My4DWorld launches Edutainment Line of Products

Sivakumar Mambakkam a "Game Designer" from Windsor, Ontario informs me of launch of his company "My4DWorld". My4DWorld provides teachers and parents with professional tools to create lessons for children of all grades. It also provides the general public with easy-to-use and powerful tools to create animations and games. The official launch of "My4DWorld" product line is scheduled for December 12th, 2009 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM at the Ontario Room, WFCU Center, 8787 McHugh St, Windsor, ON Canada.

Their first product is an Edutainment game 'My 3D Crossword'. The game is an excellent way to supplement education of fact-oriented subjects like Science, Social Studies and English. Children can have fun and learn at the same time. The game also encourages the child to understand 3D space as well as help remember word spellings. This game will be available for demonstration, test drive and sale at the December 12th event.

Siva also informs me that he is writing up 3 more games which will be released by the end of 2010, the 3rd Game will fall under MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) with 2 versions, one with a Hindu Theme and another with a Western theme.

India's Cabinet Ministers

Here is a educational map for our community. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India recently appointed 33 cabinet ministers. So who are these ministers and where were they born and how old are they? For answers to these questions check out this Google Maps Mashup I created:

Kota, Rajasthan - India's cram school Capital

While driving back from work yesterday I was listening to Mitch Albom at WJR760AM talk about a Wall Street Journal article on Cram Schools in Kota, Rajasthan.

The article talks about 16 year old Rohit Agarwal who quit his high school in the northeast corner of India in June. With two suitcases and a shoulder bag Rohit took a two-hour flight and a six-hour train ride to Kota, India's cram-school capital. Why did he do that? Rohit's plan was to attend one of the 100-plus coaching schools in Kota where approximately 40,000 students show up every year. The intensive programs in these coaching schools, which are separate from regular high school, prepare students for college-entrance exams. In Kota, most of the schools focus on the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology.

Quoting the Wall Street article

The seven IITs nationwide are statistically tougher to get into than Harvard or Cambridge. While around 310,000 students took the entrance exam this April, only the top 8,600 were accepted. A whopping one-third of those winners in the current academic year passed through Kota's cramming regimen.

"If we stayed at home, we just wouldn't be able to study enough," says Mr. Agarwal as he takes a break from lessons. "If you don't study hard, you won't get admission."

Rohit starts studying at 7 a.m., works on practice problems until noon. After lunch, he goes to class, where he gets the answers to the problems, gets home around 8 p.m. and does homework until midnight.

Kota has become a cram-industry boom town as more Indians seek to send their children to college and economic expansion has far outstripped the increase in college placements, making the competition fiercer.

Students study full-time for two years just for one entrance exam, mostly for the IITs but also for other universities and colleges. The rigor has become part of its selling point: As Kota's reputation for success has spread, more young hopefuls have flocked to the city

Michigan’s Education System Raises the Bar

(This guest post is written by Heather Johnson, who frequently writes on the subject of instant degree. She welcomes your comments and freelance writing inquiries at: heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.)

High school is not exactly the easiest period in a teen’s life, and Michigan’s youngsters are learning the hard way that it just got harder. Schools across the state just raised the level of coursework included in the high school curriculum. Mathematics, Science, Algebra, Geometry and Social Science have taken on monstrous proportions to students already juggling schoolwork, raging hormones and the terrible teenage years. There are no second chances since one failed class means graduation is delayed, and with the onus of implementing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) falling on the shoulders of the school and its staff members, every child who does not graduate in four years contributes to the drop in the level of the school’s standards.

The children, who are the hardest hit, are questioning the reason behind this new policy because they feel it inconveniences them in various ways:

Since the new policy has come into effect only this year, the gap between the standards of the last year of middle school and the first year of high school seems like a yawning chasm that the kids are unable to bridge with regular hours of study. They’re forced to learn subjects that are difficult even at normal levels like mathematics and algebra at a much higher standard – freshmen are now learning things that were earlier included in the syllabus for junior and senior year students. Students who are unable to cope and avoid doing homework have to compulsorily give up their lunch breaks or stay behind after school to complete their assignments and take extra classes.

