Tata Interactive Systems

LCB Question of the month: December 2006

The Learning Circuits Blog’s question of the month for December 2006 was actually three questions (very soon they may well start sending questionnaires):

• What will you remember most about 2006?
• What are the biggest challenges for you/us as [we] head into 2007?
• What are your predictions for 2007?

Some of us had expressed our individual views through our personal blogs, but we wanted to put up a TATA Interactive response. We decided to have a panel discussion to articulate our views. We approached the questions from various lenses – design and business, our company and the overall industry, e-learning organizations and client organizations.

And here it is – a podcast of the panel discussion. Download the mp3 to listen to it in a player of your choice or simply use the player below.

It’s a bit on the longer side (~32 minutes / 12.4 MB), but considering the informal nature of it, it has not been edited – so what you hear is everything that was said in the discussion.

The panel comprised Albert Lewis, Head – Business Excellence & Technology Strategy; Geetha Krishnan, Corporate Mentor – Productization; Manisha Mohan, Head – Design & Innovation; Anand Subramanian, Head – Systems Design; and Anil Mammen, Head – Instructional Design.

We would love to receive feedback from industry experts and client organizations on our perspectives and predictions.

Changing the Way the World Learns

At TIS our Mission Statement is to change how the world learns. And we recognize the important part we play in the evolution of our industry.

We also recognize that we are but one of many innovators in this industry, so we share our ideas and leap frog from the ideas of others.

This website caught my eye as I surfed through my latest Newsgator hits on the keyword "elearning." http://www.connectivism.ca/about - its an interesting discussion evolving around a proposed new learning theory entitled connectivism....I especially like the question that has been posed about its relation to social cognitivism.

eLearning is changing the way the World learns...no doubt about it!

(Dawn Papaila is Consultant – Instructional Design with Tata Interactive Systems.)

Vedic Math: An Alternative Way Of Learning

Probably the world is made up of two kinds of people—those who love Math and those who hate it. 

Long before computers and programs like TIS’s award-winning Jojo in Numberland, in about 1500 BC, Indian mathematicians came up with a system that eased the pain of learning Math. Today, Vedic Math is probably not so famous as the other Indian contribution to mathematics—the concept of zero. It was, however, saved from total obscurity, largely due to the publication of Vedic Mathematics by Sri Bharati Krsna. What the system boils down to is a set of sixteen sutras (aphorisms or, more literally, tricks) that deal with every conceivable mathematical problem—from basic arithmetic to complex polynomials—that a student encounters.

This has huge implications for curriculum designers of Math courseware and special-needs education for learning disabilities like dyscalculia — imagine compressing a typical ten-year Math course into one page of sixteen simple rules of thumb.

One of these sutras—the rather innocuously named ‘vertical and diagonal’ rule—facilitates the mental multiplication of any two numbers. The thought of multiplying, e.g., 54643345 by 67598793, without a calculator would daunt the best among us, and doing it without putting pen to paper seems quite out of the question. In fact, with a bit of practice, it is child’s play as this little demonstration  shows—and it takes all of five minutes to learn how it’s done.

Apparently, on average, we only use 2% of our brainpower; Einstein reportedly used 5%, though I haven’t a clue how anyone could calculate that. The point is that learning is a step in evolution, and technology should facilitate the better use of one’s faculties. Whether we use it as a crutch that we can’t do without, or a tool to sharpen our skills—that is the question.

(Vivek is Manager – Content at Tata Interactive Systems and a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology)

Wiki: Breaking the Knowledge Class Barrier

I know it sounds very “brave new world”, but my forays into the world of Wiki (Hawaiian for “quick”) and other social software have convinced me that something very brave and new is happening out there. In this world, phrases such as “new paradigm”, “the Next Big Thing”, “democracy in education”, and “hypertext on steroids” abound.

Of all the social software available, Wiki seems to have captured the imagination of a lot of people. A quick definition: Wiki is a piece of server software a software tool that allows users to freely create and edit hyperlinked Web pages using a web browser. Wiki implementations typically use a simple syntax for users to create new pages and cross links between pages on the fly. For more information, click here .

Big companies such as Motorola and SAP are using TWiki (a Wiki based tool) to design chips and develop software collaboratively by large teams spread across the globe. To read more on TWiki and its many success stories, click here .

Ubiquitous Learning. . .E-learning 2.0

Stephen Downes on E-learning 2.0, comprehending how we are changing the way we learn and what lies ahead in the field of e-learning.

What happens when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is "delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read— and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.

The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests.