My encounter with MOOC: Tools Learned

As in my previous posts I was talking about online courses I joined. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). Online education is going in completely different direction. Students are getting benefited by these classrooms as compare to the live classrooms. Some of the courses I joined let me provide some details about theses courses.

1. Crash Course On Creativity
2. Technology and Entrepreneurship
3. Mobile Health without borders

All the above courses I joined are on venture lab. MOOC by Stanford University. Large no. of students from all over the world is participating in these online courses.

 Till now great learning is attached with these courses. Doing assignments, getting reviewed by your peers (peers review) sometimes we get angry because of bad reviews :) but still comments by others motivate you a lot to do better further. Furthermore working in team. Completing team assignments is amazing experience. You team up with strangers and strangers become friend with time. Google Hangouts, Chatting on various places. Participating in discussions. Proposing something, Criticizing at the same time. It was the thing that I never expected before but how the learning is shaping is amazing experience. Some of the tools about which I learned during the course from the team mates and students are.

1. Podio (project management and team management tool)
2. Leancanvas and Leandstartup to make business canvases of your model. A easy and efficient way to present your B plan.
3. Got familiar with Google Hangout nice way to participate in discussion with team members. Although their is limitation that maximum 10 person can participate at a time. But moreover you can record your hangout session and later can broadcast it on youtube. Is not it is great.
4. Designing your image on paper and then later scan it and fill color in it using Adobe Photoshop and Adope Illuminator nice way.
5. Getstudyroom.com here you can start a course separately and can make communities. White board concept is amazing to teach and getting learned by others.
6. Storm Board Real Time Brainstorming and collaboration using sticky notes.    
7.  Making effective presentation using Prezi.
8. Converting PPT to videos.
9. Brainstorming on google drive and creating google group.
10. Adding meeting in google calendar for fixing time of google hangout.
11. powtoon.com effective way of presentation 

So these were some of the learning flashes I learned during the course. I will update you with more.
I see great future of MOOC and I bet next big thing in education is online courses and online tools to study and collaborate.

Happy learning and sharing. 

Team Building and Coordination

Crash course on creativity- I have awesome team with me they all are hardworking, full of enthusiasm and moreover very talented. I am lucky to have such team working with me. Anna, Laxmi and Rohin they all are awesome teamplayer.
Overall that is great experience to work on a team assignment with them.

Our power is our team. We will make the best.
We started to work on group assignment. Let us see where we will end up.

Happy creativity..

An Imagination : My Autobiography - First Assignment Venture Lab

As the venture lab course of creativity was demanding to make cover page of your autobiography and write something about you. I have designed my autobiography cover this is what I want to be like and after some years I will live my dream and my autobiography cover would look like something this -

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And this is the logic and something about the cover story is as follows  :

Whom To Blame? is Autobiography of "Saurabh Heda".
He won and lost many battles in his life. As the first line of the cover page says author of Best seller science fiction, this line suggests that Saurabh has great passion towards science and he write books to express his fascinating imagination about science.

In this book Saurabh is trying to find out reasons behind his success and failures in his life.

Whom to blame for failure  and Whom to give credit for success. Various incidents in his life teach him various lessons. Some of the instances make author think that He is only lucky enough to get the success and Sometimes he think that why God punish him only. But finally he discovered that Hard Work is only the key to success.

Cover page last part indicates:
In the first phase of life saurabh think Am I procrastinator? In the second phase when he is youth and young he ask to himself Am I flirt? and In the final phase when He get all success he ask Am I hardworker? Still author is trying to discover answers to these questions in his autobiography.
Clicking on submit button will make you to go through the fascinating pages of his autobiography. :)

A crash course on Creativity : By Tina Seelig Venture Labs at Stanford

Joined this course on creativity by Tina Seelig . Course is offered by Stanford Technology Venture Labs.
 Course started from today i.e 22 April 2013 itself and looks very interesting that is why I thought that why not share my experience and my learning about this course on this blog.

First Assignment's problem statement is great and very creative. I appreciate beauty of the assignment and It enhanced a creative spark in me.

Assignment is to design a cover page for your Autobiography. Isn't it is interesting? 

Ideas are not cheap they are free.
If any of you are interested to take part in this course. Go and join this here. Let us join this course create teams, contribute and learn.

Will share my feedback and course content on my blog posts.

And till then Happy creative thinking..

ARM MPS system : Demo application

In this post I will cover ARM MPS system briefly. ARM MPS system in long Microcontroller Prototyping system from ARM pvt. ltd.

 From the name it is clear that this hardware development kit is used to prototype ARM micro controllers. What do we mean by prototyping is that we can make a full microcontroller with all the peripherals around it using FPGAs inside the system.

Software requirements:
1. MPS system CD come with the development kit.
2. HPE_DESK
3. Quartus
4. Keil MDK from ARM systems

There are two FPGA present in the ARM MPS system.

1. CPU FPGA
2. DUT FPGA

CPU FPGA is used to prototype processor. We do have encrypted images of arm cortex m0, m1, m3 and m4 with us  so what we do is to burn these images on the CPU FPGA using HPE_desk software.This is how we implement processor to our microcontroller.

