MSIT Buzz

Happy republic day

2012-01-26T11:02:00.000+05:30

Whats happening today

2012-01-23T21:05:00.002+05:30

First years are in Web Programming Course. Second years all gone for internships.

JNTU first years are in week 2 SSD. Second years in JNTU just entered practicum.

Gearning up for 2012 Admissions

2012-01-17T21:07:00.000+05:30

MSIT 2012 poster

2012-01-03T14:53:00.001+05:30

Whats happening today

2012-01-03T14:48:00.001+05:30

Second year students completed their specializations course work. Most of them are going to internship.

First year students are going through SSD course (2 more weeks to go).

Whats happening today

2011-12-09T10:56:00.002+05:30

First years are in Data bases course. Second year students are in third mini semester finishing up specialization courses, one month to go for practicum.

Gearing up for new academic year admissions and campaigning.

Dussera Vacation

2011-09-24T07:58:00.003+05:30

Dussera vacation as per calender is between 2nd Oct 2011 and 8th Oct 2011.

Due to agitations in JNTU University: MSIT at JNTU is following dussera vacation as layed out by state government, i.e till 28th Sep 2011. Possibly 1-2 days holidays during navami and dasami.

Whats happening today

2011-09-14T10:35:00.002+05:30

Second year students are in the second mini semester currently taking Specialization courses (3rd week).
First year students completed Object oriented programming using C++, they are right now in Object oriented programming using Java.

Whats happening today

2011-08-26T00:33:00.001+05:30

For Second years: Software Engineering Foundations course ends.

First years: Completed preparatory course and just joined Object oriented programming course, using C++.

Specializations are about to start next week.

Whats happening today

2011-08-02T10:06:00.002+05:30

Preparatory course is going on for first years, currently in Week 6.

Software Engineering Foundations course is on for second years, currently in Week 4.

After a week or two, most likely we will know status of specializations and number of students joining after preparatory course.

MSIT Counseling on 16th, 17th and 18th June 2011.

2011-06-16T10:57:00.002+05:30

MSIT Counseling 2011:

Eduquity Career Technologies PVT LTD,
403, 4th Floor, Myhome Sarovar Plaza,
Behind British Library, adjacent to medicity,
Secretariat road, Hyderabad-63
Ph:040-23243010

Students must be selected for MSIT admissions procedure. MSIT 2011 ranks are available in this URL.

Candidates must bring original certificates, DD for preparatory program.

Whats happening today

2011-06-08T10:07:00.002+05:30

Academic year is coming to an end with this week. All second year project demos are scheduled this week. First year practicum ends this Saturday. Demos at JNTU (Friday) and IIIT (Saturday) this week

Thank you all

2011-05-19T09:34:00.003+05:30

Thank you making the decennial event a huge success:

Dignitaries:

Prof.Raj Reddy, Chairman, CIHL
Prof.C.Subba Rao, Former APSCHE chairman,
Prof.D.N Reddy, Vice chancellor, JNTU and OU
Shri. Rajanna, regional head TCS
Prof.Govindarajulu, Registrar, IIIT-H
Mr.Gopi krishna IPS, Director, CIHL
Prof.Raj Kumar, Vice chancellor, RGUKT
Shri.Sandya Kode, Director, EnhanceEdu
Shri.Sriram K, board member, CNK
Prof.Sreenivasa Rao, DEAN , CIHL
'Esteemed JNTU & IIIT Faculty

Along with all MSIT faculty & Staff, Alumni and students of MSIT.

Decennial invitation - Thank you for making it success

2011-05-19T09:20:00.001+05:30

Invitation Final

Events on 17th May 2011

2011-05-17T09:47:00.003+05:30

Decennial Event Schedule

2011-05-17T09:44:00.000+05:30

Todays Spree events: Throwball , Table tennis and counter strike

2011-05-16T14:54:00.002+05:30

Venue: JNTU

Activities: Throw Ball Table tennis (S,D) Counter Strike

Boys Cricket Finals today

2011-05-14T11:03:00.003+05:30

Today at JNTU Kukatpally cricket ground, boys cricket finals. And possibly mentors cricket event in the afternoon.

Up coming events: Shuttle on 15th May 2010 at JNTU

Throw Ball, Table tennis (S,D), Counter Strike on 16th May 2010 at JNTU

Events that are completed:

Girls Cricket
Fifa 09
NFS - MW
Cricket
Tennicoit (S,D)
Chess
Volley Ball
Age Of Empires
Carroms (S,D)

MSIT Spree 2011 - On going events

2011-05-12T11:07:00.000+05:30

Today on 12th May 2011 - Chess and Volley ball for boys, girls at IIIT.

Tomorrow on 13th may 2011 - Age of Empires, and caroms for boys, girls at IIIT.

Events that are completed:

Girls Cricket
FIFA
NFS
Boys Cricket
Tennicoit

MSIT Spree 2011

2011-05-09T11:16:00.002+05:30

Annual student festival & events:

Girls Cricket
FIFA 09
NFS
Boys Cricket
Tennicoit
Chess
Volley ball
Age of Empires
Carroms
Shuttle
Throw ball
Table tennis
Counter Strike
AdZap
Floor Crossing
Face painting
Logo Design
Painting
Short movies
Anthakshari
Solo Singing
Group Singing
Solo Dances
Group Dances
Skits
Alumni Events - between 4PM to 5PM on 18th

MSIT Decennial year celebrations

2011-05-04T16:42:00.001+05:30

Whats happening today

2011-04-29T11:16:00.001+05:30

First year students are in practicum (2nd week). Second year students are in the middle of internship.

Whats happening today

2011-03-28T15:17:00.001+05:30

Advanced programming course for first years, and practicum for second years. MSIT fellowship students are just about to finish the specializations.

First years just completed computer networks foundations course.

Whats happening today

2011-01-31T11:52:00.002+05:30

First year are in Web programming course. Second years are in practicum. Most second years got internships and went to internship location.

Next course: Computer Network Foundations.

Whats happening today

2010-11-16T16:29:00.002+05:30

First years are finish up ARW and second years are in specialization (third mini semester). Placement season a head. Buzz about decennial celebrations is going on.

MSIT Voice August 2010

2010-08-26T10:07:00.001+05:30

MSIT Voice August 2010

Preparatory course 2010 over, 64 selected in JNTU, 60 selected in IIIT

2010-08-26T10:04:00.002+05:30

Preparatory course is finally over. 64/150 got selected in JNTU and 60/100 got selected in IIIT. Few are the selected students are going to leave (approximately 10 students might leave from both the centers).

