Power of Webinization

2009-04-08T10:48:00.000+05:30

The web has three fundamental value propositions. They are death of distance, all time accessibility and overcoming of language barriers. Historically human endevours were hindered by two natural and one human-created barrier. The two natural barriers were distance and time. Human ability to cover distance although improving over the ages, it was limited it overcoming it altogether. The inventions of industrial age such as steam engine when built into a locomotive and steam boat, for the first time made as one scholar put " man could travel faster than any animal and sail faster than winds". Later discoveries such as telephone did help us overcome challenges related to time and space to greater extent.

However, what web has brought us is more fundamental. On the web there is no distance at all and accessibility is always assured. For example, a learner in India, the American university's learning resources are as easily accessible as they are to a regular student in university campus in USA. See an example here or in addition they are available all the time.

But still more radical empowerment unleashed by the web is overcoming the linguistic barrier. The ability to reach out to an audience that do not speak your language. For instance, you may read this blog in a language of your choice.

These are have made man almost an omnipresent ( a quality which in the past was exclusive to Gods alone) and multi-lingual.

Education and the WWW

2009-04-07T19:31:00.000+05:30

Since its inception the WWW has been closely associated with education. Many of the components those have powered web and powering it today have had their origin in the educational settings. In fact the web world was heralded in CERN, an European research lab. The first really effective, easy to use Web browser, also called Mosaic was developed in National Centre for Supercomputing Applications(NCSA) based at University of Illinois. And one of the most successful web venture and powerful search engine Google was conceived and developed at Stanford University. Thus the web and education are closely intervened. No wonder there have been lot of efforts in harnessing web and its resources for educational goals. In this blog I shall be covering the history, evolution of this phenomenon. I shall also discovering tools for educational use.

Teaching Development Life Cycle

2009-04-07T14:12:00.000+05:30

A regular teaching job involves the following stages

Identify Need- spot a need for a course
Course requirement analysis
Course design
Course content- specification, scope, depth of coverage etc
Course delivery plan and schedule
Course delivery and implementation
Continuous and end of the course evaluation
Course completion and review

The Teaching Process: Defined and its stages

2009-04-07T14:07:00.000+05:30

Teaching may be defined as a process of converting outside knowledge into outside values i.e. learning deliverable. A learning deliverable may a lecture, class notes or lab experiment etc. However, teaching development life cycle involves few more phases which are listed here.

Curriculum Design
Content aggregation
Lesson Plans
Learning deliverable- Presentations, notes
Content delivery
Content Management

IPR Course in Engineering: Purpose and Scope

2009-04-07T13:40:00.000+05:30

Courses are intended to equip students with knowledge, tools, skills needed in thier future professional life. The required knowldge, skills and tools change over time. Currently one such knowledge area that is expected to be widely required in professional life in these times of globalised world is that of Intellectual Property Rights. Intellectual properties are considered to be pivotal and driving force of coming economy and as such be protected by thier creators - employees and employers for proper harnessing of thier potential.

A First Course in IPR covers essential aspects of this important and imperative knowledge area from professional perspective. The course covers themes such as

Awarness of IP
Importance of IP from Professional and Institutional perspectives
Forms of IP
Reading and Interpreting IP documents such as patents

IPR: What Academic Decision Makers need to know

2009-04-07T13:13:00.000+05:30

We live in the information age. Each age in the human history is known for the dominant theme and work. Industrial age is known for mechanization of work. Similarly information age is and will be known for innovation. Innovation is the ability to combine idea with information to create new values. A new value may be a new product or a new service or a new algorithm or may even be a new business method or model. While getting a useful idea is challenging, protecting a successful idea from competitors is still more difficult and challenging. Ideas, concepts being intangible may be expressed in multiple ways , and as such may stolen or misused or exploited by others. Any such situation in which in ideas can't be protected properly, dents the motivation for an innovation process and innovator himself. In addition, any environment that prohibits innovation hurts a business enterprises more dramatically and cumulatively impedes economic growth.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are means to achieve that protection for useful outcomes of innovation process. IPR- being legally enforceable methods provide a general framework for establishing ownership to an innovative creation to an individual or group or the institution. At the same time they make that society at large benefits from such creation and there by creates a healthy and encouraging environment for creative folks.

