 How many of you have seen this book called Science and the Common Understanding? How many of you know the name Oppenheimer? Oppenheimer is actually one of the great faces of the last century. He passed away sometime just before the turn of the millennium and he was, he was a genius in many ways although he did not get the Nobel Prize but anyway he wrote a book called Science and the Common Understanding. He described what he called the House of Science. The same description is applicable to the house of education they call it. Let me explain. Let me also go back and tell you what Lewis great chemist said, he said you go to these ancient monuments, let us say you go to this Kapalishwara temple or something. It is your overwhelm by its beauty and completeness. So you sort of talk in hushed tones then he says think of the time when it was actually being built. You would have seen the scaffolding, you would have seen the workers working, the noise of hammers, people would be spitting talking and so on. Then he said you realize that these monuments are the result of ordinary human effort given a direction and purpose. So eventually most of human activity blossoms if you give a direction and purpose to it. The house of education is somewhat like the ancient monument but there are also many differences but let me first explain why it is like an ancient monument. The house, this is a metaphor, do not take it literally but the house of education is simply a construct that describes all activities by which knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next among human beings. You might say why is it important that is why we are on the top of the food chain. All other animals do only copying so they are no cleverer than their parents but whereas in education as knowledge is passed on from generation to generation each generation gets cleverer. So your kids are actually cleverer than all of us intrinsically but you have a long way to go but let me explain this house of education. This house of education is a vast house. The beauty of it is it has got all doors open all windows open and everywhere there are signs of welcome. You might object sir every time we have to get admission we have to struggle so much into a school or you go into college. Those are unfortunate things that happen in a country where you do not have enough seats for the number of students applying. So we will ignore that for the moment. See the house of education is an open house everybody is welcome. The difference it is also not really built your plan because nobody knows where new fields will come in the lots of researchers and so on. But when you enter a school for example you have a teacher who guides you through all the completed rooms these are rooms that are completely done it is beautiful everything is beautifully arranged everything is in place so that is what we take you through and then after we take you through 12 rooms we say you are now graduated I mean of course you have to write a silly examination that cannot be helped but once you are familiar with the design and the beauty of figuratively speaking 12 rooms you get a certificate saying you finished your school education then you go on to undergraduate. In undergraduate again you see many more finished rooms but some of these rooms are not fully finished occasionally furniture is rearranged in some place or a picture is you know they think this picture is not the right picture they change the picture and so on change the decoration. Then you go through postgraduate education there the rooms are even less finished in fact I say make a tongue-in-cheek statement that when I understand something very well I teach undergraduates when I do not understand it so well I teach post graduates when I do not understand it at all I teach my PhD students because at the PhD level you are sharing your ignorance with the student and you hope together you can solve some problem that you could not solve by yourself earlier around this time some of you may come back to be guides to take other novices through this house of education. So basically it is a cooperative phenomenon where the teacher and the student work together in order to add to knowledge and to understand what has happened already before there are some principles of teaching that I will share with you this is also partly you will have a chance to go and tell your teachers no no this is what President Anand said was the principle of teaching why are you teaching this way and so on but is also meant for my own colleagues teachers these principles are actually lot of them have been initiated very nicely by Aurobindo how many of you know the name Aurobindo oh good many more names how many of you have read the book small book by Aurobindo on education anyway let me tell you some principles that he says Aurobindo of course uses English words that are very uncommon that is so you have to keep a dictionary by your side if you read Aurobindo but you will discover that the words he uses are absolutely right I mean they are the ones to use but I will try to tell you in simpler English first principle of Aurobindo is nothing can be taught that means all of us lose our jobs but the fact is that the teacher is a facilitator of learning you know when you teach the message does not always reach the student and many students are not listening also at all times but in any case the idea is that you can only facilitate learning of the student by sharing with them what you enjoyed the second principle of teaching is this is very difficult to follow in India you should go from the near to the far what Aurobindo says is that when you teach something you must give examples from the immediate environment of the student then the student will grasp things very well I will tell you not to be more concrete for example we teach air pollution but the only data I have is for Los Angeles so I sit here in Madras and I cannot give example of Madras and tell you how pollution can be prevented here or what happened in the past to pollute the place I have to tell you about Los Angeles and it is meaningless to tell you about Los Angeles anyway I am telling you about the second principle I do not have data about the immediate environment so I keep telling our students when you go out to the industry give me back information that I can use as an example unfortunately in India we do not do this very well because we have an oral tradition we have always communicated orally from one generation to the other you are not very good at documentation we are beginning to change the third principle is this is an important principle it says diverse approaches to the same problem will improve your understanding much more than doing many problems this is the opposite advice you will get when you do entrance examinations unfortunately entrance examinations are not education let me I will explain that separately but the problem of the beauty of education is it is enjoyable and all that but it becomes a harassment when you think of the exam that is going to come I mean the teacher is talking you are not worried about what the teacher is saying and how interesting it is how will she ask a question on this for you know what a question will come in the examination how will I answer it how will I get marks this becomes the obsession but let me come back to what a Rabindra says and I will illustrate this by a small story there was a mathematician and a physicist they were both given a glass of water and asked to make tea so they boiled the water they added tea leaves and made tea then they were both called given in two empty glasses each and asked to make tea the physicist again boiled filled it with water then boiled the water and made tea the mathematician filled it with water left it on the table he said by the previous theorem I have already made tea that is the method you should use if you can reduce a problem that you meet to a problem that you have solved before then you have not only seen the connection you are also doing an intelligent you are solving the new problem intelligently so whenever a problem is posed to you should ask is it different conceptually from what I have already done if it is not different do not do it now this is bad advice for a entrance