Stories in your mother tongue

K.C. Deepika | FEBRUARY 20, 2019 22:04 IST

Digital ‘hyperlocal libraries’ offer books in underserved languages

Imagine a library with books for children in languages ranging from Kannada, Tamil and Marathi to Marwari, Siberian and Bundelkhandi.

In an attempt to bring in diversity into the reading habits of children, encourage reading in their mother tongue, and aid learning in formal classrooms, digital ‘hyperlocal libraries’ are offering content that is free, downloadable, and reusable.

One such open source digital platform is StoryWeaver from Pratham Books that offers over 18 lakh reads in 148 languages. Under its ‘Freedom to Read 2019’ campaign, 11 organisations and eight individuals were chosen to help build hyperlocal digital libraries in 30 languages, including 14 ‘underserved languages’ such as Korku, Marwari, Pawari and Santaki. Launch of the gateway to this material coincides with International Mother Language Day on Thursday.

Speaking to The Hindu, Suzanne Singh, Chairperson, Pratham Books cited a new UNESCO report on mother tongue literacy, which states that around 40% of the global population has no access to education in a language they speak or understand, and the 2016 Global Education Monitoring report, which mentions that imposing a dominant language through a school system in multi-ethnic societies is a ‘source of grievance linked to wider issues of social and cultural inequality’.

“In India and other parts of the world, there is a yawning gap between the language spoken at home and the medium of instruction at school. This can lead to children feeling alienated and reading at lower grade levels. This disengagement with the learning process can even cause children to drop out of school altogether,” she said, adding that the digital storybooks provide a link between the language spoken at home and the medium of instruction in school.

Sharad Prakash Suryawanshi, programme manager, Unnati ISEC, which has been working in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region with children from the Korku tribal community, said the material readied in Korku has helped children ease into the formal education system after the first one or two levels.

 

“Very few students would manage to progress to the higher classes as the Marathi-medium was very difficult for them to catch up with. There were no books in Korku until we started at the end of 2017. We readied material in Korku for different levels: songs, stories and reading for the first level and writing for the second level. We integrate aspects such as village experiences, animals and gender equality into the material. Till now, we have translated around 140 books, and are trying to get community volunteers to write original stories,” she said.

But how can a digital platform reach its intended audience?

Purvi Shah, Head - Digital Initiatives, Pratham Books said StoryWeaver serves as a resource for teachers, educators, and literacy organisations. “Educators are able to integrate books from StoryWeaver into lesson plans and expose children to reading material with an Indian context featuring characters and settings they can actually relate to, narrated in their mother tongue. To give you an example, Suchana, an education support group for children from Santhali and Kora villages around Shantiniketan, has created a mix of translations and original stories in Santali and Kora, written in the Bengali script. As of now, 200-odd titles have been translated into the two tribal languages and some have even been printed into books,” she said.

Source : https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/stories-in-your-mother-tongue/article26323685.ece?fbclid=IwAR1CYWbF8hu3NDZC8NeGDKg2HsmUMDOZa0Ih2RtmevgvfkaKRT9mIr5uCTs 

Do we make our resume or does our resume make us?

Updated: 20 Feb 2019, 12:03 AM IST  Mariyam Raza Haider 

• With the amount of fortune and time invested in building one’s career, the resume has unequivocally become the most prized possession of our lives
• A resume, on the other hand, confines us within the boundaries of repetitive job descriptions and employer expectations
•  

If someone looks at your life right now, you’re living a dream. A girl from small town Dehradun working in Hong Kong! Think about that," was a friend’s analysis of my life, as I contemplated switching careers last year. She did sound right.

In some odd way, I had cracked the code of professional success at a relatively young age. Within five years of picking up my bachelor’s degree, my resume boasted of overseas graduate studies, multiple speaking engagements, becoming a researcher of a best-selling book and a steady international job. Clearly, I was living the millennial dream.

However, while my job looked enviously impressionable to others, it failed to inspire me. I was a square peg trying to fit in a round hole at that organization, only because it looked great on the resume. Most people advised me to keep the job and not get my decent resume dented by an abrupt break. But that is when I had an acute realization: My resume was being conflated as my life story.

With the amount of fortune and time invested in building one’s career, the resume has unequivocally become the most prized possession of our lives. Like a mirror, it reflects a successful persona that we want the world to see. As a result of which we have diminished ourselves into sanitized versions tailored towards a competitive market, losing our individuality.

Our generation is ready to be debt-ridden in order to have the tag of a top-ranking institute on the resume. As of 2017- 2018, Indian public sector banks had ₹71,724.65 crore as outstanding education loan amount, of which nearly 9% is never coming back, having already fallen under non-performing assets.

But that perfect job cannot be promised simply based on our college degrees or elaborate work descriptions. It is a summation of our genuine interests combined with passion and persistence to pursue, despite setbacks. A resume, on the other hand, confines us within the boundaries of repetitive job descriptions and employer expectations.

The more I looked at my resume while I was working in a 9am-6pm job in Hong Kong, the more I wanted to look beyond it. Somewhere within the margins of that A4 document, lurked my true interests. What followed next was a search towards mining those relevant experiences, that began by what I call the “resume reduction technique".

I sat down with a physical copy of my resume and a whitening tape. Slowly, I started striking out all those employment experiences, internships, institutions, that had simply landed me a job.

