TATA Interactive Systems

Tata Interactive Learning Disability Forum 2008 Highlights Need for Remedial Action

The Tata Interactive Learning Disability Forum (TLDF) 2008 held in Mumbai on the 29th November and in Kolkata on the 2nd December focuses on urgent need to address Learning Disability (LD) issues.

The third annual TLDF – a unique global forum on LD in India – was successfully conducted at Mumbai and Kolkata. This is the first time the event, earlier only held in Mumbai, has been extended to include the eastern metro city of Kolkata as well. 

Focusing on the theme of “Special Deeds for Special Needs”, the TLDF 2008 underlined the importance of early remedial action to help learners with special needs. When asked about the TLDF, Sanjaya Sharma, CEO of Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) said, “Around 3–7% of the world population suffers from LD, but it can be overcome if detected at an appropriate time. We have invited international LD experts to interact with city doctors, parents and teachers to make them more aware. Right now we are focusing on Mumbai and Kolkata, to spread awareness.”

Tata Interactive Systems has been championing the cause of LD for several years, and its efforts recently bore fruit when LD was included in the MBBS syllabus last year in the state of Maharashtra. The educational authorities are now taking the initiative to enhance the B.Ed. syllabus as well, and similar efforts are on in Kolkata too. Such grassroots-level awareness is critical as the lack of awareness about LD has meant that even prestigious schools tend to classify LD-affected students as slow learners.

Sanjaya added, “In the past couple of years, volunteers from our Mumbai staff have made presentations on LD in about 26 schools. In Kolkata too, we will carry out a similar programme.”

The TLDF emphasized that LD need not be an impediment to real-life achievements. Among the speakers was Swaroop Sampat Rawal, former Miss India and a special educator and consultant who said, “I am dyslexic, but I have completed my Ph.D. on this subject.” The event saw a series of highly informative and engaging sessions by noted LD experts from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General (LTMG) Hospital’s LD Clinic, one of the few clinics that offer LD certification in India; nasen, UK; Haskins Laboratories, US; Bombay Teachers Training College, Mumbai; SNDT University, Mumbai; and Manovikas Kendra Research & Rehabilitation Institute, Kolkata.

TATA Interactive Systems Runs The Mumbai Marathon 2008

On January 20, 2008, TATA Interactive Systems (TIS) celebrated team spirit by participating in the fifth annual Mumbai Marathon. TIS has been running the marathon for three consecutive years in support of students with learning disabilities—extending its initiatives beyond schools and the teaching community.

This year the participating TISians were sporting T-shirts promoting the message of the TLDF 2007—Together Let’s Define the Future, and even carried a banner spreading awareness of the cause. Click here for more pics.

Awards Season for Tata Interactive

Gifts in the festive season are normal and welcome, but awards are even better. And when we landed two awards this month, we couldn’t stop smiling. So allow us to preen a bit.

Encouraging, Enabling & Empowering LD Students – The TLDF 2007

The TLDF 2007 received an overwhelming response with over 200 attendees making it to The Grand Hyatt, Mumbai that played host to the day-long event. The TLDF 2007 brought together national and international speakers, deans, principals, teachers, and even families of students with learning disabilities.

This year, the TLDF 2007 not only discussed working together for the benefit of LD students, but also welcomed on stage, the students and parents of students who have overcome learning difficulties.

While the TLDF 2006 successfully spread awareness on LD, the TLDF 2007 went a step ahead and brought together speakers and participants from across the globe to gather support for LD students in India. For the last two years the TLDF has proudly provided a platform for this cause, and with the support and encouragement of positive results, we will continue to encourage, enable, and empower LD students for a better future!   

Some of the topics discussed in the sessions were: the steps beyond LD certification, multidisciplinary approaches, medical aspects, the role of a Special Educator, how to identify LD in the classroom, the social and emotional aspects of LD and most importantly, the role of the Government. To enable a greater sharing of knowledge and extend our support to this cause, we have made the TLDF presentations available on http://tldf.tatainteractive.com.

Brain Teasers On Sale

We are delighted that Brain Teasers will go on sale from 27-Feb-07 in Landmark, a leading national bookstore chain in India. Brain Teasers is a book we created to meet the special educational needs of children with learning disabilities. The book has been developed in association with the LTMG Hospital in Sion, Mumbai and is published by Tata McGraw Hill. This is a proud moment for all those involved in the creation of this valuable book.