Preparatory course 2010 started

2010-07-01T09:49:00.004+05:30

With 100 students in IIIT and 150 students in JNTU. 8 weeks program is between 26 th June and 23rd August.

This year we are going to announce likelyhood of announcing selected candidates by 6th Week.

MSIT Voice - May 2010

2010-05-12T14:43:00.001+05:30

MAY 2010 Voice

MSIT Voice April 2010

2010-05-11T11:41:00.000+05:30

April 2010 Voice

MSIT Voice, March 2010

2010-03-18T09:59:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (March 2010 Edition)

MSIT Voice feb 2010

2010-02-11T12:18:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (February 2010 Edition)

MSIT Voice January 2010

2010-01-18T12:21:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (January 2010 Edition)

MSIT Voice December 2009

2010-01-04T09:24:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (December 2009 Issue)

MSIT Voice November 2009

2009-11-05T12:15:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (November 2009 Issue)

MSIT Voice October 2009

2009-10-08T09:52:00.000+05:30

The MSIT Voice (October 2009 Issue)

An Argument Worth Having

2009-09-06T21:09:00.001+05:30

By GERALD GRAFF

Freshmen are often overwhelmed by the intellectual challenge of college — so many subjects to be covered, so many facts, methods and philosophical isms to sort out, so many big words to assimilate. As if that weren’t enough, what your different instructors tell you may be flatly contradictory.

Students understandably cope with this cognitive dissonance by giving each of their teachers in turn whatever he or she seems to want. Students learn to be free-market capitalists in one course and socialists in the next, universalists in the morning and relativists after lunch. This tactic has got many a student through college, but the trouble is that, even when each course is excellent in itself, jumping through a series of hoops doesn’t add up to a real socialization into the ways of intellectual culture.

What the most successful college students do, in my experience, is cut through the clutter of jargons, methods and ideological differences to locate the common practices of argument and analysis hidden behind it all. Contrary to the cliché that no “one size fits all” educational recipe is possible, successful academics of all fields and intellectual persuasions make some key moves that you can emulate:

1. Recognize that knowing a lot of stuff won’t do you much good unless you can do something with what you know by turning it into an argument.

2. Pay close attention to what others are saying and writing and then summarize their arguments and assumptions in a recognizable way. Work especially on summarizing the views that go most against your own.

3. As you summarize, look not only for the thesis of an argument, but for who or what provoked it — the points of controversy.

4. Use these summaries to motivate what you say and to indicate why it needs saying. Don’t be afraid to give your own opinion, especially if you can back it up with reasons and evidence, but don’t disagree with anything without carefully summarizing it first.

It’s too often a secret that only a minority of high achievers figure out, but the better you get at entering the conversation by summarizing it and putting in your own oar, the more you’ll get out of your college education.

Gerald Graff, the past president of the Modern Language Association and a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been teaching since 1963.

September Voice 2009

2009-09-06T07:22:00.001+05:30

MSIT Voice September 2009

MSIT Students, in daily news papers, after convocation

2009-08-17T15:50:00.002+05:30

August 2009 Voice

2009-08-08T11:52:00.000+05:30

Voice August 09

What language should children be taught in?

2009-07-13T10:32:00.000+05:30

Most middle-class urban homes in India are likely to have grandparents who cannot speak English, parents who speak it reasonably and a young generation for whom it is their primary language. This transition, in one or two generations, out of their mother tongue and into English is unaccompanied by a proper education. This means the young cannot speak English correctly and few can write it without error or without recourse to stock phrases and cliche. English education also means that young Indians are removed from tradition, because tradition does not translate well. Their culture tugs at them strongly however, and so they revert to Hindi for entertainment through Bollywood.

Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915 with strong views on this subject. At a reception in Karachi in March 1916, he said of those educated in English that “there is no continuity between school and home in India.”

In June that year Gandhi wrote, in a letter to a correspondent, details of how to reintroduce modern education in Indian languages: “Arithmetic will certainly include oral sums and Indian accountancy.” He was 46 then and on most matters his ideas were fully formed. He was clear that education in India should be in the mother tongue.

Concluding a speech in English at Benaras Hindu University in February 1916, he said if he had to examine those whom he had just lectured, most would fail. “And why? Because they have not been touched.” To be touched, to truly understand, he believed, we need to be communicated to in our own language. There was also the problem of efficiency: “We never master the English language; with some exceptions it has not been possible for us to do so; we can never express ourselves as clearly as we can in our own mother tongue.”

Gandhi had no problem with English also being taught at school; but not as the medium for schooling: “We do want the English language, but we do not want to destroy our own language.”

India’s greatest literary figure was the Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore, and his views were similar to Gandhi’s. Tagore felt that the setting up of English-language institutions in India was confused with making and staffing buildings. In February 1919, he said at a lecture: “The mischief is that as soon as the idea of a university enters our mind, the idea of a Cambridge University or Oxford University... rushes in at the same time and fills the whole space. We forget that the European universities are living organic parts of the life of Europe, where each found its natural birth.” This organic growth of centuries could not be reproduced by raising buildings.

Tagore wrote each culture had something unique to contribute to the world, and that India would contribute nothing if it educated its young in English, because what that language held within was European. In 1921 Tagore set up Viswa Bharati University at Santi Niketan (Abode of Peace) “to approach the west from the standpoint of such a unity of the life and thought of Asia.”

His university aims to be a “centre of culture where research into and study of the religion, literature, history, science and art of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Islamic, Sikh, Christian and other civilisations may be pursued along with the culture of the west, with that simplicity in externals which is necessary for true spiritual realisation, in amity, good fellowship and co-operation between the thinkers and scholars of both eastern and western countries.” The Nobel Prize-winning economist and former Master of Trinity College, Amartya Sen, who was named by Tagore, attended Viswa Bharati University.

C Rajagopalachari, who took over as governor-general from Mountbatten, was an intellectual of the highest calibre. He thought English caused damage at school: “The language becomes almost the main aim of all effort and the instruction in science and other subjects will suffer in efficiency.” His solution for keeping up with science was that its terminology could remain in European languages, without translating the terms.