exam or for your final exam so we will put exams apart I will tell you how to handle exams as a 5 minute 2 minute advice at the end but fundamentally you should be able to solve a problem from different ways from different angles then you will understanding of the problem will improve see the purpose of education is to find what is called unity in knowledge that is the whole purpose of science and in general of all of university education is to tell you there is so much diversity around you there are so many different things but a few principles can explain all of them the question is can we discover those principles how do you discover those Newton for example did the greatest unification which is why he is considered one of the greatest scientists of all time because he showed that planets movement and a stone falling down or a fruit falling from a tree are all the same the same laws govern everything so if you put in the correct mass correct body is involved then you can get to show that the phenomena are identical so this search for unity is what you are doing and in this search for unity you have to be able to understand from different points of view the same phenomena that is why diversity is important solving diverse problems I mean solving a problem by diverse means is better than solving many problems then another principle of education is that repetition is an important part of education so if you are all complaining about teachers repeating themselves it is for a very good reason let me tell you a story when I first went to the US I had a professor who dragged me off to listen to a pastor this pastor was a very good speaker he spoke very well so I went there and this man spoke and at those days I was also a young kid and I was quite a good listener this man repeated himself seven times so at the end of it I asked him why did you repeat yourself seven times he said gee did I do that then I did right because in the school of pastors they tell me only one seventh of the congregation is listening at any time this is true in class 2 in class actually we assume that as kids you listen a little better we assume one third of the class is listening at any time so we normally tell you what we are going to tell you then we tell you then we tell you what we told you it's called the American farm and method but that's what all teachers use because when you start off these kids have forgotten the last class so you have to tell them no no you know last class we discussed and then we tell you this then in this class we are going to discuss and then we start discussing so this repetition is also an important part of then let me tell you a little bit about learning because teaching and learning are not synonymous I may teach and go away you may learn nothing and sometimes you don't relate to a teacher sometimes you relate to a teacher very well but I won't tell you this because it's an important aspect of education and it's very often overlooked our idea of learning has comes learning and creativity our ideas modern ideas come from the so-called split brain experiments of a person called sperry sperry and co-workers sperry was a neurosurgeon he got a Nobel Prize and he and his co-workers used to work on accident victims these people had head injuries and they either had damaged left brain or right brain so the summary of what they said this is a little bit of an oversimplification but this is given a book by Blake sleep on the right brain the summary is like this there are four steps to learning and creativity this is common for all and this division into parts is simply for our understanding I mean it's not as if your brain things like this but basically they said your brain the human brain has two parts the left brain and the right brain the left brain is logical good with words and good with step-by-step reasoning the right brain on the other hand is intuitive it thinks in terms of pictures and it's actually illiterate if you had a damage to your left brain you won't be able to your language skills will go away you won't be able to speak you won't be able to I mean you won't be able to do co-gently step-by-step talking but what happens in actual life is that there is a redundancy there is a provision in nature that if your left brain is damaged over a period of six months the right brain will learn to do the job of the left brain so it's not there is a time delay but you don't lose everything but because of the split brain experiments these people could isolate what happens in each brain and this is the summary so the first step is data gathering it's called data gathering because you are watching you are hearing things you're getting various sense perceptions and you're learning a lot of things fact I keep telling my colleagues students don't this is not a license for students to not to listen in class but in practice I tell my colleagues relax if the students don't seem to be listening to you don't worry their left brain is listening anyway this is true you may not actually appear to listen but your left brain is collecting that information which is why you know when you read for the exam all of you must have this experience you actually went listening in class but when you read you suddenly say oh this is why the teacher went on and on about this you are not listening but you still know that the teacher went on and on about it that's because the teacher was trying to emphasize a point but you weren't listening but your left brain was collecting this information having have once the left brain has collected this information your right brain begins to wonder how do I put all these together you know you have so many subjects so many things that you know and you see so many things on the way and you want to know how can I make sense of all this the right brain always tries to make sense but it doesn't always succeed what it builds is models to understand the world but suddenly you think here's a model that explains everything I've seen that's called the enlightenment stage the in between stage when you struggle for models is called the incubation stage that is you're incubating these ideas in your right brain asking what's the model what's the model you know you may not do this explicitly but you're actually doing it without your knowing it on the right in the right brain the problem with these model that you models that you come up with and the model that seems to work is that most of these models are wrong because they are quick generalizations by your right brain saying this is the model that's why we don't all get Nobel prizes you know 1 in a million 1 in 10 million gets a Nobel prize because their right brain ideas are good it's the right brain that comes up with this unification that's why you need a fourth step which is called experimental verification in nowadays if you formulate a scientific theory along with it you must propose an experiment that may actually lead to downfall of the theory for example when Einstein came up with the general theory relativity he suggested that a measurement should be made during a solar eclipse in a place he also located the place in Africa where the solar eclipse is going to occur two years later where it could be seen to see if light from the Sun is actually bent by the stars and this bending is very small but they had to do a elaborate experiment and if that experiment had failed Einstein's theory would have been thrown out but along with the theory he proposed it and then of course Eddington the famous Eddington experiment he showed that bending of light occurs exactly as Einstein suggested it should and so the general theory relativity was accepted but this idea of experimental verification is very recent in the sense it's the last 400 years that we are doing this before that we had a Greek there are only two traditions in learning basically one was called Greek the other was called the Hindu tradition both of them had similar ideas in fact if you read the Greek mythology also it sounds exactly like our Indian mythology I mean lot of their gods have the same characteristics are in God's in the sense that in both really you don't have people who are all wrong all evil and all good we all have a mix of mixture of qualities anyway coming back to this