Education

Our pride and shame

Sunday, 08 August 2010 10:26 |

Terminal 3 in New Delhi took just 37 months to go from conception to reality. It took sixty-three years to enact a right to education bill and it is stalled because of lack of funds. Have we got our priorities wrong?

Angelina Jolie opens school in Afgan

Friday, 19 March 2010 06:59 |

New York, March 17 (IANS) Actress Angelina Jolie has set up a school for girls in Afghanistan, and it opens Monday.

The institution, which can accommodate upto 800 students, has eight classrooms. It is located at Tangi, reports usmagazine.com

Following a 2008 visit to a refugee settlement in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, Jolie, named a Goodwill ambassador for the UN, donated $75,000 for the school's construction.

Try different

Wednesday, 03 March 2010 21:59 |

The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

But you can always try different.

Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

No more frills in exam hall

Thursday, 18 February 2010 08:06 |

Students appearing for the Tamil Nadu state board examinations in March will not be permitted to wear shoes,socks and even belts inside the examination hall!The Directorate of Government Examinations has come up with this curious restriction, apparently to curb malpractices.