The children are sore because most of them have already decided their future careers, vocations where advanced mathematical principles would stick out like a sore thumb. Freshmen are unable to get their seniors’ help since the older children themselves are just learning the same curriculum.

As if extra lessons on school days are not enough, weaker children and those who fail a class are taking online classes or credit recovery courses over the summer. Even the bright students are finding homework assignments to be extremely tough.

Looking at things on a positive note, schools and their teaching staff are rising to the occasion to help children struggling to cope by putting in extra hours themselves. For doubts and questions that arise after school or tuition hours, online help is always available. The schools are bearing the added expenditure incurred in paying the staff for working overtime and for transportation costs incurred in driving those who stay behind after school hours to catch up on their coursework.

Officials are justifying the policy as a necessary step in the process of providing the future workforce of Michigan with a solid foundation that will help them perform better when they take on college degrees and graduate into members of the earning fraternity. Obviously they’re hoping to catch them young! But in the eyes of the children, it’s a big leap indeed, one that leaves them little or no time at all for the fun things that high school students would love to do.

Satyagraha an English Word?

I was under the impression that Satyagraha is an Indian Word. Apparently I am wrong. Satyagraha is also an English word because....

Justin Song a 13 year old 8th Grader from Carmen Valley Middle School, San Diego, California was asked to spell "Satyagraha" in round 10 of National Spelling Bee Competition. Unfortunately Justin was eliminated because he misspelt the world Satyagraha as Sattyagraha.

From Wikipedia

Satyagraha (Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह satyāgraha) is a philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (also known as "Mahatma" Gandhi). Gandhi deployed satyagraha in campaigns for Indian independence and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa.

Maybe in the 82nd National Spelling Bee someone will be asked to spell "Gandhigiri" :-)

Indian Americans excel in 81st National Spelling Bee Competition

Desis rule in the 81st National Spelling Bee Competition which just concluded in Washington D.C.
Samir Mishra of Lafeyette, Indiana wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee 2008 after spelling guerdon. He wins $35,000 in cash plus more than $5,000 in other prizes. He is 13 years old. Sameer Mishra spelled "guerdon" to win the title.

Coming in 2nd was Sidharth Chand, 12, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan a Detroit Country Day Middle School seventh-grader. This was his first year at the competition.

Congratulations to Samir Mishra and Sidharth Chand

Top High Schools in Michigan

Newsweek has published a list of Top High Schools (1300+) in United States. Michigan has 31 High Schools listed. Topping the list in Michigan is International Academy, Bloomfield Hills. International Academy is the only school from Michigan ranked in top 100 (ranked 12).

I have mapped out the entire list of 1300+ schools on Google Maps. Check out the High Schools in Michigan and other states on Google Maps at mibazaar.

Indian American is the top winner in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search

Shivani Sud an Indian American who attends Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina won the top prize in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search. The winner was announced last night in Washington DC. Shivani Sud won a $100,000 scholarship.

Shivani had submitted a bioinformatics and genomics project to Intel Science Talent Search that focused on identifying stage II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumors.

A versatile student, Shivani Sud is a Teen Court student attorney, a Durham Rescue Mission volunteer and performs classical and modern Indian dance.(via)

There were a total of 40 Finalists from schools across United States as shown in this Google Maps Mashup. (Note: Indian American Shravani Mikkilineni from Michigan who attends Detroit Country Day School was one of the finalists.)

Sita and Manisha Kaura of Bloomfield Hills devise a quick way to learn English, expand vocabulary

Detroit News is reporting that the Indian American, Dad and Daughter duo (Sita and Manisha Kaura) have come with a method to

revolutionize education, to expand vocabularies, to increase understanding, to help everyone feel as passionately about words as they do.

There approach to vocabulary and spelling improvement revolves around 1,500 word parts, most derived from Greek or Latin, that they have identified as the most useful.