been both traditions of Hindu and Greek traditions we used our left brain to collect data but we didn't use our right brain we went to a sage somebody who was very wise and told him look I have observed all these things I am very confused you please explain then say say Vasishtha or Vishwamitra or Aristotle there or somebody like that would explain to you or don't be confused I will explain to you the trouble is with the sage explaining it as you can't verify it because it's blasphemy the man is a sage so you can't question what he said in fact the first person who actually defied all this was Galileo and I'll tell you another actual story Aristotle had two wives and he made a statement in 260 AD that women have less teeth than men I mean he had to explain why men were superior in some way to women and he suggested that men have more teeth than women and it was 1400 AD before somebody had the guts to count the teeth of all the women many women and many men and say no no they all have the same number of teeth some others had seen it before but Aristotle said it how can you contradict it so nobody had the guts it was Galileo who said no matter who says what question it always question things till you understand it till you experimentally verify it and the funny thing is Aristotle himself at two wives he never counted the teeth so this business of having a sage to explain the world to you is a bit risky it's a good thing but at the same time it's risky so you shouldn't always take the sage fully at face value but in any case I'll also give you another example of right brain and left brain combination in two different people our Ramanujan was a great number theorist you all know that and he was invited by Hardy to come to Cambridge to work on number theory because Ramanujan wrote to Hardy and Hardy found some of the results that Ramanujan wrote was so wonderful and they were not they didn't exist in mathematics and he said how can a kid living in Chennai with practically no background in good mathematics education how can he come up with these results so let's invite him here and take a chance so invited him and apparently as soon as he went there Hardy posed a very difficult problem to Ramanujan something that had not been solved for 25 years in combinatorial mathematics in combinatorials is about how many ways you can do certain complicated things anyway this Ramanujan just listened to the question then went to the board and wrote the answer it was a very complicated formula and Hardy stared at it and said this is ridiculous I mean this problem has not been solved for 25 years here's a guy who comes in and writes a solution on the board and he stared at the solution he said was too beautiful to be not true there that appreciation of beauty is important at the same time there's no way Hardy could tell why that was right and then he worked on it for one-half years logically proved it was the right result and then went to Ramanujan and said how can you do such a ridiculous thing how can you write a solution to a problem he said I didn't solve the problem Goddess of Namakal solved it and gave it to me this is this is an important cultural trait in India we think faith in God doesn't matter what God you have you can have your own personal God faith in God and humility are important prerequisites to intuitive understanding I think they are important characteristics you shouldn't ignore them but let me also say that university education always teaches you logic I can't teach you intuition because I don't know how my own my mind works I mean in fact I'll tell you another story this is sorry another two minutes I'll take another two this was in 1990 I think I was in the US 93 93 92 I was watching television and you know in 1990 there was an expo that is an industrial exhibition in Canada and they housed it in a huge dome that is made of wood it was a very big construction it was done temporarily in order to exhibit it and the dome itself was an exhibit it was done by a carpenter who had passed some eight standard or something this fellow was being interviewed on TV I just turned it on and I listen to the interview and this girl asked him all kinds of questions she said how did you support this member how did you design this part how did you do this after about five or six questions if I couldn't answer I mean he had built it then he looked at her he became red in the face and he said you don't expect me to understand everything I know it's a beautiful statement there are some things that you know by gut feeling but you can't explain you can't understand so I think this is an important part that you have to realize there are some things that you know I mean if Tendulkar is playing cricket and hits a beautiful shot he doesn't sit there and say what did Newton say what is the force what how is the ball ball he doesn't calculate all this and try to hit the shot I mean he'd be bored long before he finished any calculations so you're doing it by your right brain using your right brain and you shouldn't lose that ability unfortunately all education here and in the best emphasizes left-brain activity because only if it's some logical I can come to class and explain to you how it's done if it's not logical and I say oh you know you just do it and I'm not teaching you anything and after two minutes you'll walk away he's not telling us anything useful you'll also stop listening so there's no way we can communicate intuition but you can nurture it yourself and one way of doing it I've recommended it batch after batch of students they don't take up the recommendation but I'll try it again with a new back my recommendation is however complicated the problem you will find that intuitively you know the answer or you can sort of guess the answer always guess the answer and write down your guess then work the problem out logically and see if your logic confirms your intuition there is see if the answer that you get by logical deduction is the same as what you got by intuition if it's not if they don't agree then you have to think again either you have to check your logic or again ask where your intuition went wrong because your intuition can go wrong because of various prejudices that come into life as you grow up with something you can't help I'm not asking you to fight that because your various experiences you go through various things each of you will have a different twist to your intuition and those twists can be sometimes very wrong so what you have to do is keep checking then you can either correct your intuition or your logic I tried this in IT I told our students in thermo I teach thermodynamics I said guess the answer write it down and then do the problem logically if logic confirms your intuition then you get self-confidence you get more and more confident about your own right brain activity and eventually self-confidence is far too important in life for you to ignore but you know what our students to I mean this is probably what you will also do they write their answer right brain answer in pencil then they work out the problem in pen if this answer doesn't agree they copy this answer there I tell them there are no extra marks I'm not with checking you are checking for yourself but they say anyway in case you think of giving marks it's better for these two to be the same so there's such an obsession with marks now I'll just close by giving you some advice about examinations and so on and I hope your teachers agree with me you can't ignore exams this is a mass education system so my recommendation is and I'll tell you another one story before I see this Rajagopalchari I don't know how many of you know the name in Rajaji's wonderful man he came to our college when I was I'm that old in 1963 he came to our college when I was in college and he addressed us all and he said nowadays examinations have become more important than teaching and he looked at us and said I believe you have exams every year in those days we had exam only one exam on the end of the year it was beautiful because eight months you could goof and you could also study only things you liked those you will remember for life in education we give you many courses those are all required for completeness because some of it will be required later