Tweet up with Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor is a well known person and need no introduction, when I got to know about the tweet up I was very much surprised in first place as I have never heard of any minister meeting a group of social networking people through internet in an informal session. My impression of a minister was long speeches which only happen at rallies and election meetings. This man was however different from other politicians. I became a fan of Shashi Tharoor after the tweet up.

It was informal and he was not carrying any baggage of being a minister or other achievements of his, he was very much approachable and responding to all the questions positively. This tweet up has changed my impression of politicians.

I always  looked up to people like APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr.Manmohan Singh who made to the highest office in the nation. I would love to become a politician but sad that there is no definite way how you can enter politics and do the required to progress as a politician, if you choose it as a career. You can serve the society best when you are a decision maker. I hope we have more politicians like Mr.Shashi Tharoor who is educated and has a positive approach towards the society.

Lessons we learnt from Recession.

We have seen a new calamity called recession in the last few months, it did not give us a warning on our weather forecast nor we can estimate the damage done. People in all parts of the world were caught unaware and were left questioning what went wrong. What actually went wrong? Why did this downturn happen? There is an old saying in Telugu which I would translate ” One which rises rapidly would fall someday”. The inherent intent I guess is that one should grow with stability.

Once tsunami struck we all learnt lessons from it, we brought in systems which would give tsunami alerts and help us in protecting our selves and minimizing the losses. I guess recession was more dangerous than that, as we may not have any warning systems in place and there is no immediate way of protecting ouself. We however learnt lessons from recession also.

According to me recession was a result of the credit expenses done by citizens in a particular part of the world. This credit expenditure created a huge hollow hole in the finance circulation in the world. This hole had to be filled which was done by the income of other parts of the world, governments have to shell out huge stimulus packages to fill in this hole. Finally we were able to come out of this downfall. The one obvious lesson we learn from this is “We should only spend when we have enough to spend”. Spending on credit would personally effect an individual’s finances and when done is large scale would effect the global financial system. And “Always save for a rainyday”. I hope recession never occurs again.

Virtualization – Back bone of cloud

Virtual refers to something which do not exist in reality. We use a technique called Virtualization in cloud computing which is the heart of the cloud. The cloud service providers setup data centers at various locations. This data center is a repository of processing capability and storage capability. The idea is to extend these capabilities to various customers . The advantage to the customer is that they need not invest a lot in infrastructure but pay nominally to the service provider.

In order to extend this kind of service the technique primarily used among various cloud service providers is Virtualization. In line with the definition of virtual, virtualization technique in cloud computing also gives an impression of the resources which actually do not exist in reality.

In order to use the cloud service now a developer can use the API given by the cloud service provider to describe application’s initial composition onto virtual machines, but also how it scales and evolves to accommodate workload changes. The developer should have a complete vision about the application and its scalability.

The challenge here however lies in predicting the scalability extent of all the applications running in a data center. As the cloud is based on virtualization, the availability of the service and the integrity of the data are in doubt. The data security and integrity is totally dependent on the practices followed by the cloud service provider, their principles of resource allocation and recoverability. The cloud user need some techniques to ensure that their data is safe and their application is up and running.

I think its inherent in our nerves that we are skeptical about a service which is not real. That might be the reason we are hesitant to spend on credit cards. Lets find out what can we conclude about the cloud .

Clouds in the Net.

As discussed in my previous blog on cloud computing, this new form of service is useful for beginners. Small and Medium firms can experiment with their ideas . The cloud solution is inexpensive as the experimentation do not require procuring the underlying infrastructure and it allows you to scale your systems horizontally and the user is supposed to pay only for the storage and compute resources consumed by the application. This setup converts the storage and compute resources into utilities, i.e pay for what you use.

There are advantages and disadvantages for everything we use, it is up to the user to weigh the advantages to decide whether to go for it or not. If we count the advantages of cloud.