Engineering is the application of natural sciences to work and performance. Engineering innovation is a process of coming with new work methods or process to radically improve work productivity and enhance performance. In order to unleash the creative energies of their students and faculty , engineering institutions must institutionalise IPR process and procedures.

Webinization: Story of Political Parties and Politicians

2009-04-07T11:18:00.000+05:30

Webinization as observed elsewhere is sweeping across all spheres of human activities. Politics is one such sector which is getting webinized as much as possible. With general elections declared, political parties as well as prominent politicians are web ways. Indian National congress, the oldest political party in India and has a full fledged web presence. Shri. L K Advani, a prominent leader in Indian politics has webinized presence here. While the point here is the stress the sweeping of web into every corner of human activities, the list is not complete but is just an indicative one.

Webinization: Story of Temples

2009-04-07T11:17:00.000+05:30

Webinization is sweeping human institutions. One of the oldest and traditional institution such as temples are undergoing a degree of webinization process. Temples are the places where devotes are expected to go for worshipping. Temples donot have any thing to promote or sell. Most devotees of a diety or temple are so becasue of thier family tradtion or in some cases have become a devotee of a particular diety or temple in their own life time. One rarely finds an advertisement about a temple in traditional media. Of course temples do publicise events such as jatra in media. Nor anyone would become a devotee of temple by going through its advertisement. None the less temples are currently busy establishing web presence i.e become part of webinization phenomenon. Some of the example include Tirumala Temple of Tirupati and Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Manjunatha Temple of Dharamasthala

Webinization is in Vogue

2009-04-05T17:41:00.000+05:30

Webinization is in vogue. Webinization is transforming of an activity or process from a traditional platform onto web platform. Online banking is a webinized form of traditional counter-based banking. Web-based teaching is a webinized form of traditional class room teaching.

A Webinized enterprise conducts its activities on or via web. Enterprises differ in the nature, extent and depth of webinization. They also differ in stages of webinization. On the one, enterprises such as Google show very advanced stage of webinization. Dell also an webinized enterprise of a different category. For an enterprise such as Microsoft webinization mean an entirely different thing Amazon is similar to Dell than other two.

Webinization: An Introduction

2009-04-03T18:57:00.000+05:30

The aggressive advent of web as a pivotal platform and probably the pivotal platform for all human endeavours is making inroads into every human activity. The process of either initiating a human endeavour on the web or transforming an already occuring human endeavours such as business, education from traditional platform to web is called webinization. Webinization varies in degrees. A traditional business opening up a web site has started its journey towards webinization although it represents a very rudimentary stage of webinization.

WebTools:001: Search Engines

2009-04-02T22:09:00.003+05:30

Tool: Seach Engines

Description: 1. Search Engines are used for searching information on the web
2. Search Engine help general and as well as advanced searches
3. Search engine is the gateway to web resources

Examples: Google, MSN Live, Yahoo

Uses:
1. Student may use search engine for gathering information on the web as part of home work
2. A Businessman searches for competitors information
3. A lawyer searchs for a old judgement etc.

Example:
1. Person interested in knowing more about a historical monument such as TajMahal may use search engine.
2.

Previous tool Next Tool

WebTools:001: Search Engines

2009-04-02T22:09:00.002+05:30

WebTools:001: Search Engines

2009-04-02T22:09:00.001+05:30

WebTools:001: Search Engines

2009-04-02T22:09:00.000+05:30

The Importance of Intellectual Property

2009-03-31T15:51:00.000+05:30

Listen to this blog post

The intellectual contribution of employees and citizens is the life-giving element of any human based organization- be it a government department or profit-making company, The knowledge worker today applies his “intellect” faculty in his work and brings about “new” results in the forms of products and services into market. This phenomenon is generally known as innovation. “Intellect” is one of the factor of production in this knowledge age.