and also we do know where you're going in some it we don't know where you're going to work so one subject is important for some students another subject will be important for another student since we don't know the university always spreads its education over many topics and all of you won't like all topics I mean some topics some of you will find interesting some of you will find boring but some matter of discipline that you learn all the subjects but what we used to do is eight months we did whatever we liked whatever subjects we liked then one month we mugged like mad for the exam I mean that's what you all do too but unfortunately if you have frequent examinations and we are also guilty of it is borrowed from the West this business of frequent it's called continuous evaluation and I hate the word because there is no point in evaluating first of all let me also tell you and this I think my your teachers will also agree with me if you hate exams we hate them more because you people write one exam and you go away I have to grade 100 papers when I finish grading 100 papers I discover I haven't taught you anything because most of you will write wrong things and then I get very depressed for two days I tried very hard I taught them this I taught them that but they haven't learned anything maybe I didn't teach it right then you go back again and you have to do this year after year and then you discover after 30 years nothing will change they will always do badly but we have to do our duty so we also hate exams but in mass examination system in a mass education system there's no choice I have to give you some ranks I have to say I'm not interested in finding out how clever you are you know I don't have enough brains to cope with the world I am struggling why would I want to find out how clever you are and also mark you you know clever one clever two clever three what a bore you know but we are forced to do this so basically you can't ignore exams but what I recommend is you set off a fraction of the time two thirds of the time in school you do exactly what you are very interested in then that last one third you mug like mad for the exam and write your exam then after the exam immediately you get another two months of liberation study only what interests you study it well and pursue it further that way you will find your interest also so I'm sorry that we are forcing an examination system on you that we also dislike also because of competition between schools now marks are getting to be asymptotically 100 the other day I recommended a very bright kid 97% in that principal laughed at me 97 is no mark at all nowadays 99 plus only we admit so there is no limit to this you go on getting more and more marks and getting less and less chance of admission in a good school but these are realities don't let all these things bother you education is great fun examinations are a bore but examinations are like a king to whom you have to pay this you know unless you pay they'll trouble you so also take care of the king but take care of yourself first so three months absolutely find out what is what you find interesting and pursue it very well and this technology enhanced education that we give is mainly because we're not able to reach with their aunt enough teachers in India compared to the number of students we have therefore we are using technology to transfer these things I mean to teach these things but there's really no substitute for a teacher and the only best way for you to use a teacher is to first see the teacher notice somebody who is out to fail you mean the teacher is no interest in feeling you in fact we all try to push you away because otherwise you'll come back and write the exam one more person so you're actually in a cooperative business and you make a life easier for us in fact I'll tell you one secret which I'm sure whenever I come start taking a class I look for those four or five faces that will show a change you know before and after they haven't understood it then they understand it and suddenly their faces will become bright in fact the cosmetics use this advertisement I often find the face before the cosmetic better than the face after the cosmetic but as far as students are concerned there is absolutely no doubt that when they understand something and their face brightens up they look so much better than when they didn't understand something and unfortunately most of you have been taught not to show the teacher this face you know you'll sit up like this without showing them any but three or four kids can't help it they will break into this thing so we look for those four or five faces we'll be sitting here there and so on and if they are absent we get very depressed we're all also looking for you know somebody to appreciate I mean we are not teaching you what we learnt we discovered on our own we are only passing on knowledge from one generation to another and you have to appreciate the fact that even Newton said that he said the reason I saw more is because I stood on the shoulders of giants and that's a fact all the time your the accumulated knowledge is already available to you and then in schools and in this colleges what we do is try and say we can't go on adding to the portion so when we add something we remove something we decide what's useful in the future and so on so that's what we try to do and I hope what have they come for by the way you pulled me out suddenly and asked me to talk for digital India yeah let me just give you a word of warning you don't know what digital India or digital anything the problem is that there is a continuity in education and the interesting thing are the connections you know when you learn two facts Karl Sagan said that he said the methods of science are more important than the results of science the results may go wrong but the methods are universal so you must remember that while you get these bits of learning the important thing is the connection between these bits in fact that is why I object to this frequent exams and all that because we have all kinds of rules I teach ABC given exam asking if you know ABC then I have DEF and when I ask you about DEF if I ask about a you will say sir out of portion so the real point is that there is a continuity and there is a connection between these things and the connection is what is important that's what leads you to do interesting things later so while I am not against digital India because digital India is the only way you can reach a large number of people the fact is that you can't reach in fact now there is a new initiative to teach rural women to use Google then they get as clever as anybody else because they also Google I mean this is what we do when we go to class now we Google to find out what you Google to find out so that you can't corner us with questions I mean we know what you got also from Google but I think it's a good thing we've democratized knowledge completely but I think it's still important for you to remember that these connections are very important you must appreciate the aesthetic connections the aesthetics of the connections then you learn to look at beauty in this I hope you do and I hope you have a wonderful time I mean you have a great opportunity I know you also have more stress but actually I think the stresses are more on the parents than the kids I mean they say Mr. Kapil Sible once told me children are completely stressed out I said who told you that I mean he was very easy to talk to although he was minister he said what do you mean you think they're not stressed out I said they're not I mean this they look very stressed in the exam and they go out after five minutes they're all laughing playing they haven't been thinking about the exam so they can handle it but if you think about it you think you're stressing them that's because you're so much older you can't handle the stress of the present generation so the kids will take care of themselves it's only when parents start worrying too much about the stress that all difficulties arise otherwise the simple principle of teachers is to relax students also to relax you learn best when you relax but do remember you have to pay some you know there is what's it called toll booth that's the examination don't try to run