As the white ink began concealing those nouns, it astonishingly revealed verbs: Actions that brought joy and satisfaction. Phrases like: organized a photo exhibit, interacted with locals, published a poem, gained prominence above all the other novelties.

By the end of the exercise, I was left with processes that had been far more enriching than the outcomes. I could recall those instances to be the most creatively satisfying, thought-provoking and action oriented. Some of them were rooted deep into my interests and activities as a teenager.

LinkedIn’s career expert Nicole Williams says, “The dream jobs we aspire to as children are a window into our passions and talents. Identifying and understanding those passions are key to improving our performance and enjoyment of the jobs we currently do, even if they aren’t specific to the careers we dreamed of as kids."

Cleaning my resume helped place a finger on areas where I personally thrived, helped me gain perspective on the nature of career that I envision for myself. Through the reduction exercise, I recognized my love for the spoken and the written word, that had gone amiss in the hustle to chase the next big dream.

Whether it is volunteering as a Mathematics teacher, doing sports commentary for the local radio station, or performing a solo recital at a music fest; the reduction mechanism can help us trace our instinctive aspirations. These passions may or may not turn into our professions, but they steer us towards a more meaningful life. They can help us invest time into suitable recreation practices and know ourselves better.

And finally, relooking at your resume in a new light enables you to respect your struggles and failures. When we are no longer slaves to a resume’s perfection, we allow ourselves to take risks and seek new opportunities.

Former US first lady, Michelle Obama in her memoir, Becoming, says, “I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child: ‘ What do you want to be when you grow up?’ As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end." A lesson I remind myself everyday since having left my job and begun a new chapter.

Mariyam Raza Haider runs a regular blog on Medium, where she writes about productivity, mental health and life lessons.

Source : https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/business-of-life/do-we-make-our-resume-or-does-our-resume-make-us-1550600202137.html 

Effective Reading Habits

Reading is perhaps one of the most continuous activities that we perform, on a daily basis. We read not only books and newspapers, but numerous reports, assignments and textbooks, depending on which profession or level of study we belong to. However, have you ever wondered if you were reading effectively? In this talk, the speaker Jordan Harry answers this question. The average untrained reader is quite slow, and also quite ineffective — one reason why we often forget what we started reading. In this talk, he lists out various bad habits that we have as readers, and also effective tips to read faster and more efficiently.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2-ahs905MQ

PR | The Hindu | 18th February 2019

Say Goodbye to Examination Anxieties

Source : The Times of India , 6th Feb. 2019

Most students aware of just seven career choices

There are over 250 careers across 40 domains covering over 5,000 job types that one can pursue in India, the researchers said.

Published: 04th February 2019 09:49 AM

NEW DELHI: Most students in India are aware of just seven career options out of the more than 250 they can pursue in the country, according to a survey.

The survey of over 10,000 students across India in the 14-21 age group found that 93 per cent of them were aware of only seven careers, including law, engineering, design, and management.  The survey was conducted by Mindler, an online career-counselling platform.

There are over 250 careers across 40 domains covering over 5,000 job types that one can pursue in India, the researchers said.

“Our research on over 10,000 students across India suggests an alarming ignorance of the career options available to students today,” said Prateek Bhargava, founder and CEO of Mindler, who recently launched a platform for career counselling in tier II and tier III cities across India.

India has limited trained career counsellors available who can assist and guide students to make the correct career decision, he said.

The platform aims to bring counsellors from underserved cities across India under one roof and systemise the career counselling sector.

Source : http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2019/feb/04/most-students-aware-of-just-seven-career-choices-1934034.html 

वाचनसंस्कार

Source : Maharashtra Times | 19th February, 2019

Mumbai University Announces The Schedule Of Its Summer Session Examinations

The examinations are going to start from March 25, 2019 and will continue until 10th June, 2019. Meanwhile, the dates for engineering examination are yet to be announced

Mumbai University has declared dates for the Summer session of First Year and  Second Year along with university level and postgraduate degree examinations for 2019. The dates were finalised in the meeting conducted by the Examination and Evaluation Board, which was conducted recently. A total of 550 exams have been announced out of which 486 exams are categorised as the University Summer Sessions exams and 64 examinations will be regular college examinations.

According to the new Maharashtra Public University Act of 2016, all the courses are divided into four faculties, and hence these examinations have been divided accordingly. They will held between March 25, 2019 and June 10, 2019. Meanwhile, the dates for engineering examination are yet to be announced.

The examination department under the supervision of Deputy Registrar, Krishna Parad, has prepared the schedule considering that 90 days of academic terms, vacations and various other professional examinations. This year, the University will also implement a choice based credit pattern for semester VI for the first time.The dates of all these examinations have been uploaded on the university's website and the timetable will be published soon. 

8/2019 Mumbai University announces the schedule of its Summer Session Examinations https://www.mumbailive.com/en/education/mumbai-university-has-announced-the-summer-session-examination-date-2019-33112 3/6  It is also being said that the there may be a change in the dates of certain examinations, due to dates the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Students are advised to keep a note of the same on a regular basis.

Source : https://www.mumbailive.com/en/education/mumbai-university-has-announced-the-summer-session-examination-date-2019-33112