Networking for Results

Networks or networking is not new to humans. Every social interaction is in a sense is act towards building a network. Connecting to our neighbor or another person is much appreciated and widely practiced feature of human society. Rolodex is an example. However networks in the past were constrained by time and distance barriers. Today technology enabled networks such as social networks have transformed the range of reach and made the job of networking much easier and brought the privilege of being a part of network to every one's reach.

Technology-enabled networks are here to stay and grow. In fact they are growing exponentially.  Facebook, one of such rapidly growing network has over 500 million users - meaning one in every 14 people on the earth is on Facebook.  This fact has far reaching implications for each one of us: faculty, students and institutions. As our experience shows, our students who belong to digital natives generation and were born into "another time"  are increasingly finding their social and professional homes on these networks. This new reality must be considered while planning our academic and as well as any student related activities. Each one of us must develop a personal and professional plans to harness this new resources. I shall cover this in my next post Networking Tasks.
 

Don’t; confine u r students into u r learning for they were born in another time

"Don’t; confine u r students into u r learning for they were born in another time" asserts a old  saying. I quoted this in my engineering class and asked my students to identify their “another time” for which they were born into. In other words I asked them to describe the kind of world they are living in now and expected to have during their life time.  Times have changed from agrarian to industrial to information times now.  Information Times is one in which every activity we do is some way related to information. A small discussion helped us to identify activity generally undertaken by students: They Google to search information, they blog to publish information, they comment ( add info) and  they  ‘inform “ their status. At that point of time, I provided a small description of the information world we r living in

Today networks have created “an editable information space in which everything is connected to every thing else “ .

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My Mtech Seminar via kwout

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The another time in which my students are expected “live and experience “ is described above. Preparing them would be making them participate in this information space by publishing, commenting and linking. The publishing provides them a means to share ; commenting makes them to analyze critically and linking makes them to get connected to wider world and be part of a community to which they belong to. Hence an evaluation component of the course requires each student to create a blog, publish and visit another ( see picture above)  students blog and comment and connect with blogs of a minimum no of blogs of their class mates  

Information Life

We all intuitively understand the phrases such as working life, professional life, social life, school life and even married life and so on. Each of them refers to a one dimension of our personal life or some time segment of life. What most of us fail to recognize or miss to realize is what we all have another important dimension to our existence Information Life too.  Our information life is all about our relation with information or in other words relation with outside world. We live in an information rich (or inundated) world, in which we either produce or consume information. We also act as a conduit in information life cycle. Information work is widely accepted term to describe the nature of information life.  

To be successful in our Information life, like in any other dimension of life such as financial or social life, we need to think through and do work with direction, method, and purpose. Information life has to make contribution towards one’s overall life and one must perform here.

What can I contribute? : U set my agenda

Annual occasions like teachers day give us chance to ponder over important matters such as
a teacher what can I contribute to my students.. Over the years, I have been trying to figure out “what is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of my students and my institutions. With whatever modest exposure I have had, I used it my experimentation such as introducing emerging technologies into academics and projects, introduction of work and performance tools within academic settings and more.


However lot more needs to be and can be done in preparing myself and my community (students and colleagues) for harnessing emerging opportunities in increasingly connected world. My alumni which numbers more than 1500+ and working around the world may help me by suggesting ways and means towards improving my answering to the fundamental challenge on day-in and day-out basis: What can I contribute?  The following questions may broadly guide you in knowing my information requirements.

1. What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of my institutions and students?
2. What knowledge and skills do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making?
3. What standards do I have to set myself?

Current students may answer the following

1. What am I doing that helps u with your learning and work ? 
2. What am I doing hampers you ?
3. Where do you (students ) need me  - not just want but need me?
4. Where should I concentrate next year so as not only to give best but also to bring most of you ?
5. What do u expect me to learn to bring the difference ?

Your action points are welcome

Knowledge is the professional

Knowledge is the professional. Work, assignments, services are only the vehicle for the exchange of professional knowledge against employment and associated aspects such as salary. Business is a human organization, made or broken by the quality of its people. In this knowledge era, the quality of people is nothing but the quality of their knowledge. Knowledge is specifically human resources. Knowledge is not found on the web. Web contains information whereas knowledge is the ability to apply information to specific work and performance. For instance a professional be it a marketing manager or a learner can use web for mining information to carry out her work and improve performance. So every professional today must determine (1) her work and its associated performance expectations before going to web and (2) use web as an information source to support her work and elevate performance level. Web after all is another resource. As we have learnt in our school lessons resources are only means to achieve our work; they don’t do our work. We have to do our work ourselves.