I went to this talk on 2009-02-11, and I really liked the talk. He mentioned many thought-provoking things, and I really enjoyed the lecture.

By high school, the deck is already loaded against the science teacher, and it is very hard to change students after that.

There are some important qualities that teacher should inculcate.

• Teacher credibility: open ended questioning.
• Don’t challenge beliefs, religious or otherwise. For example, he thinks about students: “I don’t want you to believe evolution, I just want you to understand it”.

Start simple. For example, “what evolves”? Don’t talk about science, but rather about culture: what evolves in the culture.

The teacher’s answers (to students’ questions) must be

• knowledgeable
• respectful
• honest and
• persuasive.

If you show that they are ignorant or stupid or both, you will lose them. Don’t hurt them. Rather, amaze them with your enthusiasm for the subject.

Teachers need to be better trained

• in science
• in logic,
• and importantly, in creationalists’ tactics.

Public and lawmakers need to be educated too.

It is important to realize that science starts with “being curious” and making an observation. (Versus walking in the park with electronic gadgets.) What creationists do to students is to destroy inquisitiveness and curiosity.

If you can inculcate just one quality in your students, let it be CURIOSITY. This makes things interesting, and this applies to teaching at any level. It isn’t faith that makes good science, it is curiosity.

Sometimes, faith dictates so many aspects such that it hampers curiosity (for sure about certain things and objects).

There are a few websites that talk about teaching science. NESC and Talk Origins are just a few.

Teaching advice: Know your stuff VERY WELL. This is very very important. One needs to know things well before one can start defending.

There was this thought that came to mind: Take kids to the nature just for observations. And give them less assignments. This way, they will become more curious. Museums are great for this purpose. Take them to many museums too.

Lukas said that I keep talking about “believing in what empowers me”, everything else being constant. On the same note, everything else remaining the same, it is much more powerful to be curious than having faith.

He suggested that we read Darwin’s diary.

Panel Discussion which followed the lecture

Question: How to deal with competition versus collaboration in a classroom setting.

The question of belief versus evidence.

One of the panelist said that scientist are supposed to dispassionate about interpreting data, not necessarily in their curiosity or passion for figuring things out, or ever in what they choose to look at.
That remembers me of Yee Jiun’s comment in 2005 (I think): “You are a scientist—make distinction between your beliefs and proofs!”
I realized during this panel discussion that I talk a lot about scientific method and all that, but don’t use much of the same. Very passionate about some things… which seems to cloud my understanding.

I asked a question: There are many things that get crystallized by the age of 12. Then how do you deal with religion, and what do you mean when you say “science and religion can coexists”? Does religion (as envisioned by orthodoxes) has any place in childhood? Religion is not just a compartment of life, it is a whole way of living and thinking. Also, how does one deal with the interaction of kids with these kinds of religious people, who might be in your church, and your kid might be taught to listen to them without much of thought.
David gave an example by picking a Christian devout person, and asking if he gave conclusive evidence that ____ never existed… what will be your reaction?
This lady answered (and I really liked the answer): I will be disappointed, but my faith will be unshaken.
And David pointed out that this is the difference between two ways of thinking.
Justin (elementary school teacher) also agreed that by the age of 10-11, the curiosity is already kicked out from many of his school kids.

Pose a question, and just follow the process  naturally.

• No already existing terminology,
• and no pre-conception about things.

This is one wonderful way to develop curiosity in kids.

Justin mentioned that one of the problem is that many teachers themselves have never done scientific inquiry.

I thought about my Gymnastic teacher Laurie. She is such a wonderful teacher. She could take kids from various expertise level, and take them together, and teach all of them something. That is a great example of “teaching various skill level simultaneously”.

(The End)

सर्वधर्मांपरित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज ।
अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभयो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः ।१८:६६।

अच्छा है अभी तक तेरा कुछ नाम नहीं है
तुझको किसी मज़हब से कोई काम नहीं है

5. भटका हुआ मेरा मन था कोई,
6. मिल ना रहा था सहारा… 5, 6
7. लहरों से लङती हुई नाव को जैसे… 7
8. मिल ना रहा हो किनारा… 8
9. इस लडखडाती हुई नाव को जो
10. किसी ने किनारा दिखाया… 3, 4, 1, 2

11. शीतल बनी आज चंदन के जैसी,
12. राघव कृपा हो जो तेरी,… 12
13. उजियाली पूनम की हो जाऐं रातें
14. जो थी अमावस अंधेरी,… 13, 14, 14
15. युग युग से प्यासी मरुभूमी ने जैसे
16. सावन का संदेश पाया… 3, 4, 1, 2

17. जिस राह की मंजिल तेरा मिलन हो
18. उस पर कदम मैं बढाऊं… 17, 18
19. फूलों में खारों में पतछङ बहारों में
20. मैं ना कभी डगमगाऊँ… 19, 20, 20
21. पानी के प्यासे को तकदीर नें जैसे
22. जी भर के अमृत पिलाया… 21, 22, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.