However, innovation does not happen on its own. It needs fertile ground to happen. Innovation needs encouragement to produce something valuable and useful. In order to participate in this process – people – innovators need guarantee that fruits of his innovation get him due credit and reasonable rewards. The innovator wishes to get mileage out of his every useful innovation. This is not possible unless he “owns” his innovative creations. In other words companies in particular and society in general must establish ways and means to accord “property” status to creations of innovation. Intellectual property is an umbrella term used to indicate and cover all “ownable” entities created by the application of intellect. These entities could be concepts, business methods, software, designs and algorithms to name a few.

It is not first time in human history that we have encountered this kind of defining a “new” property. The agrarian age demanded ownerships to land holdings. The industrial age demanded ownership to mechanical inventions. For instance the inventor of steam engine, James Watt owned his invention by the way of obtaining a patent for it. The printing press created authors and authorship is owned and exercised by “copyrights”. However in the past intellectual work was a fringe phenomenon participated by few and succeeded still less.

With the advent of connected world, global flow of thoughts and experience and knowledge economy and world becoming a level field or flat, the portion of population participating in “knowledge works” is increasing. To encourage their continued participation and award those who make contribution is becoming a critical social, legal and business necessity. Intellectual property is a hot issue and protecting its owners is a new challenge in contemporary times

Web is a mother of all Resources

2009-03-26T17:30:00.000+05:30

Web is veritable resource and is growing. The rate of growth and its increasing reach is making it a destination for everyone. As a results both service providers and resource generators are using web as a means to offer their products and services. A simple survey on the web indicates that it is growing as a great source of resources and probably end up as the great source of all resources in future. As a faculty I have found every kind resource on web that might be needed by a teacher. For instance online docs help me publish and online quizzes help me test my students. In total web is a mother of all resources if not now, in a very short time

WebTeach: Preamble

2009-03-24T20:33:00.000+05:30

Today we have enough resources on the web for successful practice of web teaching. By web teaching I mean harnessing web resources in entire process of teaching life cycle. The web has eliminated the three traditional barriers: Time, distance and language. These newly gained liberty i a boon for teachersbecause it enables them to reach out to global resources on the one side and student community spread around the world on the other and integrate them seamlessly.

In this blog I shall be chronicling my experiments in locating, exploring and integrating web resources into my teaching process

Web as an educational resource: History

2009-03-22T10:04:00.000+05:30

Web as an educational resource was recognised lack back. Way back in 1995, in the paper titled Advanced Educational uses of the World Wide Web, the authors predicted that use of web for educational purpose would evolve along two axes: (1) use of the technology on a closed corpus of educational material , (2) use of this technology on an organized structure of links for an open corpus of material.

Later in 2001, A New Paradigm in Teaching Computer Science was published by Mr. Tan Tuck Choy, in CDTL Brief

WebTeach: A Web Paradigm for Teaching

2009-03-22T09:59:00.000+05:30

The explosive emergence of web as a fountainhead of all kinds of resources has been demanding a new paradigm in every human endeavour. Education is no exception. Web at the same time has become a mother of all resources- backbone of all communications- a play ground for all experiments and a common place of action for increasing number of people and institutions.

