BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Tiger Woods

Part 10/10

Posted on : July 8, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements.

Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player (Jack Nicklaus leads with 18), and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. Additionally, Woods is only the second golfer, after Jack Nicklaus, to have achieved a career Grand Slam three times. Woods has won 16 World Golf Championships, and has won at least one of those events each of the 11 years they have been in existence.

Woods has held the number one position in the world rankings for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record ten times, the Byron Nelson Award for lowest adjusted scoring average a record eight times, and has the record of leading the money list in nine different seasons.

On December 11, 2009, Woods announced he would take an indefinite leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after he admitted infidelity. His multiple infidelities were revealed by over a dozen women, through many worldwide media sources. Woods returned to competition for the 2010 Masters on April 8, 2010, after a break lasting 20 weeks.

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Lady Gaga

Part 9/10

Posted on : July 7, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; March 28, 1986) is an American recording artist. She began performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side in 2003 and enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She soon signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. During her early time at Interscope, she worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of Akon, who recognized her vocal abilities, and signed her to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

Released on August 19, 2008, her debut album, The Fame, reached number one in the UK, Canada, Austria, Germany and Ireland, and reached the top-ten in numerous countries worldwide; in the United States, it peaked at two on the Billboard 200 chart and topped Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Its first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", co-written and co-produced with RedOne, became international number-one hits, topping the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States as well as the charts of other countries. The album later earned a total of six Grammy Award nominations and won awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording. In early 2009 she embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the fourth quarter of the year, she had released her second studio album The Fame Monster, with the global chart-topping lead single "Bad Romance", as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour.

Lady Gaga is inspired by glam rock artists such as David Bowie and Queen, as well as pop musicians such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. She has also stated fashion is a source of inspiration for her songwriting and performances. Gaga was ranked the 73rd Artist of the 2000-10 decade by Billboard. As of May 2010, Gaga has sold over 15 million albums and over 40 million singles worldwide. In May 2010, Time magazine included Gaga in its annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In June 2010, Forbes listed Gaga fourth on its list of the 100 Most Powerful and Influential celebrities in the world; she is also ranked as the second most powerful musician in the world.

BigGyan - "Big" Blue Ocean

Posted on : July 6, 2010

Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy proposed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD.  Blue Ocean strategy promotes creating new market space or "Blue Ocean" rather than competing in an existing industry which already has heavy competition "Red OCean". The book has sold more than a million copies in its first year of publication.

When we started BigGyan we didn't realize we were creating one of the Blue Oceans. We didn't knew, because blue oceans cannot be created they are found, like we found one. BigGyan started with a simple concept that learning should be sexy, should be cool, should be fun. Basically, the inate human nature is that - "People love to learn but hate to be taught" as apty put by Michael Yacobian, Trainer. The learning should be fun so that people want to do it not have to do it. We all have experiences where some great teachers taught us, we not only remember them but we also remember what they taught. These teachers made their classes fun. This was in the face of traditional learning, where the whole education process is treated like a military exercise. Discipline is more important than learning per se and new methods are not tried as often.

So we started working on the idea. The Big aim was to provide all teachers/trainers with tools that they can use to make their teaching/training more sexy, more fun and more useful. Thereby making teachers/trainers job interesting as well. Within months of launching, we saw competitors emerge and die as they brought in their products, some were mere rip-offs and some really contributed something new.

In our industry, there has been only two major landmark products - Smart Class by Educomp and BigGyan Cloud eLearning by iSilkRoute. Smart Class is a closed product as Educomp maintains full control over the product. They sell it to education institutes, generally in multi-year deals. Although, Educomp started out as the technology provider but now it has become an education provider. Today, Educomp runs its own schools and own coaching institutes, thereby becoming a competitor of its own clients in a way. At BigGyan we are committed to remain a technology provider and be the best, and if possible, Google of eLearning. BigGyan is an open project. Anyone who sees value can use BigGyan to sex up their class. Educomp might be aiming to be the Microsoft of education. We don't give a damn. We aim to be Google. We don’t sell anything except a dream to sex up learning environments and communities.

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Harrison Ford

Part 8/10

Posted on : July 6, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American film actor and producer. Ford is best known for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. He is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. His four-decade career also includes roles in several other Hollywood  blockbusters, including Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One, and What Lies Beneath. At one point, four of the top five box-office hits of all time included one of his roles. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.

In 1997, Ford was ranked # 1 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. As of July 2008, the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total almost $3.4 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star.

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Tom Hanks

Part 7/10

Posted on : July 3, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title role in Forrest Gump, Commander James A. Lovell in Apollo 13, Captain John H. Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Joe Fox in You've Got Mail and Chuck Noland in Cast Away. Hanks won consecutive Best Actor Academy Awards, in 1993 for Philadelphia and in 1994 for Forrest Gump. U.S. domestic box office totals for his films exceed $3.5 billion. He is the father of actor Colin Hanks.