5. घायल मन का पागल पंछी
6. उङने को बेकरार…     6
7. पंख हैं कोमल आँख हैं धुंधली
8. जाना है सागर पार      8
9. अब तू ही इसे समझा    9
10. राह भूले थे कहाँ से हम…   10, 1, 2, 2, 1

11. इधर झूमके गाए जिंदगी
12. उधर है मौत खडी    12
13. कोइ क्या जाने कहाँ है सीमा
14. उलझन आन पडी    14
15. कानों में जरा कह दे   15
16. के आए कौन दिशा से हम…   16, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1…

What I would like to keep track of people’s location right now, where have they been after coming out of the lovely JNVK, where did they go to college, what else they did, what is their contact info, what is their email id, phone number, postal address, and so on. Only sky if the limit for what information could go in here. I will need to figure out how will people react to this, and if somebody does not want their information to be put up on a website, but we will worry about these issues later

Some questions:

• Do we want to include people’s nick names… I am up for it, but if people do not like, and have outgrown them, I understand

How can you help?

• If you see some information missing here, and do know that information, please leave a comment, or send me an email at YogeshwerSharma at gmail dot com, and I would most definitely include that information…

Acknowledgements: This information was compiled with the help of Sheesh Ram, Pritam Yadav, and a lot of help from Sunil. Thnaks a lot for putting your time in to this.

My batch (entered in 1993)

440: Neeta Yadav

441:

442: Amit

443: Rajesh

From Kanina
Nehru House

444:

445: Suman Yadav

From Kareera

446: Pritam Yadav

Email: pritamyadav05 at yahoo.com
Current Job: ?

Got married: July 08, 2008

447:

448: Ajit

From Chamdheda

449:

Bhola, from Manoj’s village.

450: Manoj

Married

451: Manju

From Himmat Singh Village, what is the village by the way?

452: Sandeep

453: Madhu Punia

Dancer?

454: Jayant

455: Bhagwati

From Ghadi Bolni

456: Manoj

457: Sanju

Vinod urf Mungfalli’s sister

458: Vikram

(Seth Ji)

459: Sunil

460: Naresh

461: Vinod

Mungfali

462: Yogeshwer

Email: YogeshwerSharma at gmail dot com
Current Job: Doing PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University, Ithaca NY, USA.

463:

(a short girl)

464: Rakhi Dayma.

465: Sarita

From Lukhi village

466:

467: Savita

Went to many clusters and regional games and a great runner

468: Samarjeet

469: Sunita

470: Sharmila

471:

472: Surajbhan

473:

474: Mahipal

475: Parminder

From Nangal Sirohi

476: Sheesh Ram

Email: sheeshram.yadav at yesbank dot in
Current Job: In Yes Bank, Gurgaon

477:

478:

479: Himmat Singh

480: Neha Yadav

481: Kuldeep

Took TC in 7 th classs
Very short guy

482: Ashok

483:

484: Bhoop Singh

485: Rajesh

486: Rajendra

487: Jitender

488: Sharmila

489:

490: Kuldeep

Ashoka house

491:

492: Ashok

493:

494: Vikrant

From Ashoka house

495: Pawan Khicchi

(from Kareera)

496: Sunil

497: Mitra Sen

498: Sanjeev

From Talwani?

499: Baljeet

(from Jhagdoli)

500: Vikram

(from Jhagdoli)

501: Madresh

502:

503:

504: Om Prakash

From Mohan Pur

505:

506:

507:

508:

509:

510:

511:

512:

513:

514:

515: Bajrang

I heard he got married, is that right?

516:

517: Naveen

People senior to me

Sanjeev Kaushik

Working in Pune

Swarndeep

Working in Pune

Sudharshan

Working in Pune

People junior to me

596: Surender

Kavinder Singh Yadav

From Rasoolpur.

SVN versioning system

Some commands

General purpose commands

svn update

This commands lets you update the current copy from the repository.

Some other useful commands are

svn status

svn status –verbose

svn status –show-updates –verbose

svn checkout svn+ssh://lion/home/yogi/svn/research #check out a copy

svn ls -R svn+ssh://lion/home/yogi/svn/research # list content of the repository

svn commit button.c -m “Fixed a type”

svn revert # for reverting to some older version

svn resolved # after taking care of conflicts, it does not commit the changes to the server…

svn export # like svn checkout but without .svn directories

svn cleanup # this is to be run if svn is holding some locks unnecessarily.

Examining history

svn log # display history of changes to the files

svn diff

svn cat

svn list

Questions about SVN

Change the editor

Using simple mv and rm with svn’ed items

Some questions that don’t deserve a heading…

• How to delete files from the version control without deleting them from the file system.

• Flexible width, so that it does not waste space.
• Does not chop wide preformatted text.

Here are some that I find useful.

• Cutline
• Rubric
  This theme has the issue that heading 1 are big, and all other are really small. There does not seem to be a graceful degradation
• Sandbox
• Sandbox-10
• Shocking blue green
• Silver in the new black.
• The journalist (is okay too)
• Unsleepable (is okay too)
• WordPress classic (the font is not that good)

Isn’t that a coincidence that most of the color themes that I happend to like fall towards the end of the alphabet.

Anyway, after collecting my luggage, I saw that…

Anyway, I started writing this while I was in Helsinki, but I am back to the bay area now, and I don’t feel like writing this right now. At some point in the future, I will complete this article, as well as upload some picture