Brain Teasers provides practice in reading, writing and mathematics, and is intended to help children with learning disabilities rediscover the joy of learning. It also helps parents understand learning disabilities and find ways to address them.

If you are interested in getting a copy of the book, visit any Landmark bookstore in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, or Chennai. If you live elsewhere, please do write in to us, and we’ll try and figure out a way to get it across to you.

Mumbai Marathon 2007: Use Your Feet To Lend A Hand

We participated in the Mumbai Marathon 2007, once again running for the cause of Learning Disability. Please click here to see some pictures from this event.

The TLDF 2006: A Report

Click here to view pictures from this event.

It was unexpected for many reasons. Neither the speaker nor his topic was on the agenda. In a symposium dominated by speakers with striking backgrounds — neurologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, principals of world renowned special needs schools, vice-presidents of international associations — to delay a planned session and invite an “unknown” to speak out of turn was something of an oddity. Ashok Kurien was introduced simply as India's Richard Branson. That did arouse a murmur of interest and even as everyone wondered what this white-haired individual had in common with the English entrepreneur, he began to speak.

Ashok Kurien talked of his days as a child, how he had struggled in school, failing numerous exams. The school kept him merely because he was an excellent athlete. Inside the classroom he was the object of derision. He could hardly even spell correctly. His mother who headed a department at a university whipped him and called him slow. As did his teachers. When he went on to college more insults were heaped on him. He dropped out. His mother refused to talk to him and they didn't exchange words for over 45 years. Kurien took up a job in the villages of India, flying small planes to spray fields with insecticide. Five years later he headed back to the city and enrolled in a college again. This time, he persevered to finish his graduation and joined an ad agency. Though his colleagues ridiculed him, his clients loved him for his creative input. Seven years later, with less than Rs. 5,000 in his bank account, he started his own ad agency. Ambience was a big success and was eventually bought by the French agency Publicis, who retained Kurien as the managing director. He went on to become one of the founding directors of India's first independent media company, Zee. He also established India's first privately owned lottery, Playwin and started DishTV, India's first Direct-to-Home TV service. Today he is worth thousands of crores. Like Branson, Ashok Kurien achieved success despite his dyslexia. And he achieved it in a society that ill-treated him and refused to accept his problem.

The over 250 strong gathering at the first TATA Interactive Learning Disability Forum (TLDF) applauded Ashok Kurien all the way back to his seat. His unplanned, simple and inspired speech was one of the many highlights of the TLDF, held in Mumbai on 30 November and 1 December 2006.

Upcoming Event: TATA Interactive Learning Disability Forum (TLDF) 2006

At TATA Interactive Systems, we have taken up the issue of Learning Disabilities (LD) as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility. We chose this area because it is congruent to our skills and capabilities in learning design and development. The three areas of LD that we are focusing on are Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Dysgraphia. In this respect, we support the Learning Disability Clinic in Sion Hospital through financial grants, development of learning materials for both students and special needs educators, and administrative support. Moreover, we have also authored a book, Brain Teasers, comprising fun activities for children with LD. This book has been published by Tata McGraw-Hill. 

The latest initiative that we have taken up is the TATA Interactive Learning Disability Forum (TLDF). The TLDF is an international symposium on LD. The event offers a platform for leading educators and LD experts from across the world to network and share innovations and ideas to help address critical LD issues. 

This event is the first of its kind in India and one of our key objectives is to increase awareness and promote remedial activities, best practices, and knowledge sharing of LD in India —we believe this is a gap that needs filling. We plan to hold this event annually from now on. Please click here for detailed information about this event.

Brain Teasers - Helping Children Rediscover The Joy Of Learning

TIS recently provided Dr. Madhuri Kulkarni of  Sion Hospital with 800 copies of a specially created book titled, "Brain Teasers". As part of the team that worked on this book, it was a very satisfying moment indeed.

We created this book ("Brain Teasers"), with inputs from Sion Hospital, to meet the special educational needs of children with learning disabilities. It provides practice in reading, writing and mathematics, and is intended to help children with learning disabilities rediscover the joy of learning. It also helps parents understand learning disabilities and find ways to address them.

The book is aimed at students in the age group of 11 years to 13 years and covers all the learning disabilities; Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia.

