Learning Online

I wanted to post this yesterday as a response to Vivek’s earlier post.

 

Closer home the Centre For Distance Engineering Education Programme (http://www.cdeep.iitb.ac.in/) , IIT Bombay offers live webcast courses for free. CDEEP also offers a value-added mode that offers additional features like video on demand, learning management system etc. Each value-added course is priced at Rs 1000.

 

What opportunities does it raise for an educational company like ours? It is probably an indicator that digital learning is in, and there are takers. The immediate results may not be too grand, but we need to keep working at it.

 

Since this concept is still in its nascent stage, it is important that we keep ourselves updated. For this purpose, I would like to introduce the Digital Learning Blog (http://pearsoned-digitallearning.blogspot.com/). If you stumble across anything that you think that we ought to know in the field of digital learning and if you have any ideas, please do drop in a few lines to gbanerjee.b.digilearning@blogspot.com. Let’s see where this takes us.

 

The next contest

It seems that it needs a prize to get you to write! Does anyone have anything to say about the few days the Higher Ed team spent in Goa?

I am running low on my stocks of wine, so maybe for this one, I will make it a dinner for two at a nice restaurant, let’s not get carried away with 5 star.

Articles which carry pictures of Vivek Govil dancing are immediately disqualified.

 

Folks from the school team, or others who were not at Goa will have to think of a topic of their own in order to participate. Maybe how nice the office is with half the people missing.

 

Oh, and I got my prize for contributing to the NSM theme, thank you very much. It felt good.

 

Vivek Govil

You Tube EDU

Take a look at www.youtube.com/edu

It's YouTube's education initiative, and has lectures from many great universities available online. I spent 40 minutes trying to follow the General Theory of Relativity before I gave up, but it was cool to think of myself as a physics major at Stanford for a little while. (the lecture is 1 hour and 38 minutes long, so I didn't last that long!)

It's a great opportunity to learn. It's also worth thinking about what kinds of opportunities this raises for an education company like ours. Any thoughts? Let me know.


Vivek Govil


Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Goa Redux

I'm back home from our Higher Education NSM in Goa, and I think we all had a great time. Well done to everyone who was involved in the planning and execution of the event.

The format was tighter this year, and we managed to cover the agenda in two days, rather than the three we did before, and I think this works well.

The team seems confident of beating our budgets, but the next 4 months are going to test us all, the editors and manufacturing to get the books out on schedule, the sales force to drive sales, and the Operations team to execute the orders.

The hotel was beautiful, good service, and I was able to sneak out time for swimming and volleyball. I am dreading seeing some of the pictures from the dance on the last night!

Vivek Govil
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

It’s 1st April. This day, twenty seven years ago I was born. I look back and imagine myself in the cradle, crying; people looking at me, smiling and saying- You're going to be the butt of all jokes, all your life!! I wonder if they had to actually touch me to believe I was a baby, and not a hoax or prank.

Since that day, I have made people smile at the very onset of the chat about birthdates.

"so u were born on fools day!!"

"its a nice day to have one's birthday"

"don’t tell me"

"are u kidding"

"don’t fool me"..etc etc etc....

But I have not met one person who was normal after hearing my birthdate...

In my toddler days, I used to celebrate my birthday on 5^th April. Just to escape the ridiculous notion that everyone born on 1st april are fools, I made sure that no one ever came to know of my real birth-date.....I followed a sequence before disclosing my real birthday.....I made every one believe that since Isaac Newton was born on 1st April and is a genius, so am I. (Cooking up Newton's birth-date at that age was a sure sign of genius, wasn't it?) Talking of Newton, my analytical mind tries to look at the brighter side of it all (Everything happens for a reason, after all). I can invite people for my birthday bash, without dreading of a hefty bill. Knowing very well half the people won't show up thinking it's a prank.

Thank God for that!!

 

Anita Yadav

A video dedicated to NSM

Dear All

 

As we all know that NSM is just around the corner and most of us will be going to Goa to be a part of it. I have a suggestion that why not we utilize the video footage and the photographs that we capture in Goa, to create a small video film (Or a music video with effects and background score). The video can serve as a memoir for the annual event. I have shot and edited some short films during my college days and will be happy to provide my assistance on this.

 

Do provide your valuable suggestions and feedback for this.

 

 

Regards

Navneet Khurana

Promotion Executive

Marketing PTG and HE

Pearson Education,

482, F.I.E., Patparganj,

New Delhi -110092

Ph: 011 – 43030217, +919891565754

E-Mail: navneet.khurana@pearsoned.co.in

 

A Year at Pearson

Yesterday was my first anniversary at Pearson, and I am not sure how my report card should read.

 

2008 was the most fun I have had in my working life, and believe me, I have enjoyed most of my career up to here. It has also been the most intense work I have done so far, and it’s a company where I can see myself building a career. I read somewhere that the average lifespan of a CEO today is about 18 months, so that may be presumptuous but I hope that’s what happens.

 

On the performance front, it’s been a pretty good year, as all of you know. I do think that we have removed some of the kinks in the organisation structure, and that we now have a team that is more cohesive than before. I think we are also shedding some of the petty beauracracy that bogged us down, and I hope this will allow us to be more nimble and market focused. I also hope we are moving to a more open culture, but one which is still performance based. So, there are some good things achieved, or partly achieved.

 

But when I look at my notes from the early weeks in the company, there are so many areas where I feel we have not made as much progress as we could have, so I think maybe it’s a reasonable start, but there’s still so much to do!

 

If you have ideas that you think should be on my agenda, or comments on what I may have done well or badly, please email me. Or just write and say, Happy Anniversary!

 

Vivek Govil

 

 

Some pictures of the new office

These are artist impressions, but they should give you some idea of what the new office might look like.
Here is the reception :

Here are the workstations :

Here is a view of the manager's cabin :

Here is the board room :
And finally here is the breakaway room, where you can have coffee or lunch:

School NSM destination

We can plan out some place in RAJASTHAN

NSM DESTINATION

KERALA GOD'S OWN COUNTRY


This one line about kerala has fascinated me ever since my school days,so I'd vote kerala as our NSM destination.

Kerala as we all know is a land of greenery sandwiched between the western ghats, on the east & the Arabian on the west,It offers almost everything from beaches to sanctuaries to hill stations.Unique feature being its backwaters,house boats on offer to catch a glimpse of the nature ,Overall the natural surroundings are breathtaking.

This is what I've read & heard about the state,now when I've an option I don't really wanna lose it & go all out!!!!!!!!