Education is one of those human endeavours which has been highly affected and greatly benefited by the web phenomenon. I teach in the department of computer science and engineering at SDM College of Engineering and Technology, Dharwad, India. I have been exploring web resources and incorporating them into my teaching process for quiet sometime. Way back in 2000, I used email as a means of sending questions to students and receiving answers to them as part of my basic skills lab evaluation. More recently, I used a combination of email, online docs to conduct seminars by about 120+ students almost entirely eliminating all paper work. In this blog, I shall be describing my approach for using web resources in my teaching process

Stages in Information Work

2009-03-09T11:47:00.004+05:30

Knowledge worker : a software developer, consultant or faculty needs data to do his work. Data sources are always outside. In other words data must be procured from the environment before any knowledge work can actually start working. This process of procuring data is called GET. To be successful at this stage a knowledge worker must have the following attributes

Articulation

The first step in procuring data is to describe it. One must be able to explain in detail what kind of data he needs to do his work, in what format and even when. This a foundation step because quality of articulation determines the progress to the next step. Articulation is also a skill every knowledge worker has to develop over the time and keep it current. We live in an age of information plenty and unless we are able to articulate our needs in clear term we may end up processing a lot of data that is not all relevant to our work. One must develop a good understanding of keywords within his domain. For instance, a faculty working in the area of Intellectual Property must have a clear understanding and exact interpretation of technical terms. This establishes a clear communication between information seeker and information provider. The information provider may be search engine or librarian. In either case clearer the information request better the chance of getting right stuff or data.

Now Everyone is Information Worker

2009-03-02T09:03:00.006+05:30

We live in knowledge era and information age. By Information age we mean that much of our works is built around information. Information is knowledge applied to do work or measure performance. As professionals we are involved in gathering information, processing or even transforming and finally publishing it. Gathering information may be as simple as asking a colleague next desk to a long sequence of actions such as browsing for it on enterprise network to searching on the web. In knowledge era, people contribute or create work by using knowledge assets. This asset could be personally owned or may be part of business. To be effective both individual and enterprise develop a process of generating, building and extracting value from knowledge-based or intellectual assets. At practical level knowledge is reduced into information and made use of it either for doing work or measuring performance. ( Knowledge and information are somewhat related the way wealth and money. Money is one practical form of wealth).

At practical level knowledge management or information work consists of four basic steps. These step help people gather information they need to do their work and help them in value creation and make contribution. The four steps of information work are

GET is the first step in which an information worker scouts for information and procures it
USE is the step in which he applies procured information for work
LEARN- checks whether work has produced any value
CONTRIBUTE- makes a contribution by way of publishing results of his work by way of information

Teaching with Hypertext

2009-02-22T05:37:00.000+05:30

Background
Teaching as we know today is determined by text (book). Delivered in a classroom for a countable number of students in physical world, classroom proceedings consist of one or more of the following: Lecture, listening, notes giving, notes taking, discussion etc. One or two hours of lecture is a flow of information from the scholar to students. Once in the classroom, the teacher is confined to use only those resources (such a notes, textbook, transparencies) that he has brought in. In total text based classroom teaching is a bounded teaching. In textbook based teaching world, textbooks and reference materials were by definition scarce and rarely available in plenty. Apart for usual access to his college library, a student rarely had any alternative access to books or references. On the other hand faculty with possession of books and references represented a kind of unique resource. There existed a potential difference in the knowledge levels of learners and lecture. Classroom delivery assumed a great importance and attending class became the only available access to knowledge. Hence classroom remained a great attraction for students and live lecture stood great source of understanding
Enter Hypertext
In hypertext world, however access to knowledge resources has expanded and can reach any where on the globe(hypertext). Secondly student has access to multiple resources available in multiple format via multiple channels. In addition to this, even customised learning resources are available in plenty. In other words, college library and class room delivery have lost their position as prime source of knowledge repository or transfer. Making classroom teaching interesting is a herculean task. Traditional chalk and talk lecture looks pale in comparison with what is available and accessible to students elsewhere
The changed challenge for faculty
In hypertext technology enabled world, the criteria for success is not what you as a faculty bring with you to classroom but how well you are connected to outer world during your lecture. In other words, how well you combine those (outside) resources available to your students synthetically and produce an irresistible content delivery that makes or holds classroom as still preferred location of learning.

