Facilitating Online 2011

Got to know of Sarah Stewart' s course as an online course at wiki educator through Twitter. have joined this course and hope to learn about using online mentoring and training . I had subscribed to Dim Dim but had lot of issues. Besides was able to use it only for online interviews.

As Drona develops I expect to add the feature of mentoring and training online for learners. Hope to learn how to do this well.

saw the introduction session of 7th March recorded. Looked good and hope to get to the live session on 14th/15th march

the journey of Drona so far

Setup Drona Edutronics (thats education +Electronics) in Jan 2010. Started operations in April 2010 with funds from friends and family.

Now its close to year. Here is what I learnt

1. Free tools are too restrictive: Udutu was what e started off for creating courseware but quickly moved to Articulate and PowerPoint. Created several visually appealing and engaging courseware based on scenarios and learningthrough problem solving. Took care to have the scenarios close to industry practice. Also had some courseware with just specific knowledeg and tips to acquaint undergrads with terminology, conventions and choices in components.

2. had estimated 10 days for a course/module per developer. It was closer to a month and with much handholding

3. Team we had has all but vanished and wilted under the pressure to perform. have tried to alleviate by having Wed morning experience share meetings and Saturday afternoon movies which inspire. Mostky from TED or other such sites.

4. Creativity is needed for thinking out the how and the what. Got our tema to read atleast Chap 1 of Horton's Elearning by Design

5. Most industry experts are able to give a narrow view of the subject. This has to be tempered with a lot of research to round off the course

6. Story boarding is resisted by most developers. They would much rather launch straight into the concept

7. E learning development is by no means cheap if you want to do a good job of it. Perhaps like any other work!!

So Drona enters into its new year with many challenges.

Engineering and technical education

Engineering and tech education is always treated as being dull. I studied at a premier institution: IIT Delhi. The teachers were all very knowledgaeable and many of them emminent in their fields. But few could make the class interesting or give a holistic view or expose us to applications of what is being taught. The result: engineering was reduced to mathematical operations. The real world seemed far away.

The situation is worse now. Engineering colleges have mushroomed and faculty is scarce. To hope for a teacher who can make engineering look like romance is far fetched

I would like to make a difference. Can we use technology to make engineering interesting and engaging?

E learning

Gaming

Performing arts

Would like to put them to use