DUT FPGA contain software image for all the peripherals that we require for our application. CPU and DUT FPGA two FPGAs are used in the system so that separating processor image from the peripheral image.
A  peripheral image can be made and can be compiled and ported to the DUT FPGA using Quartus.

Hence using this full system we can test 3rd party peripherals with required processor without licensing the processor. Hence can be used for the testing of the systems before actually making hardware.

Finally if system is ready we can execute demo application on our system using Keil MDK software. Keil MDK is used to compile and port the application code on the developed system. Here we can test our developed system by porting applications on it. We ported Blinky program and wrote text on the LCD of the MPS system.

We installed all the softwares on windows 7 platform but there are some issues which needs to be tackled while using Windows 7 otherwise if you use Windows XP then everything is working perfectly fine.  

This is just a brief introduction of MPS system otherwise it has enormous capability with it. OKay so explore yourself with the system.

Last but very important while I was executing this Demo on the system engineer from ARM Kishore Amarnath helped me to execute it on the system. All the conversation went on mobile and email. I am really grateful to him for his precious time that he helped me in sorting out the issues.

Minsterial Visit at IIT Jodhpur for the Foundation stone ceremony of permanent campus

There was ministerial visit scheduled at IIT Jodhpur for the foundation stone ceremony of the permanent campus and MHRD minister Pallam Raju was invited for laying the foundation stone at permanent campus of IIT Jodhpur. Rajasthan current CM Mr. Ashok Gehlot was also among the dignitaries to visit IIT Jodhpur permanent campus. But CM could not come because of some health issues as it is what they told us. Don't know whether it was health issue or IIT Jodhpur is not vote bank for him so he did not visit. Let us leave that I think he is not destined to see the glory of the great institution.

For your information presently IIT Jodhpur is running in MBM campus. Days before the visit preparations were started. Painting, Denting, and Proper Lab arrangements were done. Preparation were happening in the full swing. I was also preparing for the demonstration in our SoC lab. Lab coordinator told me to prepare some demo on development boards. I prepared Demo on ARM MPS system and EVALBOT.

Finally the time come and Pallam Raju came to our campus. He came to our lab for hardly 2 Minutes. Finally all the students went to permanent campus cite for witnessing foundation stone ceremony. Huge media was present and several eminent personality were present there to witness the ceremony. Among the dignitaries Pallam Raju, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chandresh Kumari (MP from Jodhpur constituency) she is also cabinet minister, Dr. Patnayak from DRDO, only one woman chief guest she is secretary in HRD ministry some Sharma I forgot her name, Maharaja of Jodhpur Gaj Singh and obviously director of IIT Jodhpur Dr. P.K. Kalra with  all the faculty members were present there.

 A plantation drive was also conducted and finally foundation stone laid by Pallam Raju. Sweet was served to all the attendees. With the speeches of all dignitaries everything went fine. Special thing was that everyone gave their speech in our Mother Language "Hindi" and It was amazing to hear speech from Pallam Raju in Hindi :).  This is how we enjoyed our whole day (16 April, 2013). I don't know enjoyed or something else :)  but yeah from my inside I was happy that I am a part of the IIT group now, so what it is not old IIT. The thought was striking in my mind that, How it would be after some years when I will visit this unique campus and my chest went up in proud.  

TED talk by Massimo Banzi - Arduino open source Imagination

Massimo Banzi Innovator one of the inventor of Arduino open source hardware platform. The platform itself has all the design files for the board open sourced on the web. You can make your own board can make changes in it.

 He starts his TED talk with the line "You don't need anybody's permission to make something and create something great".

First example banzi gave was of the 3d printer makers movement. All the files software as well as hardware available is free on makers website and you can arrange those items and can make 3d printer yourself that is the spirit of DIY :). 
Motherboard and the board that powers this maker 3d printer is  arduino based.
How can we make something that a kid can also use and create, that was the driving force that made them make arduino.
Banzi says if you have any idea just go and make them.  Banzi gave example of magazines and companies that came out by developing products on above Arduino. These companies created solutions for real world problems by using this arduino as a processing element, and their out of the box ideas converted into the million dollar companies. MAKE maganize and Adafruit company are some of the examples. Adafruit company is created by lady and this lady is one of the hero of open source hardware campaign. MAKE magazine gather DIY projects and publish them in very lucid manner.
Other examples and projects Banzi talked about was on Quadcopter equivalent is Arducopter community is building around it DIY's can make themselves too. Another company MATTERNET (a new paradigm for unmanned aerial vehicle) came out by making of a product above arduino.
There were lots of examples like plant interacting with the outer world and making its twitter account and interacting with the real world. GIZMODO etc. etc. Some enthusiasts created earthquake detector this detectors automatically detects and tweets on twitter account. Open mirror digitalhabits.it, Pebbles another company came out with product using arduino. The idea was that your mobile phone is interacting with you watch via bluetooth and showing same stuff that is on your nokia phone to on your watch.  Finally he gave example of Ardusat that is satellite based on arduino, rarest thing that you can imagine, on kickstart this project is in the conceiving phase if you want to contribute you can contribute there.