About Teaching Web blog

2009-02-22T05:22:00.000+05:30

Today we have enough resources available on the web for the successful practice of what I call " Teaching with web based resources in mind". By this I mean the availability of online resources that can support entire teaching process. I have been experimenting with online tools and using them in my teaching profession. In this blog I shall be recording my experiements with online teaching tools

Blogging and Teaching

2009-02-16T06:03:00.004+05:30

Blogging is a kind of personal publishing. In its earlier days and initial forms blogging was meant as a journal where in a blogger recorded and published contents concerned to herself and a select community. Over the years, "possible" applications of blogging have expanded and varied in their scope and nature. In the earlier times, when blogging technology was proprietary and available only to people within an organization, its usage in terms of people using it and purposes served were limited.

The advent of free blogging services such as blogger or Wordpress have changed the blogging landscape once for all. Individual entrepreneurs or small businesses have explored blogs to create community of users. Some have used it as a common point of information dissemination or share or notice board. Even some others have used blog to launch new products/services and conduct follow up actions. There are instances in which some companies have used blogs to offer tech support.

Even teaching community has not been left behind. Many technology savvy faculty have used blogging as a crucial component in their overall teaching process. There are even cases of some faculty using blog as a sole means of communication and content delivery for a set of students whom he has never met.

My personal interest in blogging started some time ago. Although I was experimenting an integrating other web tools such as online docs in my teaching activity (see Using web resources for conducting seminar), I was not aware of full potential of blogging as an effective teaching means. In some western universities blogs have been used by faculty as an extended class room.

Currently I have begun harnessing the potential of blog in my regular teaching process. I have created a blog as an extended class room for the course Management and Entrepreneurship that I am currently offering at SDM CET, Dharwad

Social Networking Sites

2009-01-26T05:23:00.008+05:30

Communication is one of the fundamental value propositions of the web. Emails serve people in communicating on one-to-one or one to many basis. Chatting helps people conducting conversations in real-time basis. However communication enabling potential of the web is much more than these. It allows creating of communities. Communities are group of like minded people or people sharing common interests. On the web web such communities are called Social networking sites. Some of the well known social networking sites are : Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc

Since their introduction, Indian social network sites (SNSs) such as Minglebox, Bigadda have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks (such as inviting contacts) but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.

Onward Online

2009-01-22T07:15:00.000+05:30

The online world is the "new found land" of our times. Exploring this new found land and making it our next natural habitat is an exciting challenge and a discovery process. It is something similar to the venture of of the early proponents of Newfoundland settlement which offered various grandiose reasons for their schemes, but the special advantages of the island were more relevant and these were, largely, related to the fishery. However this new "online" land is much more in its offerings. Here are some observations

Online world is a technology enabled resource. It is not constrained by the natural barriers of time, distances and sometimes it even overcomes the barrier of language.
Online world is a general resource, however to explore and exploit its true potential one must specialise in one or the other way. Some of the general purpose tools that might be considered for specialisation are blogger, custom search engines, web site
Online world resource is global in reach, but it must be made local to be useful

About Centre for Online Excellence

2009-01-19T16:05:00.000+05:30

The online world is the newfound land of our times. Exploring this newfound land and settling there is an exictiting challenge and a discovery process. In this blog we discover its potential, meaning. We also try to develop approaches on how to harness its potential for individual and instutional purposes.

2009-01-19T16:02:00.000+05:30

Power Presentations

2009-01-12T07:18:00.003+05:30

In this globally connected world communicating with others is an integral part of our personal and professional life. Be it a student, professional or would be entrepreneurs; all of them need to present themselves to their respective audiences. Many a times presentation has to be made online and need to be co-ordinated with a group of participants. In the past there was only way to achieve this: using Microsoft Power Point. The usually procedure was to edit a presentation, send it via email or pen drive etc.