past the toll booth very fast make your payment and go but that you can do in about one fourth of the time so three fourths of the time you can have wonderful fun I hope you do and I hope you have wonderful thank you very much okay so the government's aim is to see I have written it down because I didn't know okay the government is saying we are going to encourage people their involvement and then create awareness about all the digital things that we have around us okay and even transform India into a digitally empowered society that means what they're trying to tell us is you know all of us should be aware of what is around us and how this can help us in our education just being a good member of the society right so today I'm going to tell you about online education what it is all about and how it can help us since you're all 11th and 12th pretty soon you are going to some university some college right and then those universities you may take up a course in engineering or some humanities topics but then there might be some topics that they're not teaching at college but you are still interested in okay so these online courses you can go and look it up and they are very interesting and you'll see how now what is online education when I say online education what comes to your mind what does that mean online education we all go and look it up in the YouTube Google right as soon as we get an assignment from school what do we do I'll go and look it up in Google first right Wikipedia we'll just take some information Wikipedia right but then there is more to it online education okay many universities including the IITs we all all these universities in India abroad outside India they are all offering courses now what are online courses it's just like your regular class at school college okay the professor or the teacher they will come and talk they'll be doing it in front of a camera so it is getting recorded right and then it is posted or published on a site once it is published and if you want to take up that online course you can go sign up and then the videos are there you can go and watch anytime so once you sign up for an online course the videos you can access the videos anytime anywhere all you will need is a computer and the internet these days how many of you have smartphones a good majority right so you can access these courses using your phone and some of these are available as mp3 you just have to listen while you're jogging or playing right do you do that listen to music yeah you can do that also so online courses there is exactly like a course conducted in a classroom except that it happens online online meaning you have to log into a site you have to access that course there okay now usually see in colleges in schools we have semesters right one semester two semesters per year maybe three semesters online courses typically they go on for like a few weeks sometimes eight weeks sometimes 12 weeks so it doesn't go on for a year you know at least now so it's actually you know you go sign up in a matter of you know eight weeks it's over you just have to be committed for those eight weeks okay and then what happens is every week they'll release a few videos like say Monday to Friday there'll be one video per day so you can go and either download the videos or once you sign up you can just go watch any time and then even you know if there are say five videos per week on a Saturday Sunday you can just sit and watch each video is like what 20-25 minutes you can easily commit like one two hours for that and finish it and there will be some assignments again all these assessments assignments everything submit online so it's happening online so that you it's not like you know you are sitting in a classroom you are sitting at home or in a library wherever you have a computer you sit there you are watching you're listening to the video and then once you're done you can submit your assignment online okay there is no pressure from anybody just telling you you have to submit on Monday you have to submit on Tuesday what happens is once assignments come on there will be a deadline okay today the assignment is on they'll say within a week next Wednesday you have to submit it nobody's going to come and remind you please submit please submit tomorrow is the last day you have to submit nothing like that now even you know friends did you submit no I didn't submit did you submit you do that right but then you know online it's up to you you have to motivate yourself and submit the online now but the thing is once let's say you have a doubt who do you ask now what do you do you can either approach your teacher in your classroom or you can ask your friends right I didn't understand this what do we do right so when you're taken online course what do you do when you have a question there most courses there will be something called a discussion forum okay what you can do is you can go post your question or once you are one here signed up for the course the discussion forum is on and what you can do is you can go and see if the question is already there just like you somebody else also had a similar question similar doubt they would have already posted there and the professor would have already answered to that question so it's very easy to go and answer ask questions get answered sometimes what will happen is let's say I'm a student I am posting a question and then maybe that evening I go and check it again one of my peers meaning somebody who is also taking a course along with me he must have already figured it out so he may post the answer saying oh I also had a similar doubt so I went I looked it up and this is the answer so the professor doesn't have to answer the question it's already answered there so it's similar to you asking your friends calling up and asking I didn't understand this what do I do it's already there okay so I encourage all of you to look it up at least okay and then when if you have the time after 11th after 12th when you are waiting for your results or whatever you can always look up for online courses and see if this is any topic that interests me if you are somebody who likes math there are topics in economics that has a lot of math you might be interested in taking something different but it is also based on math things like that now why is online education helpful we already have classes colleges why are we even going for these online courses see they are conveniently accessed any time any place by anyone that we already said all we need is a computer with internet connection these days like I said even a mobile phone smartphone that will help now this is especially useful for people who live in very far away places we have we all seen it on the news you know how people living in villages people who may not be able to go to the hospital these mobile hospitals come to the village and they do you know dental check up or eyes you know check up and all that something similar if they have a computer with internet connection in that village and they particularly want to take one topic so and they may not be able to go to the far away college might because they have a farm to take care of or whatever right but so when the computer internet is available they can take up a course which they are interested in right so this really helps for people who live in really remote far away places and then sometimes they cannot pay the fees they simply do not have the money to attend a particular class sometimes you know physically handicapped they are not able to travel to a college to take up a class and then sometimes you know people who work full-time and they are not able to leave that job to take up a full-time class for people like that they can you know use the weekends or after work time to sign up for these courses and spend a few weeks and you will finish a course that might help you get a better job there are other advantages you know for example there are these are courses sometimes offered by universities outside India I am living in Chennai but I am looking up for an online course that is offered by say a university in the US I cannot physically go there right now one I cannot afford it to there are visa issues and all that right so then but if the online course is there all I need is a