Banzi : He is italian and have funny accent and i enjoyed his TED talk, very much educative and at the same time great presentation skills with great sense of humour. You inspire me Banzi............

Banzi is one of those contributors who contributed significantly to the open source community. You are one of the star in the community of DIY's :).

Concluding Remark this talk inspired me to create my own open source hardware and software above arduino a great and supportive community is there to help you if you have any problem. You can modify and build already available projects over there, you can change them and  with all of that we can make something  cool something worthy to the society making some solutions that can be useful for the deprived people.
It give me sense that sharing and contributing has great power. My stomach is bumping and my mind is fighting with the thoughts that i can also contribute :) 

---- Happy sharing

----Ideas are worth spreading[TED tagline]. 

Mount exfat file system on Ubuntu

In this part we would mount exfat file system on ubuntu. In general ubuntu can not mount exfat file system the following packages and repositories are required to mount exfat file system on your machine

1. $sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat - For adding particular repository

2. $sudo apt-get update

3. $sudo apt-get install fuse-expat expat-utils
(In case you don't have fuse already installed on your system you have to install fuse too. $sudo apt-get install fuse)

4. then plug in your hard drive and make a directory in the media so that you can mount exfat file system on that directory.

$sudo mkdir /media/exfat

5. now mount exfat file system on it :

$sudo mount /dev/sdb(number) /media/exfat - This command will mount your particular exfat file system drive onto the folder specified. In this case we have specified exfat named folder.

Finally navigate in the folder to excess the contents of hard drive and for 

6. $sudo unmount /media/exfat - Unmounting the drive


Note: In effect sometimes it is not required to make new directory to mount the drive because after installing the required packages you can simply mount it by just clicking on to the required drive to be mounted. If you are not able to see this drive then it is advisable to mount it by making a new directory.

Happy mounting... :)

International workshop on "Quantum Biology" at IIT Jodhpur

Today 26 Jan, 2013 republic day.............
Happy republic day to all of you. Morning program ,"Jan Gan Man", and Nukkad was awesome. Nukkad topic was very irony and related to the latest social issue from which our country is struggling  right now.
All the foreign participants of the workshop attended morning republic day celebration. A voice is coming from my inside --- man we chose best dates to conduct the workshop, they all saw our so called "Cultural values" and we made them stand on "Jan Gan Man during flag hosting". :)

Other than republic day today is second day of the "Quantum Biology" workshop at IIT Jodhpur. Soon IIT Jodhpur is going to set up graduate and post graduate courses in the field of "Quantum Biology" setting up CoE in Quantum biology hasna mat. Speakers were invited from all over the world to take input about course structure and curriculum.

 I was one of the volunteer administering Fooding for the workshop. The only reason for the participation was to get good food during this workshop :) By the way that is only partially true. Workshops and conferences always fascinate me  but the thing was that topic was not matchable with my capabilities or moreover understanding the theme was beyond my intellectual capability.  In spite of all i attended some of the sessions by renowned speakers invited from corners of the world.

Things i learned  (i thought i should share)  in workshop was that sessions were damn boring and all who were there including faculty were like jabardasti bathaiya hein sabko:), some were checking emails on there laptops, some were talking, some were smiling by seeing foreign visitors i am also one of the culprit that korean {sorry}, some were playing around their mobile phones, some were taking nap faculty too i won't name any :) i was too :). Uff Am I writing essay on "A scene @ Railway station"? I am feeling like that :)
I am not saying that we did not earn anything from workshop but question isCan we learn more?

Finally time to conclude,
Some of the points that are bothering me and we should do something about it-

1. How can we make these workshop interesting and understandable by the masses?

2. More interaction and more collaboration among all of us is needed during these kind of workshop.

3. Pre workshop sessions and Pre mind storming sessions should be conducted in the form of seminars, days before the workshop so that we can take maximum benefit from the foreign visitors.  

Overall food was good the only satisfaction i got during the workshop, one more day is left. :)


For me today's Republic day is dedicated to Jyoti Singh Pandey (Nirbhaya).
Jai Hind.



---------------------------------"Let us be the part of change" citation[Nukaad] :)

Installation of Lamp Server on Ubuntu

             $sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

L- Linux
A- Apache
M- MySql
P-  PHP

Steps :

          1. During your installation set your mysql password
 
          2. Then install phpmyadmin using

               $sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin 

          select apache sever for the configuration  option


          3. then open and configure your apache2 to phpmyadmin as follows

          $sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf  
               the above file is  (apache2 configuration file)

          4. Edit this file go at the last and add
            Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf
        to configure phpmyadmin with apache server
      
          5. Last step reload your webserver using
                $sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Yeah Finally your lamp server is up for running on your computer
Open your web browser and type localhost in the url bar and it will show up a message that your browser is installed and up for running

type localhost/phpmyadmin and from here you can modify your database directly. 

A nice tutorial showing the installation procedure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYUZQmM8Bk





--Do yourself...