Times have changed now. With the advent of Presentation facility offered by Google docs, it is now possible to create, edit and share presentations online in real time basis. Students, researchers, organizations are taking advantages of this feature. With its collaboration feature, Google presentations allows presenter to share her presentation with others. She can choose people and restrict them for either viewing or editing actions on the document. Last year about 120 of ours students used Google Presentation to prepare and present their seminars. Faculty can use presentation feature for conducting classes. what is more you can share this class presentation with hundreds of students online during class sessions or even with thousands of colleagues teaching the same course in different institutions across the state. Here is one example.

Online Docs: Publish your way to the World

2009-01-05T06:23:00.008+05:30

Dealing with document is the mainstay of computer work. Crating a new document, editing existing one, printing them are the main activities associated when some one uses computers. Documents are usually created to be read by some one - application for a job to be read by prospective employer or project report to be read by faculty. The normal way of sharing document is to either send a print out or soft copy sent either through an email or pen drive etc. As one needs to share documents with and among more people say batch members of a project or if that documents needs to be turn around - sent back for corrections then it becomes difficult and expensive to use printouts. In addition if documents are to be shared with people who are locally at different and distant geographical locations then it takes sometime to send and receive back the documents.

On-line documents such as Google Docs solve this problem very efficiently. Online document can be created, edited and stored on the web. They can be shared with one or more users for collaboration, comments and corrections. They can even be published for public consumption. Powerpoint Presentations can be published and accessed by the presenter at the lcation of presentation - no need to carry softcopy. and Since these documents can be accessed from anywhere in the world- users can access them at times of their convenience and participate actively in the document creation and building process. Online documents may be used innovatively to meet your specific needs. Last year we conducted entire process of conducting seminar for a class of 120+ using online documents resources.

Web Search Engine: Your Gateway to World Wide Web

2008-12-29T08:54:00.005+05:30

Since its inception web has grown into a veritable and globally accessible information resource. In order to discover information on the huge web, a user needs some tools. Web search engine is designed to help user in navigating and discovering resources on the web. A search engines such as Google or Yahoo provide user a search box in which he can enter one or more key words ("Computer " or " Computer Technology" ) and obtain relevant information he requires. Search Engines on accepting keyword(s) provided by the user, find all matches to those keywords or phrase in their index and display them on user computer screen ( Search Engine result page SERP). Search engine build and keep updating their index by way of crawling the web. Today WWW is estimated have well over 11 billion pages. Both Yahoo and Google claim that the have indexed about 8 billion pages.

Using a search engine is a simple exercise. User has to go the web site of particular search engine say Google or Yahoo and he may see a search box on the home page. He must enter keyword or phrase that best describes his information need and press the enter key. Web pages matching those keywords are displayed on user screen. User may click on those links to investigate further to determine relevance of those links given his information need and move on

Web is globally Accessible Information Resource

2008-12-22T12:04:00.001+05:30

Since its inception web has been developing as a globally accesible information resources. Infact web and its earlier avatar the Internet were principally designed for information publishing and sharing among select scientific community. However later it went onto to become a common platform for information sharing and publishing for wider audiences. In its early stages, information exchange was through ftp protocols which needed some kind of technical expertise from user.

However with the introduction of web browser in 1990's moving around on the web became much simpler. Realising the growing preference of web as a medium of expression, individuals and institutions started developing web crawler- that literally crawl around the web and collect information and associated links and send back to origin for indexing. Search was possible for user within such indexed source for finding required and relevant information. Later Yahoo and Google made bigger impact in web search arena.

Thus web has become a globally accessible information source. Earlier some kind of information were available only when you join certain institutions or visit thier campuses. Now web has made it possible to access information source no matter where you stay. For instance, today engineering students from around the world can access best available resources at Stanford University through web. Check for yourself here :Stanford Engineering Everywhere

Web Models for Developing Regions: A Research Challenge

2008-12-21T09:02:00.000+05:30

Web is gaining a central stage in contemporary world. Businesses, governments, individuals, institution alike are slowly but surely recognizing the pivotal role that web is going play in the days to come in their personal and professional realms. Web is a growing reality to be recognized sooner or later.

