This Always Works - but more for senior citizens

As kids we like to do only what takes our fancy or what interests us. But as we grow older the list of must do things keeps becoming larger and larger. Parents instructing do this and don’t do that. Behave like this or you will get rebuke. It’s impossible to work out why we as kids are not allowed to mix with certain interesting people and why the home work from KG onward is so boring and still needs to be finished before the end of the day. The compromises go on and on from our early school to primary, middle, high school and on to the university. Along the way we also pick up our favorites – people, things, subjects, places, and relations in the family, books, smiles, flowers, poems and celebrities. However all these will have to be subservient to our demands of life. Such as job – we are all not lucky to have a vocation of our choice -, boss, colleagues and associates, neighbors and so on. For a big part of our life we keep struggling to reach for what we like to do within the constraints of what we have to do.  Most of us are struggling with this dynamics of life and are happy with some kind of sub optimal equilibrium. In many cases we change our attitude and feel convinced that what we have is the best for us.

Then comes a stage in life, where the constraints start disappearing – your job is no longer  there ( you have superannuated), professional life stresses are gone, you have steady though less income, it’s you and your wife only again in the house may be for the first time or after a long time. Now this is the time you must go for a kill – try 10 out of 10 for your happiness. Fish out the things you liked to do but could not or did not find time to do. It could be occasionally reading that story book, listening to the poetry, old songs and gazals. Start posting on to the blog you created years back, find old friends and communicate with them. Spend time with the friends and visit your children.

Do push your self a bit and form a monthly objective a little beyond yourself. But do not try the uncharted territoty. I for one never wanted to be hands on but am good at ideation. Now I indulge in the activities which allow me to do contemplation, ideation and problem solving in the academic and research. At 60 plus, as always, I still like to push my intellectual faculty but have no longer the demand of  going to office, pushing others for deadlines, leaving kids to school, reaching for work in time, preparing and pushing myself for activities pushed on to me …

I do what I am doing right now, writing this post, read  others blogs and comment on those, initiate or take part in Higher Education Forum, an online Google group, go for walks with my wife, improve my cooking skills and share the results with my children and grand children. Watch old movies together. Eating out is less but still I want to see the world – my wife willing! However embarking on journeys to explore India and beyond is still to planned though. Till then TLC and other channels will do!

Overall much happier than I was any time in my life so far.

HRD’s Task Force suggests Measures to Curb Faculty Shortage - A Comment

Well to the best of my understanding and experience this recommendation is half baked. GOI or our education system just cannot become world class by employing 3 lakh teachers and from where? 

Already our government and society has downgraded the profession to such an extent that the mediocre or still lower in the class will opt for teaching. Look at the engineering colleges and majority of the business schools, engineers and MBA who cannot get the "proper" job join teaching. What’s our hope? Students learning suffer, employers suffer and we as nation suffer for the lack of quality professionals and work force and work culture. 

Do we have the political will and patience to try Finland model. Started in 1970s, Finland education system from primary to university is being considered as best in the world. Other following are Singapore, South Korea and Israel. Teachers in Finland are trusted by the system and society. The formal / informal evaluation is done by the teachers and taken as such. However to know the learning standards a random sample of students are evaluated and report on the state of learning published for further objective setting. There are no accreditations or grading in Finland. Overall - rather a superset of objectives is set by consensus - and institutions try to reach these objectives by the means available to them but complete freedom on methodology. 

Teachers in Finland are paid well, have freedom to innovate and research and apply those ideas for student learning. Do we have the will and intention even to try on these lines? If done consistently and persistently, in twenty years we will not have governance and deliverables problems we are facing now. 

Start with creating an eco system to produce teachers who want to be teachers, are capable of doing research and can innovate. Can take majority of the students in class to their peak learning capacity and are trusted by the society and system.

Refer to the transcript of an interview with Finnish Education Expert

http://www.learningfirst.org/teachers-we-trust-interview-finnish-education-expert-reijo-laukkanen

It's not PPT or Infographics - It's the Story Telling Which Impacts Max

Story goes like this, in a conference, one speaker did away with the Power Point by saying that it has "neither the power nor the point". I along with many others could see the point. With out referring to text or numbers on the screen he went on to share the story of his topic,with proper build up into the subject, lessons and inferences drawn and closed his narrative with moral of the story rather than conclusions.

We have always been communicating through story telling, as kids with our friends, as grownups in our homes with siblings and parents. Outside with our friends in school. One on one with our colleagues. However when we move on to higher education, specially MBA, we learn to get more " focused" on numbers, graphs, charts and ppts with text and graphics. So much so that bright MBA students start thinking through these tools. What it does? Well these are more like props to help us deliver better. For a moment, imagine, if there are half a dozen props for an actor to deliver his dialogue and do a scene, can he really make it good? I feel even the best one in the world will not be able to engage her audience. That's why at the most a single prop used well, may help in enhancing the narrative. But more props will be distraction from the main theme.

Sit back and think, while speaking in a conf., a board meeting, making a pitch or selling an innovation if again and again speaker refers to the props on the screen, the point may not stick, story may not impact and the job may remain half done. On the other hand, increase the effectiveness of your message and contents by providing the skin of a story and share it as a story. Listeners will listen better, remember better and carry the message better. The posive tradeoffs are the ones which we keep striving for in our professional life.

An experiment was done, where the same information was shared oveor email, social networking site, plain mail and also the colleagues sharing one on one. The result, the last, where colleagues shared one on one, was remembered better and proved more effective.

Most of the MBA pass outs, even from the best of schools, abandon story telling in favour of ppts and excel sheets. My preference for sharing my thought process or a formal topic through story telling, at times elicited comments from the hardened MBAs, that who will listen to her stories, with out realising that only stories are listened to rest are skipped over or skimmed over.

Try this age old communication skill. Still not convinced - just visit the blog dastangoiblogspot.com