computer internet at my home in Chennai and I am taking a course that is offered by a university in the US so it is very accessible now you will need a computer internet and it is very easy for you to take up a course that a particular topic that you are interested in but it is offered by another university far away from us now also most many topics these are all offered best professors the really best teaching staff so you may you may be attending a school or a college a local school a local college but you are interested in a topic that is taught by a professional a really good professor somewhere again online course is the answer you can go and look it up look up that course now another thing is let's say I am into English literature or whatever right but I am also interested in movies I want to know how language plays a role in movies how they interpret language in a movie there are many courses where you can actually take up film appreciation and music related courses these are all apart from what your regular courses engineering or medicine or math you are taking you have regular class regular college but at the same time you also want to learn something about films for that you cannot leave this and go and join another course right so you can take this course and simultaneously sign up for a online course that does focus on film appreciation or music that is again some an option that you can go for now this are we already talked about you know this once the videos are there you know nobody is pressuring you to sit and finish it in one shot and then submit the assignments immediately nothing like that it is there you can watch it at any time at night after before you go to bed 15 minutes I want to sit and watch you can watch and again you know these are all many there are many courses that are pretty much not offered in your regular school colleges like I said film appreciation this is something not many colleges offer so you can take up this course while you are studying economics or math or commerce you can still get a certificate in appreciating films you can write about it you can become a journalist there are so many different courses when once you go once you start looking up courses you know you will understand what a wide variety of courses that are available so you can go and check out those courses and then you know pick something that you like and at least try it out if you can finish it that is fine you can try it again because if they keep coming lots of courses are there and one important thing is in most online courses the course material material meaning the videos the assignments everything is free any course any university you go and join most of the time you have to pay some fees for the books for the course for the teaching for the tuition whatever online courses most of them are free which is very big advantage right you can go download the videos and learn on your own right and at the end most of these courses they will offer you a certificate you might you may have to pay a small fees and then I can exam get the certificate but then you know this certificate you know it's from premier institutes like IIT so it might you know you will never know once you go for an interview after you finish your course and you have a certificate in different you know variety of courses outside your regular curriculum this is going to help you now some of the you are already aware of some of the sites that we mentioned like for example edX are you familiar with the site edX yeah I see two three hands Khan Academy yeah I'm heard many people mentioned that name then there is another one called Koserra I'll show the Koserra one again the Koserra one I'll go into the site and I'll show you okay Uday city these are all sites that you can go look up and look for different courses and see if something interests you okay this is the Koserra site as you can see on the left side can you see from there the courses are listed on the left side these are the categories given here I think it's not too visible from them so they have arts biology come chemistry computer science then in computer science they have branches food and nutrition engineering education humanities medicine math music physical earth sciences physics social sciences teacher development programs and they have it in various languages too so that is on the left side that you see and yeah you can take the categories I guess yeah we have actually take the category called music film and audio because we thought there's something y'all might be you know interested in seeing what is there that is the category the courses that you're seeing on the right side again I don't know how much you can read from there yeah once you select the music film and audio tab it's showing a list of universities that are offering courses on that particular topic music film audio on the right side under courses you will see the first one is University of California the second one is University of London University of North Carolina University of Edinburgh these are all different countries courses from different countries can imagine if you want to take up a course you are taking actually courses from these prominent universities all over the world you can see the kind of courses right it says fundamentals of music theory there's history of rock music there's a part one that means a part two probably is coming then you have exploring Beethoven's piano sonatas I mean firstly listening to Beethoven is one thing on top of it somebody is going to discuss his whole music and you know somebody so interested imagine Madras where would you go and actually find some people who know Beethoven's music discuss with them have them offer a course on Beethoven or something like that I don't think we are going to get this kind of an opportunity you know locally available if you go to the music college we don't have karnatic music we have a bit of Hindustan music but I don't think we have in depth about you know this kind of western music or something so this is something that you can look at various things probably something else if you click also see the very first one University of California it says learning how to learn powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects and the second one is saying enhance your career and employability skills these are all as you go you are going to need once you finish college you know you're going to start looking for a job and these are all skills that you're going to need at that time so this is something you should look up and once in a while go see what they are offering and what kind of courses they are offering in see there is one under all categories you can see teacher professional development so this is meant for teachers teaching professionals who can go and take up some classes where which which might help them teach others so then we have mathematics so the beauty of this is right I mean you guys are doing any programming languages in 1112 computer science students C++ no C directly on the C++ 9th or let's see 9th or let's see 11th or let's see 11th or let's see 12th are doing C++ so if you actually go to this course at 8x I don't know which one one of them actually has a course in learning C but the person who invented it or invented it rather than the way the C language formulated and so on who are supposed to be say the father of C he would be offering a course on C language here so if you're learning C there in school it makes sense to at least go and check out how they are teaching C on NPTEL we have a course in introduction programming in C which is getting offered right now so that is a college view of it's the same programming language it's not going to be like it's something else or whatever but it's like how you can get an exposure to how different people would teach the same thing you can see how the same concepts are handled for instance you know when I'm talking or when a teacher teaches me something some things I understand, some things I don't when some other person tells me in a different way the same concept I understand it better when I go to the third person I understand some other concepts better so it is like I also don't pick up all 10 concepts from the same person and the same you