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Mark Zuckerberg

Part 6/10

Posted on : July 2, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook with fellow classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard. He is currently one of the youngest billionaires in the world with personal wealth of US$4 billion in 2010.

Education System

A little history

Posted on : July 1, 2010

►Only way to really learn anything is by studying history of it. I will use following chapters to build up the context for my later chapters and to show why we are where we are and how all this is interconnected.

►Until the British came to India, education in India was primarily dominated by Guru-Shisya parampara (Teacher-student tradition). The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata aptly capture the education environment in such times. Guru (the teacher) imparted his knowledge to Shisya (the student) and was considered above God. The single biggest advantage of this system was deep bonding between teachers and students as a Shisyas used to dedicate 10 to 15 years of their lives serving and living with Guru in a Gurukul (a school). At the end of the education, the student gave Guru Dakshina (fee) to the Guru. However, only a handful of Shisyas could be educated by the system. As many parents would not want to be separated from their children from 10-15 formative years fo their lives. Moreover, the education was very much dependant on the Guru, in terms of what he wanted to teach or knew. Students/parents had no say at all as far as the course curriculum was concerned. In most scenarios students/parents didn’t even had any preference as they didn’t knew what was useful.

British education system

►With the advent of British in India, they brought in their productized/processised education system. This probably was the single biggest positive contribution of British to India.

►The new education system was a more “scientific” way of teaching – it entailed that some basic skills like writing, reading and listening were taught first. Thereafter, as the child grows and her capabilities increase she would be introduced to other subjects like mathematics, science, social studies and languages. For a period the student is taught these subjects to a basic level. Thereafter, student/parents have option what to pursue next based on student's interests and social/economic environment prevailing at the time.

This new system could teach more students and finally became a de-facto method of teaching students

Classroom as we know it

Today classroom as we know it is a room in which teaching or learning activities can take place. Typical classroom will include a large writing surface (a blackboard or a whiteboard) where the instructor or students can share notes, graphs and drawings (with limited detail) with other members of the class.

Challenges to the classroom

While the classroom is clearly the dominant setting for learning, the flexibility of classroom instruction is often called into question.

Teachers are unable to use interactive graphs and animations, videos to enhance students learning experience.

Further, learning is limited to classroom only. Outside classroom there is a disconnect among students themselves and also between students and teachers.

Before seeing how eLearning completely transforms classroom based study, lets see another way of teaching apart from classroom based study.

 

Distance learning

►Distance learning is the poor cousin of classroom based learning.

►Lets start with it’s history. When was it first used? Where was it first used?

►As a concept it has existed since long. We all know the story of "Eklavya and Dronacharya“ in the great epic of Mahabharta. Eklavya, an aspiring Shisya was refused education by Dronacharya (Guru). Yet he managed to learn without direct contact with guru. He acquired skills and knowledge of the level of Arjuna (who was best student of Dronacharya) bu watching him from a distance. He was the first person to have learnt using distance learning (at least in the mythology).  Conceptually, it was the first time Indian education system was shaken. Much has changed since then. But it gave an idea teachers presence enhances the effect of content but content is king.

►Since then the question has always been - how much distance. Read some examples on right.

1. In 1728: Boston Gazette published an advertisement regarding teaching short hand by sending Lessons weekly to interested learners.

2. First institution sponsored distance education began in the United States in 1874 at Illinois Wesleyan University.

3. First dedicated university for correspondence was setup in 1883: The Correspondence University of Ithaca, New York (a correspondence school) was founded in 1883.

4. The term “distance education” was first used in a catalog for 1892 of University of Wisconsin-Madison.

5. In a short story “The Machine Stops” (published in 1909), E.M.Forster describes an audio/video communication network used to deliver lectures a remote audience. To read more about of use of technology for providing education in India and Abroad, see my blog post -

Shaking up

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – James Cameron

Part 5/10

Posted on : July 1, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and inventor. His writing and directing work includes Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic  and his return to feature films with Avatar, Cameron spent some years creating documentary films, and also co-developing the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist,[4]  Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies.

In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$1.9 billion in North America and US$5.75 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing directors of all time. Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time.

BigGyan Cloud eLearning: Top 10 College dropouts – Buckminster Fuller

Part 4/10

Posted on : June 24, 2010

All education is great but sometimes life experience is a better educator. Throughout history there have been people who excelled in their fields despite being failures at school.   These people learnt by experimenting with situations that life presented. Here is a list of Top 10 College dropouts selected by BigGyan.

Introduction

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.