1. Useful for experimentation.
2. High capacity systems available at low cost.
3. Accommodates surge computing.

Innovative ideas are meaningful only when put to implementation. Cloud enables innovation as there is less economic burden. People can deploy their experiment on cloud and discard if it is not feasible after deployment.

The end user who uses a cloud pays only for the amount of resources used, it is possible to have high capacity systems at lower prices as compared to owning the systems.

Surge computing is a situation where a particular application might see a sudden spike in the service requests. In a traditional system when this kind of situation occurs the server with its limited capability may go down. As cloud offers horizontal scalability, in case of a spike additional virtual servers are brought up to handle the additional traffic.

When we look at the disadvantages of cloud computing, we can list out the following.

1. Security of data stored on a third party server is unknown.
2. Confidentiality of data stored and transferred on the cloud is unknown.

Even if there is a security mechanism in place how robust is the mechanism. To gain wide acceptance these issues are to be addressed.

Cloud Computing…whats the buzz?

Cloud Computing is a very common word heard among the technical people these days. What is really exciting about it? Cloud is used synonymously to the internet. It is not that we have not been using internet before the word cloud computing came into limelight. The new idea is about using internet to provide Infrastructure as a Service(Iaas). The essence of cloud computing is to provide high processing capabilities and storage capabilities to the end user. The best part here is the end user need not own these capabilities but they are priced according to their utility. This kind of set up enables small and medium enterprises to have high performance and processing capabilities on ad hoc basis without actually owning the infrastructure.

This kind of set up opens up an opportunity for many entrepreneurs to try their ideas at a nominal price, where they can use the processing and storage capabilities as utilities and only pay according to the usage. This is a very good idea to start off, but as the organization grow the requirements of processing and storage will also grow. What about the sustainability of the process on cloud? How safe and reliable are the processes? Can someone completely bank upon the cloud to run their business to whatever extent the organization’s business grow? Is there any threshold after which the organization cannot depend on the cloud but has to switch to their own infrastructure?

These are the issues we need to really understand before starting off with using the technique for the organization. The reliability and long term sustainability of the process is to be assessed before initiating the process.

Popularity in India

When I started blogging I used to write blogs mostly on technical aspects, now and then whne something interesting strikes to me I would write it as a general thought. I always keep a track of the stats regarding number of views to my blog. When I was writing pure technical articles the number of views were very low. The graph showed very few spikes. One fine day a funny thought struck to my mind about some lyrics of Hindi songs which were really funny. If I start mocking them I think my blog would never end. I wrote a blog on an instance of these funny lyrics almost a month ago. Since then I have atleast some views everyday. I have not written anything else after that but the views are still striking.
Two things are certainly popular in Inda, movies and cricket. People love both of them. Many products piggy back on the popularity of these two entities. Ultimately cricketers and movie stars make money.

Understanding SCORM.

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Refernece Model. The motive behind developing any standard is to achieve interoperability which in turn would ensure reusability. When an instructor develops a course module through e-learning, the intent would be to reach as many as possible. Technical issues should not hamper the reach. Any LMS or e-learning course module is SCORM compliant, it can be used by a broader audience.

SCORM do not describe about the features of an LMS. SCORM describes how the content of the module be packaged, how the content communicates with the LMS, how can the user navigate through various aspects of the course say video clips, power point presentations etc. In short the interface between the content and the LMS which ensures interoperability with other systems. There are various content authoring tools which produce SCORM compliant content.

There are various versions of SCORM, each version addressing different aspect of interoperability, it depends on the application we use to decide which SCORM version we are willing to comply to. There are many benefits once you achieve SCORM compliance. There can be instances where we have to integrate certain course modules with a pre-existing LMS then the utility of SCORM comes into picture.

In brief, having interoperability achieved we can attain re usability, remote accessibility. In the context of remote accessibility I can quote the example of Internet. Internet is possible today because of standardization of network operations, we can thus access remote e-learning resources once we have the systems SCORM compliant. Therefore SCORM compliance is essential to make the e-learning resources reachable to a wider audience.