Web is universal in nature and global in access. By universal in nature we mean that the potential value proposition of the web ie. "timelessness" and "distance less ness" are useful to every one in the world. By global access we mean the consequence of its first nature ie resources on the web are accessible to anyone no matter where he or she stays in the world.

Every thing about web , beyond this point is local. A teacher for example in India can not harness the web in the same manner as teacher does in a western nation such as USA or Ireland. Or a business man in India can not make web a central resource in his business in a way an entrepreneur in an advanced economy can do. Government of India or even state governments can not take the e-governance initiatives the way Ireland has done it.

These are not casued due to lack in intentions to use the web, rather due their inability to use them given the "web realities" in the regions. There are two classical challenges in the domain of web in developing regions. They are connectivity challenges and content challenges.

In this research work, I address the issue of challenges faced by developing regions in making web a regular part of their resource repertoire and harness them to their advantage.

Web is a Veritable Resource

2008-12-15T12:01:00.001+05:30

Web is a globally acccesible veritable resource. Most see web as an information resource, but it is not necessarily limited to that. In addition to information resource, web is source tools, is a platform and assumes many more useful forms depending on your position. For a business it is a new channel for product and service promotion and delivery; for a teacher it is an extended classroom; for a student it is blackboard that is accesible on 24/7 basis. In a sense Web is a multi-dimensional resource.

The Importance of Information

2008-12-13T10:45:00.000+05:30

Information has always been important in human affairs. Even when humans were nomadic information on sources of food and location of safety were important and critical. In those times information was local and was of any use only within that locality and community.

However with the advent of technologies such as telegraphs in the 18th century- local information could be transmitted to distance places. Thus information is made available at different location there by making it available to decision makers. The seperation of information from its locality ( or origin) and transmission of the same to different locations made a fundamental difference for people in knowing and managing thier affairs. A farmer now a days can decide to move his "field produce" to one of selected markets after gathering latest information about market and price fluations in those markets.

The ability of technologies such as telegraph to transmit information over distance have "potential" to change the destiny of countries. During the first Indian Independance uprising in 1857, British government used telegraph system to move information about "troops" than troops themselves and eventually won it over. The native rulers did not have such advantage though they did have possibly a good resource to win those battles

New Technologies, New Properties

2008-12-09T12:09:00.000+05:30

Humans have invented new properties all over the ages. Earliest properties were simple and tangible such as land, a group of sheep etc. However with the advancement of human race there were invention of tools and technologies. Each true technology gave birth to new industries and as a consequence to new genre of properties. For instance the invention of moving type printing machine in 14th century created a new business called publishing and create property named publications (books- novels etc). The invention of computers in the last century gave birth a new category of property called "software".

Gradually the nature of human made properties have undergone transformation over the years. Today brand names, trade marks patents are also considered high value properties.

Intellectual Property Rights

2008-12-09T11:56:00.001+05:30

Property is something someone owns. Ownership is a powerful feeling and a motivator. Ever since humans stopped being nomadic and settled and started civilization process, the idea of property has played a dominant role in making and shaping the course of human society. In some sense human history is nothing but the story of making property ,owning, protecting and transfering it to posterity and fights associated with it. What can be considered as property has changed during the course of human history:land, gold, mines, money and many more. Standing of an individual , familiy or group was propotional to its property holdings: Kingdoms by territory they covered; landlords by land they possed and so on. Until very recently Fortune 500 list was filled with sulants and sheiks of petrorich middle east.Now are the days of intellectual property: an idea built into a product or process. An intellecutal property could be a design, alogorithm (as in case of Google) or formula ( as in case of CoCo-Cola) or chemical formula as in case of pharmaceutical firms.Identifying intellectual properties and awarding its ownership to real owners and protecting it is a challenge in contempory connected world.