M S Golwalkar, the second leader of the RSS and its most influential ideologue, said English should be sacrificed in schools and three languages ought to be taught: mother tongue, Hindi and Sanskrit. He acknowledged, however, that Sanskrit had died in India for a reason: that it was too complex to be a mass language. Asked if English wasn’t the language of international commerce and diplomacy, he said: “Not quite. English is the predominant language of only one power bloc. Why should every schoolboy — who will have nothing to do either with high finance or high diplomacy — learn it?”

In February 1964, he pointed out in an interview that English was the medium in all universities, but standards were yet poor. This remains true in 2009.

If there was this consensus against English, how was it able to prevail in India? Because of Nehru, who led the country for 17 years after independence. All the higher education institutions he built, and he has no peer in developing nations in this regard and few in Europe, assumed students who were grounded in English: the institutes of management, of technology, and of design. Having attended Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, Nehru benefited from a classical European education. His best biographer, Walter Crocker, wrote that he was fluent in Hindustani, of course, but if he had a third language, it was French.

All three of Nehru’s books, Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India, were written in English. Nehru told a meeting of the Sanskrit Commission in 1957: “If the medium of instruction was Sanskrit, or even if it was any other Indian language, nobody could make any progress in the technological and scientific field without having a good knowledge of some of the foreign languages.”

But he puzzled over the fact that his countrymen received an English education in India’s towns and cities but were not quite modern in their outlook.

He said at All India Radio’s literary forum the same year that despite India’s progress in science “strangely enough, the thinking of the people lags behind.” Science “has not changed the thinking of the common man. So there is a danger that while we grasp the ideas of modernity superficially, we do not imbibe them fully and we will fall between two stools.”

Read more here: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=187656

Taken from other mailing lists.

'Are we educational institutions or placement agencies?'

2009-06-10T09:47:00.001+05:30

'Are we educational institutions or placement agencies?'
Ajit Rangnekar, the Indian School of Business's new dean, is angry.

http://getahead.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jun/03/slide-show-1-isb-dean-are-
we-educational-institutions-or-placement-agencies.htm

"What is the purpose of educational institutions? Are we placement
agencies or are we educational institutions?" he asks angrily when asked
how the ISB, Hyderabad, will place its students given the grim global
economic conditions.

He believes an institution should not be judged on the basis of
placements it provides its students, but by its ability to do social
good even as it adds economic value to society.

He strongly feels the process of education has been killed in the mad
race to find a lucrative job no sooner students graduate from university.

In an interview with Prasanna D Zore, the ISB dean discusses the Indian
education system, the difficulties graduates face in the economic
slowdown and why Indian business must be bold, but different.

What are your challenges given the way your predecessor resigned?

As a human being I feel sorry that Professor Rao (M B M Rao who resigned
as the dean after the Satyam fallout; he was an independent director on
Satyam's board) had to step down. I had and continue to have enormous
respect for him.

But as a school it has had no impact on the ISB. We are continuing to
grow exactly as planned three months ago or six months ago. Our plans,
intentions and achievements are still the same. So we will go with the
Mohali campus, expansion of students and creating new centres of excellence.

How soon will the Mohali campus come up?

We are aiming for 2011, but it could be in 2012.

The ISB has increased its class to 560 students this year. How will you
overcome the challenge of giving placements to so many students given
the current economic scenario?

This is one thing we really need to start moving away from. Educational
institutions and society at large need to have a very strong debate on this.

What is the purpose of educational institutions? Are we placement
agencies or are we educational institutions?

I very strongly and passionately believe that we should not be
considered as placement agencies. Unfortunately, the only thing the
media reports about educational institutions are the salaries that our
students get. So you (the media) are using a very wrong parameter to
judge an institution.

You people emphasise the salary that one student gets from whatever
company. Is that the criteria?

Instead, the focus should be on the contribution of that educational
institution to knowledge, what is the contribution of the alumni of that
educational institution not to industry but to society at large.

Unless we don't move into those spheres we are going to get into these
wrong choices.

The job of the educational institutions is to create high quality people
who will contribute enormously to society. And that is what even we (the
educational institutions) have to start focusing on.

MSIT Voice June 2009

2009-06-04T12:37:00.001+05:30

Voive June 09

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MSIT family is welcome to the spree 2009

2009-05-16T12:46:00.002+05:30

MSIT Spree invitation

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MSIT Annual event invitation for alumni

2009-05-15T15:16:00.002+05:30

Alumni Invitation for MSIT Spree Alumni Invitation for MSIT Spree manjunathbhatt Invitation made out for MSIT spree

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MSIT Poster and Leafhead 2009

2009-05-14T15:39:00.002+05:30

MSIT Poster:
MSIT Poster

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MSIT Folder:
Msit pomp letter

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Application Form, print and fill it for offline applications:
MSIT admissions form

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MSIT Electronic broucher

2009-05-14T15:31:00.001+05:30

MSIT electronic broucher

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape

Surviving the IT Job Market: How Soft Skills Give You an Edge

2009-05-06T14:34:00.001+05:30

http://www.cio.com/article/print/490192

Surviving the IT Job Market: How Soft Skills Give You an Edge

– Dave Willmer, Computerworld

April 21, 2009
Competition for IT jobs has intensified, so companies that are hiring expect to find candidates who can exceed the technical requirements of a position. While soft skills have long been touted by IT employers, today's harsh economic realities have made those abilities more valuable than ever. IT professionals who know which soft skills are currently the most important and why—nd who are willing to work to improve those abilities—can find that they have a distinct advantage over similarly qualified peers.

Skills such as public speaking, negotiation and persuasion are among the most valuable in the current economic environment. What do these skills have in common? They're all based on the ability to communicate effectively. As budget restrictions create tension for managers and staffers alike, workplace relationships can easily become strained, leading to morale and productivity problems. Effective communication can help prevent or alleviate these situations.

Under such conditions, difficult projects are likely to fail without buy-in from all team members. That's why IT professionals who are skilled at building consensus have become especially valuable. Those who have both listening skills and the ability to help others see the big picture can help keep a department or project team focused on a common goal.

In addition, now that companies are more likely to scrutinize every expense, the ability to justify support for a project has also become more important. Professionals who can clearly communicate the value of a certain project to executives and other stakeholders are better positioned to thrive.
Beyond the Job Description

Don't overlook leadership as a key soft skill just because you aren't occupying or seeking a management-level position. Stepping up to assume extra responsibility—such as taking the lead on a challenging project—is another ability that current economic conditions have made valuable. Hiring managers no longer have the luxury of bringing on board employees who can't go above and beyond their usual duties as needed.

