EduTek n Social Media Advisor

NCHER Bill

I had already mentioned about Higher Education and Research Bill in my blog post titled ‘NCHER Bill’. The bill has been introduced in Rajya Sabha. The important details of the bill can be learnt by reading the article in Hindu titled ‘A mission to boost innovation, promote accountability in education’

The full text of the bill can be learnt by clicking here.

As I had already mentioned, it really is a bold step in improving quality, research, innovation in Higher Education.

As I talk about improving quality in Education, I recently read another interesting article in Hindu titled ‘A ‘5Es' strategy for education in Tamil Nadu’ where not merely models but strategies also suggested to improve the 5 Es in Higher Education namely expansion, equity, excellence, employability and e-governance.

Those interested can access the entire article by clicking here.

                                               

 

 

Quixey: A Functional Search Engine

We are all familiar with standard search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. They would let you find information in the form of text, image, video et al.

But recently I came across Quixey, (still in beta stage) a functional search engine quite different from others. We use applications in our everyday life.  We use them in browser, phone, software and in social networks. Quixey helps you find applications to do what you want on an ever-growing number of platforms.

Log into Quixey and just explore the search engine. If you’ve not already registered, just request for an invite code and explore it.

The following screenshot shows the applications that are suggested to me for ‘Mind Map’

Not only am I shown various applications for Mind Map but for various devices too!

You just type the right keyword for the application you require, Quixey just presents the results along with price details if any.

Quixey is really is a boon to professionals who use applications to present their ideas /concepts. 

 

Social Media Influencers to Promote Ur Business

In my earlier blogs related to social media I had discussed about promoting through TFLB (Twitter, FB, Linkedin and Blog) and complementing it by implementing SEO. This time I thought I shall introduce Social Media Influencers and how one can use them to create greater awareness about your product or service.

Who are Social Media Influencers?

Social Media Influencers are the people with mass following, have the capacity to influence their followers or fans or subscribers as the case may be in Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Hence anyone doing business in B2C sector can utilize these influencers to promote their product / service.

How can you identity the Social Media Influencers?

There are certain tools that help you identify the social media influencers. The persons identified as social media influencers should retain their position at least for some time as otherwise the success of the whole process of engaging them to promote the business would not be realized.

Some of the tools used for identifying social media influencers are:

• Infegy Socialradar
• radian⁶
• Synthesio 

Infegy Socialradar: Social Radar collects information from a vast range of sources so as to accurately identify the social media influencer across various channels of the web. It enables you to identify the influencers among various topics important to your business.

radian⁶: It lets you ‘Uncover the influencers in your industry based on weighted metrics you customize, and learn where else they’re active on the social web to strategize the best course of connection and engagement’.

Synthesio: It helps you to identify who is leading the conversations in your marketplace thus enabling you to identity the social media influencer.

The next step is simple. Identify the influencer using any of the above mentioned tools and ask him to promote your products/ services.

The following link suggests how Chevy used influencer strategy to write about their electric car (Chevy Volt)

Targeting Influencers: A Case Study with Chevy Volt  

The following video shows how technology influencers were invited by Chevy to test drive the electric car and experience the ‘wow’ feeing first hand.

Test driving of Chevy Volt by Technology Influencers  

 

 

 

 

 

VIP at womenstatus.in

 

I am featured as VIP of Today (24 Sept. 2010) at www.womenstatus.in

The screenshot can be viewed at http://bit.ly/bQ0DAo

Interactions from Linkedin connections for this achievement can be accessed by clicking here.

Blended Mode of Learning through Educational Technology

Today I was chief guest for the seminar organized by the Dept. of Computer Science and Computer Application of Annai Violet Arts & Science College I spoke on the topic ‘Blended Mode of Learning through Educational Technology'.

The invitation and program details can be accessed by clicking here.

The presentation I made can be accessed from the following link:

Blended Mode of Learning through Educational Technology

Download New Re Symbol for Free

You must be aware of the fact that India just joined elite group of nations that have unique symbol for its currency .

Just downloaded and installed new Re symbol `. You can also do the same by visiting http://blog.foradian.com and following the instructions given below:

1. Download Rupee Foradian.ttf (59 KB)

1. Install the font in ‘Fonts’ folder in ‘control panel’

2. Start using it by choosing this font and by pressing grave acent symbol - ` (the key just above "tab" button in your keyboard)

 

Voila! Its so simple.

 

   

 

NCHER Bill, 2010

The constitution of NCHER suggested by  NCHER  Bill is one of the important and essential things initiated recently by Union Government. In the era of interdisciplinary subjects gaining importance in various fields such as Bio-informatics, Bio-technology, e-Learning, BIO-Chemistry, Bio-physics etc it is high time we have all the subjects under one umbrella.

Here I would like to mention the hardship faced by me when I was approached by many college professors to guide them for doing Ph.D. in e-learning. As I had already blogged about this under the title ‘Research in Inter-Disciplinary Area (ELearning)’ an Educationist with eLearning background or IT professional with sufficient background in learning theories can act as Ph.D guide for eLearning.

But since education and engineering come under different bodies, the Universities were unable to let an Educationist with IT expertise guide the students as they could not realize, it is an inter-disciplinary area.

Most of the students / college professors who approached me still could not pursue Ph.D in Elearning as they have not come across the guide with expertise in that domain.

The concept of industry experts / consultants as visiting faculty to guide the students for M.Phil  and Ph.D. should happen for all disciplines and not for engineering and management subjects alone.

I could not honour the wishes of many college principals who wanted me to handle educational technology or any other  paper for M.Ed and M.Phil  as there is no legal provision to accept such jobs on visiting basis. This may be applicable to other subjects as well.

Special weightage must be given to Ph.Ds with industry / consultancy experience as they would be exposed to challenging assignments more frequently.

Bringing all the subjects under one body would to some extent help reduce the problems I‘ve mentioned.

Online Simulations & Games as Teaching Tools

simCEO

I came across this interesting online simulation tool ‘simCEO’ that lets students create their own companies in an environment defined by the professor. The tool is a brain child of Derek Luebbe, principal of American International School of Budapest ,as he wanted his students to create their own companies, buy and sell stocks in classmates’ companies and study the fluctuations of stock prices.

simCEO  can be accessed by clicking here

Luebbe invites interested teachers to set up a free SimCEO account (using the promotional code: edutopia), and see where their creativity takes them.

Evoke

Then I came across another interesting tool, Evoke that challenges players to solve global problems. The advantage of Evoke is that it can be accessed from mobile phone too.

Evoke is free to play and developed by the World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal.

Visit the social network game Evoke and explore the various possibilities.

Don’t forget to share your experiences after you’ve tried.

Services n Products of Advisor2U

View the ‘Services n Products of Advisor2u’ by clicking the video.

Ignite Chennai

This Friday, i.e. on 23^rd instant I spoke about ‘Social Media 4 Learning / CRM / Marketing’ to ignite Chennai. The program was organized well by team members of Ignite Chennai belonging to ThoughtWorks.

The program commenced with interesting group events for few minutes followed by speeches of various presenters.

The following hyperlink ‘Ignite Chennai’ shows some of the shots taken during the program.

After about 2/3^rd of presentations there was a small break for refreshments.

All the topics were quite interesting varying from “How NOT to run a NGO” to “Entrepreneurship & Love” to “Be an insane presenter” to “Evolving music” to “Ignite the spark within you” to “PM lessons for real life” to “Enjoy the simple moments” to “Marketer’s dream”,  and so on

The program continued after 10 min break and was concluded where all the speakers were presented with token of gift with ‘Ignite Chennai’ imprinted on it.