TED 2010 LongBeach Day 2 & After

TED came to an end today and it was definitely the best use of my "Blizzard Holidays".
If I join the dot backwards, it almost feels that God wanted me to watch TED and so he sent the blizzard.
It is difficult to pick and choose amongst talks, since every speaker brought with him a brilliant idea that was truly worth spreading. Believe me, i m not being rhetorical.
Again, these are my interpretations of the ideas of the speakers - you may agree or disagree or dont care ! :)
One of the speakers was the great" James Cameron" - his speech was one of the most inspiring I have ever heard.
He spoke about his love for ocean and how one of his personal reasons for making Titanic was being able to go down and see the shipwreck. He said "In your life, keep failure as an option, not fear!!" and "enjoy the task of doing the task".

Sir Ken Robinson had really nice quotes about the current day ailing education system which he thinks has to be completely rethought and re-built.
Sir Robinson said that we have developed a linear and standardized model of education but education should be more of an organic process growing with steps and in whichever direction it wants.
In the past and present, education has dislocated a lot of people. He says its not easy to find your passion and what you are good at by searching at the top, you have to search deep inside you and it takes time.

I think i m doing what i wanted to do in life and everyone should also feel the same about their jobs.

The 12 year old girl - Adora Svitak, was really a prodigy. She spoke about how children shud be taken seriously and how silly behavior is not synonomous with chidish behavior. She is so good at 12, I wonder what she will become when she grows up.God Bless her!

Philip Howard spoke about how laws which were created to protect the people in this country, have tied people's hand and creativity. He has a famous book called "Life without Lawyers", I m planning to read it.
George Whitesides spoke about the power of simplicity and what reiterated what Einstein once said" Try to make things simple, not simpler". Simple things are easy to use and people find different ways of using simple things.


The best thing about the TED speakers is the way they connect to the audience. As Chris told in his interview, the speakers should be able to connect to the audience immediately and there should be no "ego" in the speaker at all. I think all of the speakers did that and I truly felt connected to the talks.
I cannot quote everyone's talk here but all of them are really worth spending the 18 minutes for.
Happy V Day !!

My thoughts after seeing "The Blind Side"

I watched the movie "The Blind Side" today and loved it. It is motivating, sentimental, courageous and eye-opening.
It made me appreciate the things in my life that I take granted for - as simple thing as my bed. I like my bed but I always want something more in my bedroom- one more painting, another dresser or mirror. Maybe it's just the woman in me. But watching the movie really made me appreciate what i have and how lucky i m.
I liked the good intentions of the lady who adopted the child from the street and the right heart of the kid "Michael Oher'.
From my childhood i remember, my aunt tried to educate her servant. She sent him to school but he always ran away, at that time I thought that the servant was not worthy of an education but now i feel it might be that he needed some extra help.

It has been a dream of my husband and me, to do something to educate under-privileged children, especially girls.
One African scientist at TED said " Education is the husband who will never let you down". Very rightly so.
I, with my teammates at school, launched the web application "EachOneTeachOne" for free online tutoring.
For EachOneTeachOne, I visited several schools in the Prince Georges County and tried to see if the schools needed some extra help in Math education and if science and engineering students, spending time on social networking sites, could be of some help.

The response i received from the teachers was the same - "YES" . There was a lack of math teachers, the students were not interested to study on top of that the student to teacher ratio was 30:1. All the schools needed extra help and welcomed my initiative.
Alas, EachOneTeachOne is at a stall for lack of time due to my PhD commitments and the issues of safety of communicating with adults over internet.Before watching the movie, I always thought that the time i spent visiting the schools and meeting kids could have been utilized to write a research paper or do an internship. But now I feel that it was worth having it and has much more value than anything i ll do for myself.
I would like to resume the project soon and try to continue my task of " Nar Seva" which means "Service to Humanity".

TED 2010 Day 1

Before I loose the magic of TED, I want to share with my friends my take home from Day 1 of the TED Conference.And for those who dont have time to watch the 18 minute talks, i might be saving you sometime :)
I m writing about the three best talks on Day 1 TED 2010 according to me.These are entirely my interpretations of what the speakers meant and you can agree or disagree or dont care :)

William Li - A scientist and a doctor spoke about Anti- Angiogenesis as a cure to cancer. His claim was that cancer causes prolific growth of the cells in the body as well as a growth of the blood capillaries - which grow to provide nourishment to the tumor cells. If we can prohibit the growth of the blood capillaries, then the growth of the cancer cells will be stopped since the cells wont have any food to live on. William Li's drugs have proven successful for many kinds of cancers .
According to him, by eating right kind of food - we can have our own kemotherapy atleast 3 times a day. Foods include - green tea, turmeric, tomotoes, berries, soybeans, etc.
For more information, please check his website -http://www.angio.org/

Also watch his TED talk when its out. :)

Chef Dan Barber - runs the BlueHillFarms restaurant in NY and he spoke about sustainable agriculture . His fishes come from the most sustainable farms and are naturally grown and thats wht he says make them soft and delicious.