So, how do you go about improving your soft skills? One option is to look for classes that can help you develop these abilities. For example, if you hope to improve your public speaking skills, consider Toastmasters or a similar organization designed to help people overcome discomfort in presenting their ideas to groups. A writing course from a local college or online university can improve your writing skills. Keeping in touch with members of your network and attending industry events can also keep your interpersonal skills sharp.

One of the most powerful ways to develop your soft skills is to teach. In almost any form, teaching puts your diplomacy, persuasion and communication skills to the test. Look to local continuing education programs, community colleges and mentor organizations for opportunities to share your knowledge of the IT profession—and build your interpersonal abilities at the same time.
Show, Don't Just Tell

While your résumé and cover letter should reflect your efforts to grow beyond your technical proficiency, keep in mind that an interviewer's first impressions of your soft skills might carry the most weight. Try practicing your interviewing skills with a friend or trusted colleague whose interpersonal skills you admire, asking for constructive criticism. He or she may point out mannerisms or habits (such as interrupting the speaker) that you might not be aware of.

If all these suggestions are outside your comfort zone, don't be discouraged. After all, if soft skills could be comfortably acquired by all IT professionals, they wouldn't be at such a premium. Ultimately, all soft skills are partly a matter of attitude. By demonstrating your willingness to improve in areas that aren't your greatest strengths, you take a step toward becoming the kind of well-rounded IT professional today's companies need.

Dave Willmer is executive director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. Robert Half Technology has more than 100 locations worldwide and offers online job search services at www.rht.com.

MSIT writeup in Eenadu: Chaduvu

2009-05-05T16:53:00.001+05:30

MSIT_chaduvu MSIT_chaduvu manjunathbhatt Eenadu write up about MSIT

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MSIT Voice May

2009-05-05T14:23:00.000+05:30

Voice May 09 Voice May 09 manjunathbhatt May News Letter

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape video peace

MSIT beckons students

2009-05-05T14:11:00.001+05:30

The word IT no more fascinates students, rather it is being dreaded. But IT just cannot be done away with, though one has to live to the ups and downs of the industry and its demands. So those with the best IT skills will always be in demand rather than those who just possess an IT degree.

The Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) offered by the Consortium of Institutions of Higher Learning (CHIL) formed by the AP Universities in collaboration with the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA is one programme that promises to send out IT professionals who can deal with any situation than just giving an IT degree.

It has been designed to provide industry specialists who have hands-on experience, understand business needs, work patterns and deadline pressures of the corporate environment.

“The key differentiating factor is its unique pedagogy ‘learning by doing’. Evolved through eight years of relentless pursuit of excellence the programme has an extensive support of CMU in terms of course content and faculty training,” says M. Sreenivas Rao, Dean, MSIT.

A few other domain specialisations like bio-informatics are in the pipeline. MSIT Spree has been an initiative to network and celebrate togetherness of belonging to MIST fraternity while MSIT Journeys, a speaker series, has successfully got students in touch with professionals from industry giving them the required inputs and exposure.

The programme also provides teaching assistantships to the second year students.

Despite slow down 80 per cent students are placed this year while all were absorbed in the earlier batches.

The course is offered at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) (100 seats) and JNTU Hyderabad (150 seats) and is open to B.Tech or B.E graduates or those with a P.G. degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or Statistics.

Last date

Admission is based on entrance test to be conducted online from May 24. The last date for submitting application forms is May 18 and one can apply online also at ‘ www.msitprogram.net.’

Candidates can directly walk-in to the testing centre at the Eduquity Career Technologies Pvt Ltd at My Home Sarovar Plaza, Secretariat Road in Hyderabad from Thursday to Sunday before May 23. Entrance test is waived off for candidates with GRE scores above 1100/3.5 and it should have been taken after July 2006.Details can be had on www.msitprogram.net.

Article in Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/edu/2009/05/04/stories/2009050450480400.htm

It is offered by CHIL in collaboration with CMU, writes R. RAVIKANTH REDDY

GSC Cyber Security Challenge 2009 - Now accepting applications

2009-04-17T19:31:00.001+05:30

Cyber security has become the new frontier in the security and defence world.

Therefore, we seek the world's most creative innovators and start-ups to help responding to these mounting challenges in cyber security. We recognize that many disruptive innovations are not ready for mass commercialization and we encourage researchers and infant companies to apply for this year'sCyber Security Challenge. The judging for this award will focus mainly on the disruptive potential of the technology, focusing less on the idea's maturity.

BAE Systems are sponsoring the Cyber Security Challenge through their Investment in Innovation team:

"Cyber Security is a key area for us to further invest in both because of the wide range of issues currently faced and the breadth of work being done in the space. We seek to uncover the creative capabilities of innovators in universities and SMEs that apply to information assurance and cyber security needs."

Targeted Technologies: Examples of our areas of interest include data protection, user authentication, penetration testing, network protection, spam-prevention, anti-malware, identification of data theft, detection of dormant threats on corporate servers, tackling of identity theft on the internet and defences for virtualised computing resources.

The winners of this year's Cyber Security Challenge will receive:

£5,000 GBP cash award for the 1st place winner, sponsored by BAE Systems
£4,000 GBP cash award to be split among the two runner-ups, sponsored by BAE Systems
Mentorship by Nick Kingsbury (Venture Capitalist, former partner at 3i)

Who can Apply: Individuals & Companies

Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2009

How to Apply: Enter by using our online submission system

The Global Security Challenge LLP (GSC) is a central hub for security innovators, start-ups and investors.  It is a valuable launching pad for security innovation and each year over $500,000 USD is awarded in its world leading competitions to start-ups, entrepreneurs and researchers within the security technology field.  The top contenders from previous competitions have subsequently raised over $52 million in new capital.

More: http://www.globalsecuritychallenge.com

Solutions for Rural Communities and The Geo Tourism Challenge

2009-04-16T23:27:00.001+05:30

Here are announcements of two opportunities to enter global online competitions and to be showcased to a network of like-minded community members, funders, CSOs, thought leaders, universities, governments, and enthusiasts!

Ashoka is a global non-profit network and support system for social entrepreneurs—people who devise innovative solutions to the social problems that plague society. To further this goal, Ashoka's Changemakers (www.changemakers.net) provides an online, interactive forum that encourages collaboration and discussion, along with theme-based competitions, to draw out the most effective ideas.

ENTER ONLINE GLOBAL COMPETITION: "The Geotourism Challenge: Power of Place."
Entry Deadline: May 20, 2009.
Prizes: Three top winners get $5,000 each.