know 10 children will not pick it up all from one person you require different kinds of projecting the same matter in different ways that you explain different examples that you given so on so if you are learning something right I present even if you are not going saying for certification if you are not going in for something what was relevant to your topics right there will be some courses which are there you can enhance your content you can enhance your knowledge learn you know understand it better rather than just going with your school knowledge or whatever is there so so something similar in India the IIT is offering it's called NPTEL as you can see there I suggest that all of you go and look it check up okay now NPTEL is also offering online courses I don't know how many of you are aware as you can see at the top that green bar says join NPTEL online courses so if you go and click there it will take you to a page where all the course names will be listed you can go and click and some of them are meant for 11th and 12th standard too so please go look it up see this was started the NPTEL was started by the IIT was started by the IIT's and any content that you see in NPTEL videos, MP3's, PDF files they are all free you can download anytime it's free and this includes you know MP3 you can listen to you know lectures and understand like I said you can click on the join NPTEL online certification course and sign up and then you can access videos now as you can see at the center it says start July 1st session has started where we are offering many online courses see NPTEL online course again the material is free you can like just like any other online course there is a discussion forum you can go and interact with the teachers with your peers and then there are so many different courses see the core subjects as you can see at the bottom of the screen these are some of the disciplines or subjects that you can see in NPTEL some of them as you can see there are physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer physics so go to NPTEL site and at the bottom of the screen you will see these listed you can go click on that and download videos and see if that helps you see plus plus and see these NPTEL we do core engineering we had just two courses targeted at standard 11 and 12 I guess which we ran during the summer which was invitation to mathematics and heat wave oscillations course by physics prof here are the ones which are relevant you at this point of time or we have a C course and we have a programming data structures course if interest in that but NPTEL will be more useful if you guys get into higher education you get into college you're getting into engineering you're getting into some science stream or whatever then this will be more relevant I guess that time you won't be coming to a studio you may come in for a different reason to you know get some courses from us or whatever but this is more like two years down the line a year down the line that we are looking at that and you know tell other students that these are there the same thing which Praksananth was saying air pollution in Chennai and air pollution in Los Angeles right so NPTEL courses will be more like what we are talking about the Chennai scenario so these all are Indian profs you know giving courses giving examples from our own country if they are talking about civil engineering any examples quoted from India rather than some thing happening in Minnesota which I wouldn't know the city planning urban planning or something so when Indian profs talk about it it's more relevant to us in that sense probably the accent is more understandable to a lot of us you know when the foreign profs talk there is a little bit of an accent confusion if you are not too used to their kind of speaking so when the Indian profs talk I guess that is another thing which works in our favor so we have about 875 courses in this across so many disciplines so currently what you I mean don't go to NPTEL today and say oh my god you know I don't get anything here nothing works for me here so what we are talking about today is more like 2 years down the line when you are going to college or maybe even when you are going to PG or something it's a resource you can come back to ok it's just general information online courses there are 2 types ok you can look it up these are all different see as you can see the variety some are in physics some as you can see in the middle you will see better spoken English we all want to speak better in English right as you go you know further in your career in your studies in your career you want to be able to speak better in English there is a course called better spoken English you can go watch those videos anybody can watch those videos right yeah and then you have modern construction materials you have film appreciation programming in say philosophy it's not just sciences huh I think so yeah so this these 2 courses recently we just had one examine this right these 2 courses we just finished online courses these are meant for actually students who are in 11th and 12th the physics portions are from your curriculum mechanics, heat, oscillations waves do you guys study that now some of you and nodding yes and then again high school curriculum invitation to matter these were 2 subjects that was covered in this recently and like I said July 1st another round courses have started where we have 2 courses that you might be interested in one is called practical English where again it's about basics of English how you can learn English how you can teach English and the other one is introduction to program in C with some of you have already learned so if you want to go check it out you might it might be a revision for you just go and explore go to all these sites and see what is there now the NPTEL site the other advantage we would see of online courses is something that you know we have seen I mean from last year we've been learning these courses March 2014 we started so we've done about 60 courses so far 24 are now going on I think one advantage is see if you are looking at say one one is cool right every day I go to the same class through the years my classmates have been the same the competing level that I'm doing is against the students in my class I'm begging myself against them sometimes I may go to a Olympiad or I might go to some exam where I'm probably begging myself against the students in other schools or something like that but basically my geography is limited to my classroom my school and that's where the large part of me is kind of my time so in these online courses one beauty is that you have students from all over the world there like we have I mean 98% is from India about 2% we have the world over thing but we have participation courses right from say 5000 students in a course to 50,000 students in a course okay so you have people from the US you have people from Japan you have Southeast Asia you have students from Pakistan, Afghanistan and across India so across right from Kanyakumari to Jammu Kashmir we are running exams and we have students from all over participating so when you are in such a course and you are doing assignments you are discussing and all that you are actually interacting with people across the globe so that is some exposure that you have when we are sitting in a class and doing regular work or whatever so that is something that is possible in such a forum when you have an online course again sitting in the comfort of your home you are going to be doing it right so that is something that you can think of you know and yeah we have some cross also from the US doing courses for NPTEL now so we have a cross from Rice University who is coming here from an Australian University who is coming here so they are also getting into the NPTEL forum and they have again another exposure that you get to foreign professors teaching you certain concepts so that is something that we would like to see so this is the NPTEL website that we have if you go to nptel.ac.in this is the website that we will see and under portal can we portal yes come on so this is the portal like the Coursera index that we run this is a Google portal supporting us in this portal I mean it is a platform the platform in which you know