Intellectual Property Rights

2008-12-09T11:56:00.000+05:30

Property is something someone owns. Ownership is a powerful feeling and a motivator. Ever since humans stopped being nomadic and settled and started civilization process, the idea of property has played a dominant role in making and shaping the course of human society. In some sense human history is nothing but the story of making property ,owning, protecting and transferring it to posterity and fights associated with it. What can be considered as property has changed during the course of human history:land, gold, mines, money and many more. Standing of an individual , family or group was proportional to its property holdings: Kingdoms by territory they covered; landlords by land they possed and so on. Until very recently Fortune 500 list was filled with sultans and sheiks of petrorich middle east.Now are the days of intellectual property: an idea built into a product or process. An intellecutal property could be a design, algorithm (as in case of Google) or formula ( as in case of CoCo-Cola) or chemical formula as in case of pharmaceutical firms.Identifying intellectual properties and awarding its ownership to real owners and protecting it is a challenge in contemporary connected world.

The Potential of Web

2008-12-08T17:01:00.004+05:30

The web's potential is huge. Web is a multi-purpose, multi-utility resource. At the same time web is a source of immense information and also a place for publishing information. It is a communication media and also a communication channel. Because of its unique potential, the possibilites on the web can be broadly classified as follows.

Discovering on web- Search and Browsing
Communicating on web- email and chat
Publishing on web - blogs, web pages
Communities on web- social networks
Connecting on web- feeds, RSS

Each of these will be discussed in detail in coming blogs

The Web and You

2008-11-25T12:49:00.001+05:30

Information has become the cornerstone of modern enterprise. And the web has become the largest and most accessible information resource. The ability to gather, arrange, and manipulate information with computers has given layman and as well as for business people new tools for managing.
Information has become the structural element and building block in creating new products and services. The sources of the information are so diverse, and sifting through and interpreting it for a specific business are so difficult, that even small companies will need help from data specialists. The success of an individual and as well as enterprise, even its survival almost entirely depends on its ability to harness information resources. To manage in the future, managers will need an information tools integrated with strategy.

An individul's information skill set must include ability to identify, locate, procure and deploy information for personal and professional productivity

This blog intends to discover those tools and help you master them

The Web and You

2008-11-25T12:49:00.000+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.005+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.004+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.003+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.002+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.001+05:30

Web Business System

2008-11-21T07:52:00.000+05:30

Google Alert: A Great way to keep yourself well Informed

2008-11-17T12:46:00.003+05:30

Information is the knowledge applied for work and performance. Using web’s content for one’s personal and professional work and performance is one of the most productive ways to harness web resources. There are many tools that help in getting information relevant to your work and purpose. One of the most productive tools that I have found very useful is Google’s Alert. This allows you to get relevant information and updates in your email. All that you have to do is to set alerts using keywords that best describes your information need. Some time back while working on a presentation preparation, I set an alert for the key word “ web 2.0”. I was very pleased to get information relevant to my presentation that helped me refine the same.Not just me.
.One of my colleagues who has just enrolled for an MBA course has just set up an alert for “principles of management” and is says he very impressed by this service.
· Recently a student of mine set up an alert for keywords related to a conference she was planning to attend and present a paper. She was exposed to a great number of resources by this great service

As a student, researcher, or in whatever role you are expected to play, Google alert can help you keep well informed.

Web Technologies: Latest in the series

2008-11-16T11:51:00.002+05:30

Humans have been aptly described as tool-making species. Since Stone Age days humans are busy in making tools for various purposes. In the beginning tools were built for hunting but their scope extended into many other activities later. Over time this tool-making tendency evolved into more sophisticated process of building technology. Periodically, the invention of new technologies have created upheavals and ushered new eras. For instance, the invention of printing machine in 14th century and subsequent spread of knowledge via printed books led to reforms in Europe. The invention of steam engine and their application in railways and ships made men to travel faster than animals on land and sail faster than winds in seas and ships and eventually led to industrial revolution. Web technologies is the latest in the series of technologies that has a potential to reshape the human society as deeply as or probably more deeply than those technologies that proceeded it.