Funny Lyrics of Hindi Songs

These days I have come across some funny lyrics in various hindi songs. I don’t know who the lyricist is but …..hats off man. One such song is from Kambakht Ishq, the lyrics go like this…”you’re my baby but u r driving me crazy crazy boy…you’re my baby but ur driving driving…….continues. These lyrics are said to be from a hindi song, but what I understand is its neither hindi nor english nor any thing else. These songs are played on television and radio so often that they get into your brain and you keep humming them unconsciously. Every time I sing this song I just can’t stop laughing at myself saying what am I singing.This is real “emotional attyachar”.

There is one this song called emotional attaychar from DevD. I really dont understand how can someone think something so insane and proudly promote it. It is something like hammering from within….real emotional attyachar.You cannot understand the lyrics of the song until you read the lyrics on television…thanks to those music channels who display the lyrics.

There was a song being played yesterday, shahid kapoor doing some crazy dance in it….the movie name I could make out but the song title was so weird that I just could not pronounce….but my daughter loves all these fast beat songs, so I have to play them because that is the only way I make her eat her lunch. “Bache kya kya nahi karwate “

What does an LMS do?

In simple terms, LMS can be defined as a package which can be used to design and manage online courses. These systems also allow evaluating the course taker’s performance. The course may be designed according to the designer and the course content may include presentations, webinars and other multimedia content along with the supporting material provided by the course designer. The course taker can access these courses and take the assessment as prescribed by the course designer and complete the course. The LMS is responsible for evaluating and grading the performance of the course taker.

Apart from these tasks of course design and evaluation there a set of other administrative tasks also which are carried out by the LMS. It is a multi user system where there are a set of course designers who host their courses and there are a number of course takers who take courses appropriate to their requirements.The LMS manages the users and also their access to respective courses.There should be an appropriate permission granting system in place, to ensure security of the courses and allow access to the information to appropriate users only.

The LMS should be able to manage ‘n’ number of users taking up ‘n’ different courses simultaneously and their independent learning paths, performance reports etc.

Collaborative learning should be possible through forums, also it should be interoperable in order to collaborate.There are a set of standards in place which the LMS should be complying with in order to ensure interoperability and scalability. Most of the LMS are expected to be SCORM compliant.

Discovering Learning Management Systems

I was in constant search for some solution which would provide resources to learners with some automation involved. When I was teaching in college, I saw a good mix of students.In a class of 60 there were students who are quick learners and can learn things on their own, another set of students who learn at a moderate speed with appropriate guidance and another set who are slow learners and need to work very hard and as a lecturer I had to repeat things multiple times. As I was responsible for the entire class I used to keep an average speed to ensure every one gets the concept.

The first set of students were quick and self learners, I somehow used to feel that I am unable to do the sufficient to sharpen their skills.After I came out of college I was thinking of a solution for thoseand was searching through the net if I can develop something appropriate for self learners or if there is anything already in place for such needs. I came across learning managment systems.

In my view LMS is a variant of DBMS where the data and operations are the difference. We have a repository of information in the form of courses, which are accessed by people in different roles.The roles are course designers and students. Now in the context of courses we have new operations involved to carry out the courses. Some of these operations are assessment of the student and evaluation of the test taken.Let us have a closer look at each step of the learning process.We have two perspectives of viewing the learning process.

• Course Designer perspective.
• Course taker perspective.

Course Designer perspective : The designer aims at developing a course which is understandable to a huge audience, aims at having high technical standards included in the course ultimately adding a huge value to the course taker. This involves a lot of creativity and the skill of using technology to present the essential skills.

Course Taker perspective : The course taker when takes up an online course has certain requirements in mind. The obvious requirement in any course irrespective of online or classroom course is simplicity. The course should never sound like Greek and Latin to the course taker.However the simplicity of the course to a great extent depends on the course designer’s expression.

In further discussions we will have a look at what an LMS can offer for course design. There are a host of LMS’s available few of them are open source and few others are not.What I am trying to figure out is the basic components of LMS and its architecture.