I require something to put my videos on I require something where I can have an assignments we are not doing the entire programming capability of building all these structures for instance a school requires classrooms a blackboard all your infrastructure and so on right I mean every year we are not going to keep doing it somebody provides it for us you just come and go into that so Google does it for us we give the content there and you are going to come in and study there and go so this is what we call as a portal on this portal we have all these courses currently so what we were talking about the relevant ones would be the third row that you can see introduction to programming and see that is something that you can actually explore and there is a practical English one here the second row that you can probably see currently in your standard 11 and 12 currently what you can see and what might you know reach out to you would be these kind of courses we had a film appreciation course you can probably go through that if you are interested that course is actually over but the videos will be on the website so that was an interesting course where she was discussing about the various films through the eras English films and how they classify films and you know what are the kinds of films that we see history in films then it was language in films a lot of things that she was discussing on a prof from IIT who did that course for us so we had that and karnatic music appreciating karnatic music we have a course now going on so that is still on going and she teaches about the basics of karnatic music and it's not about teaching you to sing it's about teaching you to appreciate karnatic music what are the advances in that and what is the basic things what are the how is it divided what are the parts of it and so on so this is something that I think is unique to NPTEL because in the course at edex if you go they have karnatic music but I guess they still don't have a karnatic music course so this is something that you can check out if you are interested in karnatic music but otherwise most of our this one is all engineering related engineering or sciences related that is what you would find but if you go to course at edex or karnacademy also karnacademy again I guess is academics related but course at edex we have a lot of courses which are very generally for instance you want to become a writer what are the various things for writing or what are the professions available if you say I want to become a writer it's so generic right but there are so many types of writing like you have say in a company you go to you can just do the product writing it's called technical writing technical English you have to learn certain things for that then you have your journal writing and probably so many more so they actually classify they give you what is the skills to be acquired if you want to become this if you want to become that if you want to become something else or whatever for instance interesting you know I mean for at least for me writing was all the same okay I write yeah you know you're a writer kind but when you do something like a personality thing to become a journalist there's also personality traits if I write well it's not enough you need to be outspoken to go I just come I talk to you I'm able to interview you then I become a journalist right but if I'm an author of a book I don't typically have to do that I can sit at home I can formulate my ideas and I can get into writing so there are also personality traits that are required so in that course there's a nice course on Koushara when he talks about you know if you want to get into this what are the other traits also you require you may be a good writer your English may be really good the words that you use may be fabulous but you know what are the other things that you require to kind of get into it that is also something that's spoken about so this one example I'm giving you about writing but he talks about so many things I mean the various courses if you go through there's only things that they talk to you could just give you perspective on what's available you know what are the streams that you could get into and you know apart from engineering apart from sciences what else can you do in life what else could be so what do you guys want to do after 12 who's in 12 only that group there right what do you want to do say apart from engineering sorry I didn't hear that's what what do you want to do apart from engineering apart from the engineers I aspire in engineering let's leave them also anything else that you know you really want to explore yeah okay music okay yes marine biology marine biology okay yes good review films okay good that's it all the others are engineers doctors so just go through that to get a perspective of you know what is available that's all we are saying broaden your view and get to there yeah that is over so I think yeah this is I mean this is the overview we wanted to give so hope you have the urn that you write we have Coursera you have edX you have a fun academy you have your nqc.in there is something called spoken tutorials that they do which is all just the audio format they don't do a video format of it there are quite a few courses in that too for instance the technical courses some of it here they just have the MPP formats of that so you can download it and just listen if you don't need a video player to see that so that's also there from IIT Bombay that you can see so we encourage you to try all this and then I think we have a small yeah we just wanted to see how much you know could be trivial but yeah something that you could learn today if you know the answer please raise your hands ok no shouting and ok just a small quiz sorry so this is the logo of which ok let's see if you know the next one what does url stand for you have the options you may read that and tell me tell me abcd which one so it's uniform resource locator you knew that did you learn that in school everybody knows ok great ok so everybody knows it's Steve Jones right how many of you have seen that TV movie on Steve Jobs what's the name of the movie jobs there was one other movie shans java was originally invented by son you guys already know this person it's not microsoft it's son the answer is D ok what did sergi brinn and larry page create google yes google is there we all know that how many of you go and buy things on flipkart what kind of things shoes books ok next one india's first super computer let me see some hands who knows anybody no the answer is C it's called param do you see the picture there that is how it will look room full of computers sitting together ok so the internet was originally developed by justice it was just an internal thing for the justice department then it developed into what you see now so the google it derives its name from the word google what does that mean what is that look at the options what could it be come on take a guess www did you know that why is it that we are people suggest that don't write in capital letters and bold and all that why what did he say it is equivalent to shouting when you write in all caps you know we like to put so much different color fonts and different you know colors and bold and big letters and all that if you do the entire email in that it is equivalent to you actually shouting at that person so when you compose emails you should be very careful the language and even the font of the size matters ok this is an e-commerce company founded in 2007 by Indians which one which one not ebay not jabang it's flipkart so all of you all of you thought it's from somebody outside India right no it's by two Indian so this you must know you must have learned in school how is the speed of your internet connection measured see which is not a search engine see ebay ask jeeves also you can go and it's to help you ok now pay attention this tagline is associated with which organization by intellect driven by values which one are you sure it is sinfoses sinfoses ok this one where do you want to go today not we probe microsoft what is html stand for which one is it it is b universal serial bus what is lan what does n peter stand for so now when you hear the word n peter you know right thank you so much