Professor Srinivasan (Chemistry) is retiring on the 31st of May.He has visited every department this week, thanking everyone of his colleagues, senior and junior. 

He has been one of the best teachers I have come across in this institution. I respect him for his dedication to his profession and for the very dignified manner in which he has conducted himself all these years. 

His passion for Chemistry is reflected in his research work with his scholars. They turn out some of the best research work,  acknoweldged by the academia across the country and abroad. 

The joy he takes in teaching is to be seen - he walks with a spring in his step when he has to go to class and one often hears both pin drop silence and animated interaction in his classes. 

His role as Officer in charge of the Science Association sees him bringing out the best in the first year students. He offers them opportunities to listen to some of the best minds in the field, to organise events and competitions, to carry out project work, etc. Students adore him, both inside and outside the class.

I've seen him in his elements as a Chief Faculty Advisor - one of the best organised, methodical and perfect Chiefs possible. All records are sure to be updated and perfect under him. His compassion is also note-worthy. He has never been hesitant to ask for the rights of teachers and students under his care. 

A service of about 35 years is no mean achievement and to be a professor much loved and respected by his students is an achievement by itself.

Preparation for the Speaking Lab Exam for the first years has been keeping me busy these three days.

Tomorrow and the day after, the college is going to become one of  the most inaccessible places on earth with the District authorities taking us over. But that is another  tale...

For the first time today, I saw how technology can enthuse people and create ripples of excitement in an otherwise staid and routine life.

I happened to meet Prof.Lakshmana Perumal, the COE. He's  normally very quiet, subdued and professional . But with his new Micromax, he's turned so animated and so eager to experiment with his Nokia. He showed Prof.Anbalagan and me the new phone. 

As he explained the various features, he was truly like a little boy, so gleeful and joyous at the various applications available. His eyes shone and he was totally animated. His enthusiasm was catching.  

I'm not much of a tech freak myself, but I could see and share in the excitement, as the sky opened up before our eyes with the positions of the constellations with their names, position of planets and the moon unfolded before our eyes like magic.  It shows one the nearest gas stations, restaurants (Karuppur Punjabi Dhaba was there), the nearest ATMs, opens mails, accesses Wikiandroid, plays music, takes videos, records sounds, shows one the road maps and is all touchscreen. Oh, wow, amd  at only Rs.6000/ it seemed like the most affordable toy ever. 

But above all, it showed me that hidden inside serious academics are little boys who have not given up the simple pleasures of life, like being happy with a little thing.  


I also went to bid goodbye to the Principal, Prof.P.M.Kavimani, who is assuming charge at Chennai as Addl.Director at DOTE. I wished him well and promised him that the GCE newsletter team would keep him updated on its developments. He, in turn, came up with an exciting suggestion - setting up a Community Radio for the benefit of the students in villages nearby, the women, farmers and others who could tune in and listen to our broadcasts. I know that Anna University Chennai has an FM station since I was one of their guests giving a talk one evening. I don't know if this will become a reality, but the idea has germinated and I hope the valuable suggestion given by Prof. Kavimani will bear fruit.

The FDP is over...with a info crammed session by Dr.Shanthi Thilagam from NITK, Suratkhal. 
Dr.Chandrasekhar has accomplished a neat and well organised task. His smiling face in spite of what must've been a hectic spell of organisation must be mentioned. Some people blow their tops  or sour up when things go wrong, but his smile only remained the same. Everything went off like clockwork and I would've loved to have given a feedback, but then people might think it's an inside job, praising oneself, since I would be representing GCE. 

The past one week has been one of discovery for me. I'm attending this training programme on 'A Paradigm of Advanced Computer Networking and Soft Computing' from Monday along with 66 others from different parts of the state. 

I'll confess...I signed up, because I needed to meet AICTE norms regarding staff development, but surprisngly,  what a good week it's been.

I found some incredible teachers in the resource persons -  Dr. Thamarai Selvi from MIT, Chennai,  Dr.Vaidehi from Anna University, Chennai, Dr. Ramamoorthi, Dean/Sri Sakthi Institute of Tech and a former TPGT and GCTian, and Dr.Purushothaman, most notedly.

From Dr.TamaraiSelvi, I learnt how to be confident and passionate about education. She introduced me to Grid Computing and Cloud Computing. Her session moved fast from the evolution of Knowledge Age to Evolution of Sharing. Grid computing falls back on Service oriented Architecture for its operation, wherein companies can 'Publish', clients can 'Find and Use'. It is a collection of distributed resources connected by a network. 

She also touched on e-learning under cloud computing and invited teachers interested in it to work with her. That sounds interesting as I'm also introducing  technology in the classroom and her work sounded interesting and worth exploring. 

Her second PPT on Teaching and Learning methodology was an interesting and enthusing one. She focussed on Bloom's taxonomy and encouraged teachers to consider 'productive pedagogies' which would induce higher order thinking and listed out the strategies that we should inculcate in students : Creating, Evaluating, Analysing, Applying, Undertanding and Remembering'. I felt that this is what students should be taught in classes, not the rote learning/ shallow, surface level kind of learning that goes on now.

Dr.Vaidehi was the quintessential professor, calm, sedate, confident in the knowledge of her area, concrete and illustrative. She gave examples wwith which one could relate to the topic. She spoke on Wireless Sensor Networks. Her example when she explained why a packet should be dropped - A teacher tells everyone to pass a message : 'I want to meet Anita'. The message goes around and finally comes to the teacher herself. Now, the message must be dropped, as it may otherwise be duplicated'. Oh, how well I understood that concept.

He rexplanation of Cluster Head of sensors : A person selected as a Class representative for a semester/ A professor appointed HOD for three years and rotated after that. She explained how vineyards are monitored using WSN and how in Health Care, a patient is monitored for changes in breathing, ECG, posture, pressure, etc by video, ECG, Noise etc. Her example of Ambient Intelligent Home as the future of Wireless Infrastructure was fascinating. What was even more wonderful was that, she was heading project teams carrying out these studies. 

Dr.Ramamoorthi was full of information and knowledge gathered over his nearly 35 years of academic work. He explained how Neural networks use bio-mimetic techniques. An example he gave of Lofti Zadeh's Good Hybrid vs. Bad Hybrid was hilarious. 

Good Hybrid                                Bad Hybrid

British police                           British cuisine

German Mechanic                    German police

French cuisine                          French mechanic

Swiss Banking                          Swiss lover

Italian Lover                             Italian banker 

He said the correct components must be selected to build a good hybrid system. 

He also gave an interesting story in the course of his talk. A paper was being reviewed. The reviewer sent the following report: 'Good and original, but, what is good is not original; and, what is original is not good'. That was a light hearted  info presented with humour.

Dr.Purushothaman's session on Cryptanalysis was the stealer of the show. He presented a session that showed how encryption and decryption in the web are easy for one who knows how to do it. He presented classical techniques such as Substitution Technique, Caesar's Technique, Modification and Fabrication. The revelation that the letters of the English alphabet offered simple sets  of  26 factorials caused surprise that the English language which is the cause of heart-ache in new learners, is also the base for Cryptanalysis. English never fails to surprise me. 

There's one more session tomorrow and then the week of lectures, warming chairs, good food and cool classrooms comes to an end. 

However, my year of hard work, incessant labour and thankless jobs that I've carried out, ends on a note of hope for me, for I've learnt that my joy in learning has not diminished. I'm ready for the next academic year.