Competition focus: In partnership with National Geographic Society, Ashoka's Changemakers is looking for examples of sustainable management of tourism, or geotourism, as it is widely known. NatGeo defines geotourism as ''tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place--its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.'' We're looking at people and organizations -- including the government, and corporations -- that are are initiating responsible innovations that use tourism to help sustain, enhance, or preserve local culture, build heritage, and natural habitats. For more details on the competition, please visit: http://www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge

ENTER ONLINE GLOBAL COMPETITION, "Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities"
Entry Deadline: May 13, 2009.

Prizes: a) Three top winners get $5,000 each; b) Early Bird Prize: If you enter by April 13, 2009, you could win a cell phone and digital camera (equal value of USD $1000); c) Nominator Prize: If you nominate people/organizations who could enter the competition, you stand to win a special prize!

Competition focus: In partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ashoka's Changemakers is looking for innovative solutions that span the entire agricultural value chain – from seeds to sales. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people—the 1 billion who live on $1 a day or less—rely on agriculture to feed themselves and their families, yet many cannot grow enough to sell or even eat. If you've come up with strategies, tools and opportunites for small farmers to boost their productivity, increase their incomes, and build better lives for themselves and their families, enter now! For more details on the competition, please visit http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/agriculture

For more information or media queries, please contact Ms. Kalpana Kaul, Asia Director & Managing Editor, Ashoka's Changemakers. Tel. No. 033-2417-2587; 6535-8647 (Kolkata, India). Email:changemakers@vsnl.com; kkaul@ashoka.org

MSIT Voice consolidated

2009-04-06T21:24:00.006+05:30

MSIT Voice September 2009

Voice August 09

Voive June 09

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Voice May 09 Voice May 09 manjunathbhatt May News Letter

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape video peace

MSIT Voice April, 2009

MSIT Voice March, 2009

MSIT Voice February, 2009

MSIT Voice January, 2009

MSIT Voice December, 2008

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

2009-03-22T18:47:00.001+05:30

Martin A. Schwartz Department of Microbiology, UVA Health System, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA

e-mail: maschwartz@virginia.edu

Accepted 9 April 2008 Journal of Cell Science 121, 1771 Published by The Company of Biologists 2008 5B I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else. I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain. For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can't be the only reason - fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart. A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did. That's when it hit

me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.

Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid - that is, if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying. I'm not talking about 'relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don't. I'm also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don't match their talents. Science involves confronting our 'absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, 'I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project. Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right.

No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

Instinctive Computing

2009-02-03T00:28:00.004+05:30

Instinctive computing is a computational simulation of biological and cognitive instincts. It is a meta-program of life, just like universal gravity in nature. It profoundly influences how we look, feel, think, and act. If we want a computer to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have primitive instincts. The original paper proposes a ‘bottom-up’ approach that is focused on human basic instincts: forage, vigilance, reproduction, intuition and learning. They are the machine codes in human operating systems, where high-level programs, such as social functions can override the low-level instinct. However, instinctive computing has been always a default operation. Instinctive computing is the foundation of Ambient Intelligence as well as Empathic Computing. It is an essential part of Human Computing.

What is the fundamental difference between a machine and a living creature? Instinct!

Instincts are the internal impulses, such as hunger and sexual urges, which lead humans to

fulfill these needs. Freud stated that these biologically based energies are the fundamental driving forces of our life. They act everyday to protect us from danger and keep us fit and healthy. However, we are often barely aware of them.

Perhaps the most striking things for us are hidden in our cells. Recent biological studies

suggest that mammalian cells indeed possess more intelligence than we can imagine.

For example, the cell movement is not random. It is capable of immensely complex

migration patterns that are responses to unforeseeable encounters. Cells can 'see', for

example, they can map the directions of near-infrared light sources in their environment

and direct their movements toward them. No such 'vision' is possible without a very

sophisticated signal processing system.

Instinctive computing is a computational simulation of biological and cognitive

instincts. It actually started fifty years ago. Norbert Weiner studied computational

models of Gestalt, self-reproduction and learning. According to him, these functions are a

part of the holistic communication between humans, animals and machine, which he

called it ‘Cybernetics’. In parallel, John von Neumann proposed the cellular automata

model to simulate self-reproduction . The model constitutes finite state cells interactingwith one another in a neighborhood within a two-dimensional space.

The conceptual machine is far ahead of its time. Due to the limitations in hardware, people had forgottenthe idea for several decades until the 1970’s: Conway rediscovered it in his article “Game of Life” . In the model, an organism has its instinctual states, birth, movement, eating and death. Interesting patterns emerge from cell interactions such as blooming, oscillation or extinction. Wolfram further proves that many simple cellular interactions can produce very complex patterns, including chaos. He argues that interactive algorithms are more important than the mathematical equations . The spatial and temporal interaction among entities is the key to understanding their complexity.

Today, computational cellular automata have become a powerful tool to reveal the natural human algorithms, from microscopic cellular morphology to mass panic movement in subway stations. Instinct is a meta-program of life, just like universal gravity in nature. It profoundly influences how we look, feel, think, and act. If we want a computer to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to

recognize, understand, even to have primitive instincts. In this paper, we will review the

recent work in this area, the architecture of an instinctive operating system, and potential

applications.

Fullpaper by Dr.Yang Cai here: http://www.cmu.edu/vis/media/pdf/Cai-Instinctive-Computing-Feb-26-V6.pdf

MD5 considered harmful today, Creating a rogue CA certificate

2009-01-10T22:48:00.003+05:30

main article here

We have identified a vulnerability in the Internet Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used to issue digital certificates for secure websites. As a proof of concept we executed a practical attack scenario and successfully created a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate trusted by all common web browsers. This certificate allows us to impersonate any website on the Internet, including banking and e-commerce sites secured using the HTTPS protocol.

Our attack takes advantage of a weakness in the MD5 cryptographic hash function that allows the construction of different messages with the same MD5 hash. This is known as an MD5 "collision". Previous work on MD5 collisions between 2004 and 2007 showed that the use of this hash function in digital signatures can lead to theoretical attack scenarios. Our current work proves that at least one attack scenario can be exploited in practice, thus exposing the security infrastructure of the web to realistic threats.