According to Dad

If you spent two weeks with us, you would have words coming out your ears.

In fact they have a manuscript ready. It contains 377 pages covering probably 20,000 words, fleshed out to 550 or 600 pages with illustrations.

Dad and Daughter contend that

We should not simply be memorizing words . We should be trained to recognize the fragments that form it, one of the 1,500 word parts they have determined to be key

Here are some examples:

sesquipedalian (I have no idea what this means, but lets follow Sita and Manisha Kaura's approach)

You can break up sesquipedalian into 3 parts: Sesqui, meaning one and a half; remember when Michigan celebrated 150 years of statehood with its sesquicentennial celebration in 1987? Ped, meaning foot. Alian, as in pertaining to words.

Sesquipedalian: as a noun, the word that means, "a long word."

Let's try another word: incommensurable

Sita Kaura pieced together in (not), com (together or consistent with) and mensura (measurement) and correctly defined it as disproportionate, or impossible to measure or compare.

Sita and Manisha!! If you are reading this blog post, do let us know your book title. I am sure lot of us would find it very beneficial.

Note:

Sita Kaura is a doctor who grew up in northwest India, lives in Bloomfield Township and runs a general practice in Southgate. Manisha Kaura is a sophomore at Detroit Country Day who likes tennis, go-karting and mountain biking, and bragged to her close friends about her fifth-grade graduation present -- the 2,662-page, 4-inch-thick, 12 1/2 -pound Webster's Third New International Dictionary.

Ann Arbor one of the smartest cities in United States

Right after ranking Detroit as the most "miserable city" in United States, Forbes has come out with its list of the Smartest Cities in United States. Ann Arbor which is just 40+ miles west of Detroit, has been ranked the 4th smartest city in United States. The cities ahead of Ann Arbor, MI are Boulder - CO, Bethesda - MD, Ithaca - NY.

Here's a look at all the smartest cities on Google Maps.

Shravani Mikkilineni in Intel Science Talent Search 2008 - Finals

Shravani Mikkilineni an Indian American who attends Detroit Country Day School has made it to - Intel Science Talent Search 2008 - Finals. She is one of 40 finalists from all over United States which includes 8 Indian - Americans.

Check out this Google Maps View of Indian-American Finalists which shows the High School Locations.

University of Michigan and Michigan State - Best Values in Public Colleges

Kiplinger.Com has come out with their list of 100 Best Values in Public Colleges. Michigan has just 2 colleges in the list - Michigan State University and University of Michigan

I have mashed up the list at Kiplinger's with Google Maps. For a look at the entire list of 100 Colleges click here.

Click here to look at the methodology used in coming up with the rankings.

Math and Reading Test Scores

In Michigan 62% of the students scored proficient or better in Math Tests administered by the State of Michigan. This compared to 29% of the students in Michigan who scored proficient or better in Nationally administered Tests.

Whereas in Reading 82% of the students scored proficient or better in Reading Tests administered by the State of Michigan. This compared to 32% of the students in Michigan who scored proficient or better in Nationally administered Tests.

Check out Google Maps View of Test Scores in other States including Michigan.

73 year old man from Rajasthan sits for his 10th Grade Exam......

Shivcharan Jatav a 73 year old man from Rajasthan appeared for his 10th Grade exam and failed again for the 39th time. He appeared for the exam for the 1st time in 1969.

He says "कोई बात नही, हम अगले साल फिर कोशिस करेंगे ! यह एक्षम् पास करूंगा तो शायद मुझसे कोई शादी कर ले और मुझे अच्छी नौकरी मिल जाये" which means that "No problems! I will try again next year. If I pass this exam then chances of me getting married and getting a good job is very good".

for more on this story click here.

International Academy, Bloomfield Hills, MI ranked in Top 10 Best High Schools

Newsweek has come out with the list of Top High Schools in America. International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, MI has been ranked 7th. Here's a Google Maps view of the Top 100 High Schools in America.