The book is a collection of interesting activities intended to engage children with learning disabilities. The activities have been designed keeping in mind the special educational needs of such children. They provide practice in reading, writing and mathematics. The book is divided into two parts: Information on learning disability for parents and activities for children.

Our main objective while designing the book was to keep the activities simple and colourful so as to help children rediscover the joy of learning. 

• We have purposefully incorporate examples from day-to-day activities to aid better recall.
• We have used simplified illustrations, to help children identify the images.
• We have used bright colours to provide a fresh look to the entire book.
• The activities have been graded with three levels of difficulty.
• The page numbers have been colour coded to depict the levels of difficulty. 

Please click here and here for a look inside this book.

(Manisha Mohan is Head - Innovation & Design with Tata Interactive Systems)

The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics

It’s the last place one would associate with any sort of creative endeavor—a Nazi concentration camp. And yet, it was in one of those living hells that Prof. Jakow Trachtenberg, a Russian engineer and mathematical genius, came up with his famous—in mathematical circles—system for high-speed mathematical calculations.

Condemned to death, the Professor barely escaped with his life, only to be arrested again. Amidst the misery that surrounded him, he found solace in numbers, playing with them, finding patterns, perfecting his system in his mind before he wrote them down—even scraps of paper were a rare luxury.

The system deals with a range of mathematical problems—division, multiplication, and squares—that students generally find, well, problematic. (You can view a simple example here .) It is similar to its Eastern counterpart, the Vedic Mathematics system in some of its approaches, and its application in aiding students with Learning Disabilities. 

Prof. Trachtenberg, having given the Gestapo the slip, went on to found the Mathematical Institute in Zurich after the war. Today, it is better known among the Swiss as the “School of Genius".  The Trachtenberg system is extensively used in that country in banks, commercial institutions, and tax departments. It can add great value to any course on numerical calculations—after all, the Swiss bankers would know.

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

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)

The Mumbai Marathon 2006: TIS Runs For Learning Disability

(above:Tadashi Horiuchi, TIS's Head - Japan Operations with his wife at the Mumbai Marathon 2006)

TIS's Tadashi Horiuchi in action at the Mumbai Marathon 2006.

To have a look at some more images, please navigate to the photo albums section at the bottom of the left hand sidebar.

Helping Overcome Learning Disabilities

What do Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, and Alexander Graham Bell have in common?

Learning disability.

Learning disability is a life-long disorder that affects the manner in which individuals with average or above average intelligence select, retain, and express information. It reflects a difficulty in encoding and decoding information as it travels between the senses and the brain. Learning disabilities are also termed as ‘learning differences,’ based on the fact that certain individuals learn differently—they aren’t unable to learn, but respond best to ways of learning that are different from traditional teaching methods.

Although several products are available for the identification and remediation of learning disabilities, most of these are either unable to sustain the progress of a disabled child or not aligned to government standards. To overcome this limitation, we develop end-to end solutions that screen and identify children with learning disabilities, and offer remedial action as well as a tracking system to monitor their progress. For a detailed overview of TIS’s involvement and solutions please click here .

TIS’ products have not only been endorsed by names like Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) – US, Granada Learning, Nelson Thornes, and Steck Vaughn, but have also won international recognition by the way of prestigious awards including Best Product Award at British Educational Training and Technology (BETT) Show 2004, in the Special Needs category, for nferNELSON’s Dyscalculia Screener.

In India, TIS mentors the Learning Disability Center at Sion Hospital—the only center in the State of Maharashtra, approved by the State Government to certify students with learning disabilities. Beyond the salaries and the stationery, we help the clinic with a hands-on approach—whether it’s by streamlining the day-to-day functioning or finding solutions to the scores of issues that crop up from time to time. We also share our reservoir of educational software, including the award-winning Jojo in Numberland, to help the children discover the joys of learning.

Run for Learning Disability: On January 15, we are participating in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2006. Leading the way is our Head of Japan Operations, Mr Tadashi Horiuchi (image on right) , who will run the Full Marathon. Tadashi is flying in to Mumbai from Tokyo especially for the event. He is one of more than 50 TISians who will take part in the marathon, in three categories – Full Marathon (42 km), Half Marathon (21 km) and the Dream Run (7 km), with our CEO, Mr Sanjaya Sharma himself being part of the TIS Dream Run team. We hope that our participation will reflect our commitment towards helping those with Learning Disabilities.