Did I tell you that we have already finished 90% of fishes in the oceans and our children might not have any coral reefs to look at ? ;)
Watch his TED talk for more and try bluehillfarms too :)


Jamie Oliver's, London's famous chef, has come to America to fight childhood obesity and wants to change the kind of food served in school cafeterias. I m from India so have no knowledge about it but someone told me all food items in schools are processed and packaged outside.
Then what is a cafeteria for, I dont understand?
I agree with Jamie that everyone should know atleast 10 things to cook before they graduate from high school :)

My interview

I m humbled my the fact that a very popular indian blogger Joseph Samuel Jayanth interviewed me.
Herez a link to the blog

http://www.potofthots.com/2009/10/interview-with-tedindia-fellow-neha.html

My new comic character Mr.MBA

I m Mr.MBA.I was born on this earth to make money.I m mean to everyone because my school was mean to me.They took 100 grand and taught me nothing.
U take my money and promise to multiply it, i ll worship you.I love quick profits.
WALL STREET PLUMMETED so what, I can make another one fall down.
ONLY MONEY MOTIVATES ME!!
Social Ventures and non-profits- i have my sympathies with you :)
Talk to me baby, i talk MONEY :D

EachOneTeachOne -We Mix Maths with FUN

The primary and secondary education offered in many parts of the world is of poor quality because of limited resources and lack of good teachers, among other things. As a consequence, many students need additional assistance to keep up with their schoolwork. The only option available to most of the students is to seek private or home tutoring and the traditional way of getting those is to look for resources locally.

With the easy availability of internet, the limitation of looking for these tutoring resources is no longer defined by ones geographic location. The technology required for the remote tutoring can be as easy as a simple chat session.

There are very large number of internet users who are well qualified to provide tutoring. A large number of them spend significant amount of time on social networking sites like facebook, myspcae and orkut. Many of them maybe willing to provide free tutoring as a philanthropic contribution to the society, provided some simple, easy-to-use and secure mechanism is available. Our idea is to make a web-application ‘EachOneTeachOne’ attached to a social networking site (like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut) through which interested volunteers can offer free education to the students in need in an adhoc manner without spending additional time and money. It will not be limited to students only but will be extended for all the people who need guidance or knowledge in their field and for all those who are willing to share their expertise with others. All, who need guidance, will be logging to the application as “Students” and those who will guide others will login as “Tutors”.

The area of education we will be focussing at the first launch will be Mathematics.Mathematics has become a very important part of the educational curriculum in this information age. We are focussing on middle and high school level mathematics and want to change the traditional way Mathematics is learnt and taught.

According to an article in Washington Post, the US teens were ranked 24th in the PISA Mathematics assessment. (Program for International Student Assessment), (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html).There has also been a huge outcry on the state of American public schools. (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338). We want to build a system adjunct to the current education system and help the students learn Mathematics with some extra help of our volunteers which will be available online on Facebook.

We want to invite you to join hands in this mission and work with us.If you think you can mentor some student with us, we welcome you.If you think, you can help us in spreading the word or in the development of the web application you are most welcome to do that too.
Please email at : neha@cs.umd.edu



b. Vision and Mission Statement
EachOneTeachOne is a free, voluntary tutoring application aimed at providing online education in Maths by the people and to the people over the Facebook Platform. Through EachOneTeachOne our goal is to break the geographic and financial barriers and provide quality education to all as well as to utilize the time people spend on Social Networking Sites.


c. Product and Value Proposition

In this system, the students as well as the tutors can register themselves indicating their needs and their capabilities. For now we are focussing just on Math Education. Every user (student or tutor) will be given a screen name to keep his identity anonymous. When a student needs a tutor he connects to “EachOneTeachOne” indicating his request, identified by the subject and level. ” EachOneTeachOne” then looks at the set of online tutors, selects a small group- based on the request and makes them available to the student. The student may select one of those and make a request for teaching, at which time; the anonymised identity of the student is presented to the tutor. Once the tutor accepts the request, “EachOneTeachOne” establishes and manages the chat session between the two.

Let’s take an example to illustrate more; Annie is a busy graduate student and uses Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to connect to her friends. She also wants to do some volunteer and community work but doesn’t have the time to do so. There is another girl Asha who wants to learn eighth grade mathematics. She tries to use the Internet to get answers but it takes her a long time to get the correct information. Annie and Asha have added our “EachOneTeachOne” application to their profiles on facebook and “EachOneTeachOne” has given them anonymous names “An1” and “As1” respectively.

An1 comes online on “EachOneTeachOne” and indicates the time she will be online. When As1 comes online and requests for learning eighth grade mathematics, “EachOneTeachOne” selects a bunch of tutors capable of teaching As1 and displays them on the online tutor list. Online tutor list consists of the tutors’ screen-names, educational information and also the time for which each tutor will be available.

As1 (actually Asha) sees An1 (actually Annie) in the list and also sees that An1 has a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. As1 sends a request to An1 that she is interested in learning from her. An1 accepts the request and their one-to-one chat conversation starts through which An1 teaches As1.After the session is complete; As1 and An1 both rate each other as a student and teacher to provide feedback for future users. At the end of the session, As1 gets to learn mathematics and An1 gets virtual points for helping As1.

Religion, Caste and Indian Politics

The recent elections in India took everyone by surprise. Did Rahul Gandhi's magic work or was it the awakening of the people who no longer wanted to be divided by the politics of divide and rule which indians have been a party to since the rule of the Britishers?Every person has their own opinion in this regard as we are one big democracy and everyone has the freedom to speech. Dr.Manmohan Singh has given his due diligence to the country but his hands have been tied by other leaders.

We need to rise above all our differences of skin, caste and religion & unite together for a better India.Will that happen or not -that future will only tell but I m optimistic :)