As a result of this successfull attack, we are currently in possession of a rogue Certification Authority certificate. This certificate will be accepted as valid and trusted by all common browsers, because it appears to be signed by one of the root CAs that browsers trust by default. In turn, any website certificate signed by our rogue CA will be trusted as well. If an unsuspecting user is a victim of a man-in-the-middle attack using such a certificate,they will be assured that the connection is secure through all common security indicators:a "https://" url in the address bar, a closed padlock and messages such as "This certificate is OK" if they chose to inspect the certificate.

This successful proof of concept shows that the certificate validation performed by browsers can be subverted and malicious attackers might be able to monitor or tamper with data sent to secure websites. Banking and e-commerce sites are particularly at risk because of the high value of the information secured with HTTPS on those sites. With a rogue CA certificate, attackers would be able to execute practically undetectable phishing attacks against such sites.

The infrastructure of Certification Authorities is meant to prevent exactly this type of attack. Our work shows that known weaknesses in the MD5 hash function can be exploited in realistic attack, due to the fact that even after years of warnings about the lack of security of MD5, some root CAs are still using this broken hash function.

The vulnerability we expose is not in the SSL protocol or the web servers and browsers that implement it, but in the Public Key Infrastructure. This infrastructure has applications in other areas than the web, but we have not investigated all other possible attack scenarios. So other attack scenarios beyond the web are conceivable, such as in the areas of code signing, e-mail security, and in other areas that use certificates for enabling digital signatures or public key encryption.

The rest of this document will explain our work and its implications in a fair amount of detail. In the interest of protecting the Internet against malicious attacks using our technique, we have omitted the critical details of our sophisticated and highly optimized method for computing MD5 collisions. A scientific paper about our method is in preparation and will be released after a few months, so that the affected Certification Authorities have had some time to remedy this vulnerability.

Read full article here if interested

Google Code Jam

2008-07-12T06:08:00.001+05:30

Google Code Jam (any body interested?)

http://code.google.com/codejam/

About Code Jam.

Do you enjoy solving tough problems and grappling with technical challenges? Then enter Google Code Jam!

Google Code Jam is a coding competition in which professional and student programmers are asked to solve complex algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. The contest is all-inclusive: Google Code Jam lets you program in the coding language and development environment of your choice.

Google Code Jam begins in July and continues in August, when you will compete in online rounds against contestants from around the world. The Top 500 participants will advance to onsite competitions at a local Google office to compete against those in their region (Asia Pacific; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and the Americas). The Top 100 will participate in the final round at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on Friday, November 14.

Don't be left out! Make sure to register between June 17 and July 17, and show your coding creativity in Google Code Jam.

Google Code Jam

2008-06-19T13:27:00.001+05:30

Do you find yourself debugging in your sleep? Enjoy solving tough problems and grappling with technical challenges? Then enter Google Code Jam and compete for more than $80,000 in cash prizes!

Google Code Jam is an annual competition in which programmers like you are challenged to solve complex coding problems in a limited amount of time – using any programming language or tools you like.

We began offering Google Code Jam in 2003 – on a platform powered by TopCoder – in order to support competitive programming around the world. This year, for the first time, we're producing the contest on a homemade platform developed by Google's own developers.

Here's how it works: First, you'll need to register from Tuesday, June 17 through Thursday, July 17. Then, you'll compete against global contestants in the online rounds during July and August. The Top 500 will advance to compete in one of our Google offices around the world in September/October for regional competitions. Finally, the Top 100 will compete in the coding showdown on November 14, 2008, at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California.

To learn more details and to register, please visit - code.google.com/codejam

We hope to see you at the Finals!

Sincerely,

Google's Code Jam Team

Become a Microsoft student partner

2008-05-21T12:02:00.001+05:30

Here is the URL:
http://student-partners.com/Default.aspx

online lecture sites

2007-03-19T02:12:00.000+05:30

http://www.videolectures.net provides a wide range of video lectures on several different topics from eminent researchers from top universities.

http://lecturefox.com links open source lectures from several universities including MIT and UC Berkeley.

Local news by Yahoo!, MSN in native scripts

2007-03-17T10:20:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! and MSN have started the news contents in Indian languages, while Google is summarizing it for Hindi (all of them in UTF-8!!)

I cann't explain the joy of reading MSN Telugu, it is so good to read news in your native language specifically international and information technology news items which are rarely covered by local papers.

The other big advantage is this data can be used to build language models which turn to help to build better speech synthesis and speech recognition, machine translation systems for Indian languages.

The other big advantage I see is to the students of MSIT/IIIT/JNTU. As a part of their soft-skills they can have reading and comprehensive assignments in native languages. This would serve in two folds.
1. Preserve reading, comprehension abilities of the student in native languages
2. Better reading, writing and comprehension in native language could lead better to reading, writing and comprehension in English too.

MSN:

www.msn.co.in/hindi
www.msn.co.in/tamil
www.msn.co.in/telugu
www.msn.co.in/kannada
www.msn.co.in/malayalam

Google:

http://news.google.com/news?ned=hi_in

Yahoo!

http://in.telugu.yahoo.com/
http://in.hindi.yahoo.com/
http://in.gujarati.yahoo.com/
http://in.punjabi.yahoo.com/
http://in.kannada.yahoo.com/
http://in.malayalam.yahoo.com/
http://in.tamil.yahoo.com/

BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tamil/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bengali/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/

Will IITs remain centers for excellence

2007-03-12T10:38:00.001+05:30

Bhamy V Shenoy an alumnus of IIT Madras has an interesting view point conveying the effect of coaching centers on IITs being the center for excellence. Read more at http://in.news.yahoo.com/070311/43/6d55o.html

The problem of education: Prof. Raj Reddy

2007-03-12T03:15:00.000+05:30

Worksheet for report/proposal writing.

2007-03-09T04:48:00.000+05:30

Below is the worksheet suggested by Prof. Raj Reddy for many of his graduate students and researchers to formulate their ideas and work. This worksheet acts as excellent guidelines to write course/technical reports, papers, presentations, project proposals and thesis!

Introduction with Unique attributes

What are we trying to do?
What is the key make-a-difference capability we bring to the table?

Current Context

How is it being done today?, How are others approaching the problem?
What are the limitations of current/proposed approaches?

The Vision

What is new in the approach?

The Plan

What is the plan for realizing the goal?

Impact

If you succeed who will care? What is the impact?

Financials

How much will it cost and how long will it take?

Evaluation

What are the mid-term and final exams?

MSIT NET On Ning.com

2007-03-01T01:14:00.000+05:30

Please check http://msitnet.ning.com - a social network created to connect MSITians! This url has discussion forums, blog, upload photos, videos etc - almost anything you could have done on blogger, myspace, flickr, youtube but comes as a package!

Would be good to see photos on it from recent MSIT's Kerala trip!

http://www.ning.com (created by Netscape team) allows us to create any number of social networks.

We can use it to create *n* number of networks, one for each course (or for each batch) and thus connect learning centers of MSIT and/or Gurukulam centers. The discussion forums here would be most useful to post queries and seek answers from internal as well as from remote mentors/colleagues across the centers/countries.

PS: It is free with little hassles of infrastructure, setup and maintenance.

How users read on the web!

2007-02-27T03:25:00.000+05:30

Check: http://kishoresp.blogspot.com/2007/02/online-reader-donot-read-but-scan.html#links

Why Problem based Learning.

2007-02-23T09:46:00.000+05:30

Why Problem-Based Learning? Why Change the Way We Teach? What worked in the classroom a decade (or two or three) ago, however, will no longer suffice for the simple reason that past approaches fail to develop the full battery of skills and abilities desired in a contemporary college graduate.

In June of 1994, a Wingspread Conference brought together state and federal policymakers, and leaders from the corporate, philanthropic, higher education, and accreditation communities to discuss quality in undergraduate education. This conference was sponsored by the Education Commission of the States (ECS), the Johnson Foundation, the National Governors' Association, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. The discussion that took place was based on the assertion that substantial improvement in American undergraduate education is needed to prepare students to function successfully in current business and industrial environments.

The Conference developed the following list of important characteristics of quality performance of college and university graduates (Wingspread, 1994):

* High-level skills in communication, computation, technological literacy, and information retrieval to enable individuals to gain and apply new knowledge and skills as needed

* The ability to arrive at informed judgments-that is, to effectively define problems, gather and evaluate information related to those problems, and develop solutions

* The ability to function in a global community through the possession of a range of attitudes and dispositions including flexibility and adaptability, ease with diversity, motivation and persistence (for example, being a self-starter), ethical and civil behavior, creativity and resourcefulness, and the ability to work with others, especially in team settings

* Technical competence in a given field

* Demonstrated ability to deploy all of the previous characteristics to address specific problems in complex, real-world settings, in which the development of workable solutions is required

Survey results (Czujko, 1994) of all physics baccalaureates who were employed in either the private sector or government/national labs confirmed the Wingspread Conference conclusions. With approximately 80 percent response to the question, "What skills have you found to be the most useful in your work?", problem-solving, interpersonal skills, technical writing, and management skills were cited (greater than 60 percent) over physics knowledge.

More recently, the Carnegie Foundation's report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities (1998) stated that "traditional lectures and note-taking were created for a time when books were scarce and costly and lecturing to large numbers of students was an efficient means of transferring knowledge."

Lecturing is still efficient and has persisted as the traditional teaching method largely because it is familiar, easy, and how we learned. It does little, however, to foster the development of process skills to complement content knowledge.There are teaching practices, however, that do foster such skill development without forsaking content.

Quoting John Dewey's observation that "true learning is based on discovery guided by mentoring rather than the transmission of knowledge," (Boyer, 1998, p. 15) the Boyer report urged universities to facilitate inquiry in such contexts as the library, the laboratory, the computer, and the studio, with the expectation that senior learners, that is, professors, will be students' companions and guides.

The research university's ability to create such an integrated education will produce a particular kind of individual, one equipped with a spirit of inquiry and a zest for problem solving; one possessed of the skill in communication that is the hallmark of clear thinking as well as mastery of language; one informed by a rich and diverse experience.

It is that kind of individual that will provide the scientific, technological, academic, political, and creative leadership for the next century. (Boyer, 1998)Student-centered, inquiry-based instruction, particularly problem-based learning, falls right into line with this philosophy; indeed, the Boyer Commission pointed to the PBL efforts at the University of Delaware as one example of how to help students reach the important goals highlighted in the report.

What is Problem-based learning?We believe that problem-based learning (PBL) provides a forum in which these essential skills will be developed. The basic principle supporting the concept of PBL is older than formal education itself; namely, learning is initiated by a posed problem, query, or puzzle that the learner wants to solve (Boud & Feletti, 1991).

In the problem-based approach, complex, real-world problems are used to motivate students to identify and research the concepts and principles they need to know to work through those problems. Students work in small learning teams, bringing together collective skills at acquiring, communication, and integrating information.

Problem-based instruction addresses directly many of the recommended and desirable outcomes of an undergraduate education: specifically, the ability to do the following:
* Think critically and be able to analyze and solve complex, real-world problems
* Find, evaluate, and use appropriate learning resources
* Work cooperatively in teams and small groups
* Demonstrate versatile and effective communication skills, both verbal and written
* Use content knowledge and intellectual skills acquired at the university to become continual learners.

The PBL Cycle in the sciences traces its roots to the medical school setting where small groups of intellectually mature, highly motivated medical students work in small groups with a dedicated faculty tutor to learn basic science concepts in the context of actual clinical cases.

The process of problem-based instruction (Boud & Feletti, 1997) follows:

* Students are presented with a problem (case, research paper, videotape, for example). Students working in permanent groups organize their ideas and previous knowledge related to the problem and attempt to define the broad nature of the problem.

* Throughout discussion, students pose questions called "learning issues" that delineate aspects of the problem that they do not understand. These learning issues are recorded by the group and help generate and focus discussion. Students are continually encourage to define what they know and-more importantly-what they don't know.

* Students rank, in order of importance, the learning issues generated in the session. They decide which questions will be followed up by the whole group and which issues can be assigned to individuals, who later teach the rest of the group. Students and instructor also discuss what resources will be needed to research the learning issues and where they could be found.

* When students reconvene, they explore the previous learning issues, integrating their new knowledge into the context of the problem. Students are also encouraged to summarize their knowledge and connect new concepts to old ones.

They continue to define new learning issues as they progress through the problem. Students soon see that learning is an ongoing process and that there will always be (even for the teacher) learning issues to be explored.

PBL fosters the ability to identify the information needed for a particular application, where and how to seek that information, how to organize that information in a meaningful conceptual framework, and how to communicate that information to others. Use of cooperative working groups fosters the development of learning communities in all classrooms, enhancing student achievement (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991).

Students who learn concepts in the context in which they will be used more likely to retain that knowledge and apply it appropriately (Albanese & Mitchell, 1993). They will also recognize that knowledge transcends artificial boundaries since problem-based instruction highlights interconnections between disciplines and the integration of concepts.
___________________
M.A. & Mitchell, S. (1993). Problem-based learning: A review of literature on its outcomes and implementation issues. Academic Medicine, 68, 52-81.

Boud, D., & Feletti, G. (1997) The challenge of problem-based learning (2nd ed.). London: Kogan Page.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (1991). Cooperative learning: Increasing college faculty instructional productivity. (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 4). Washington, DC: George Washington University.

Google Maps for MSIT/Gurukulam Monitoring

2007-02-22T02:09:00.001+05:30

http://www.cammap.net/ provides a geographical view of webcams located in US using Google maps. It allows you to zoom-in, select a particular web-cam and allows you to peep-into the real-world through the web-cam.

It would be nice to see a monitoring system for MSIT and Gurukulam labs spread throughout AP, and to see what's happening in any of these labs by just clicking on Google-Maps.

Google's work on Audio Processing!

2007-02-20T21:46:00.000+05:30

Click Here to read more..

Collaboration tools on Skype 3.0

2007-01-18T06:39:00.000+05:30

Skype 3.0 and the extra addons embedded in it makes collaboration lot easier.

Here are a few features that can be useful for your projects and courses at MSIT -

1. Application Sharing - You can now show demos of your projects to mentors located far away

2. Desktop sharing - If applications was not enough, share the entire desktop

3. Call Recording - You can record conversations with team-mates / mentors for future use

4. Whiteboard - Can use and demonstrate your point on a shared whiteboard.

Please download the latest skype 3.0 and "Do More" than just conversations.

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/helloagain.html

Collaborative Tools

2006-12-28T05:08:00.000+05:30

http://docs.google.com provides a mechanism of sharing doc and excel files among the team members of a project and also to perform collaborative work across the learning centers. We could use google-docs for all course/project reports and for combining teams from various learning centers.

http://www2.blogger.com allows posting a topic and receiving comments. We could create http://msitsoftskills.blogspot.com and allow the students to post their 1-page writing assignment. The soft skills mentor can comment on them and it would also be easy to do a peer-reviewing by others. Using msitsoftskills.blogspot we can also involve mentors (remotely and probably larger in number) to provide comments on the writing assignments in a short time.

http://calendar.google.com allows sharing the calendars and thus could include MSIT almanac, course's start-end date, holiday lists etc.

http://vyew.com is about sharing the desktop and the screen for making remote presentations using PDF, PPTs etc. It is browser based, and also provides tools to draw and annotate on the screen during presentation (which is viewed/shared on the other side). Speech-Lab, IIIT and CMU have been using this tool for remote presentations on what they call wednesday-meetings. http://www.gotomeeting.com is another such tool.

pls feel free add some more ....

Google Research

2006-12-24T16:49:00.000+05:30

Google research seems to have picked a set of videos on a wide range of research and technical issues seemingly relevant to most of us. Pls find them at Google's Research Videos

If you are further interested you can also look at Google's Research Publications.

MSIT-Curriculum

2006-12-24T07:50:00.001+05:30

This is a proposal to integrate Search-Engine story into MSIT curriculum.

In the II-Mini students are posed with the problem to build THIS (The Hindu Information System) and thus learn and implement algorithms and data-structures.

From the III Mini, students learn several aspects such as UI, DB etc, which can applied to THIS - thus THIS could act as linking story across the several minis.

Following are a few points top-off my head weaving THIS over several minis.

We can have the courses with the toy-problems specific to each course, but THIS could be the actual-project where they are supposed to implement many of these concepts during the last 1-2 days of each week.

II Mini:

Algos. and DS for THIS

III Mini:

User Interface (application to THIS)

Computer Graphics (?)

IVMini:

Databases for THIS (inverted index files in THIS could be stored/retrieved using databases)
Advance Programming (perl/phyton for text processing andnatural language query in THIS)

V Mini:

Data Mining (Text categorization, Query expansion in THIS)

Computer Networks (Client - Server Implementation for THIS)

VI Min:

Practicum

II Year, I Mini:

SE Foundation (Design aspects for THIS)

CMU-Portugal Research Exchange PhD Program

2006-12-23T18:42:00.000+05:30

CMU and Portugal universities have started a research exchange PhD program in Language Technologies (www.lti.cs.cmu.edu) Click Here for full details.

"The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) offers a dual degree Ph.D. Program in Language and Information Technologies in cooperation with Portuguese Universities. ...."

"Each Ph.D. student will receive a dual degree from LTI and the selected Portuguese University, being co-supervised by one advisor from each institute, and spending approximately half of the 5-year doctoral program at each institute. Most of the academic part willtake place at LTI, during the first 2 years, where most of the required 8 courses will be taken, with a proper balance of focus areas (Linguistic, Computer Science, Statistical/Learning, Task Orientation). The remaining 3 years of the doctoral program will be dedicated to research, mostly spent at the Portuguese institute, with one or two visits to CMU per year."

.... Since 2003, there exists research exchange program between MSIT-CMU, IIIT-CMU and other institutions such as Upenn through which many research scholars at IIIT and mentors at MSIT have visited CMU.

MSITBUZZ

2006-12-23T13:55:00.000+05:30

Being MSITians we definitely need a time and space for ourselves where we can share the pride, prejudices, up&downs, success and failures, joys, happiness related to daily/routine/rare/special events of MSIT.

At one point or the other everyone of us thought of expressing our opinions/views on various activities related to MSIT - which we believe could be beneficial to the whole of MSIT society and MSITians.

I believe we can do it now in a free BUT RESPONSIBLE fashion. Following the big show success of various issues being discussed on http://iiitbuzz.blogspot.com/ (IIIT Blog), we have created http://msitbuzz.blogspot.com.

More importantly I believe this blog can act as forum to express ourselves - what it takes to be an MSITian, how/why/what we are different from other, what are the special events that are happening this week, next week, our courses, achievements, projects etc.

Please start contributing to this blog to express ourselves, however, please note that it is YOUR blog, the whole world would watch, and it is important to express BUT IN A RESPONSIBLE WAY.

Please send an email to kishore.prahallad@gmail.com if you think you want to be one of the authors in this blog (start a new topic/post), else please feel free to comment on the posts.

Good Luck.

Best Regards
Kishore Prahallad
(kishore.prahallad@gmail.com)