Teaching to teachers : Article series - 01 : Very basics : Articulation

“Misery in the world is not due to bad students, but due to bad teachers”

I would like to run a series of articles on better teaching basics. Intention of this series is to help aspirants who wish to become good teachers / existing teachers who want to increase their skills in the profession.

In this article let’s discus about one of the basic qualities of teaching, that is,

Articulation. Wiki meaning for this word is, “the formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech”. We should know how to speak during the lecture / session. We should know where to rise the voice and where to make it low. We should have command over the sentences we phrase. Sometimes you can take the liberty of a shout if it needs. If you can make your words clear to audience / students it’s ok with the general grammar instead of looking / searching for clear cut sentences according to English grammar. Ultimately, the goal is, our topic should be well understood by the students / participants by the end. It may not be 100 % relative to this topic, but to refer with the context, examine the famous “I have a dream speech” by Martin Luther King Jr. How he has command, articulation, more ever the flow he attains during the speech.

And, having articulation is not the only quality a teacher required but it helps in delivering the lecture better. There are teachers who are not much good with articulation but still they managed to run the show better. But, I believe it is their interest and movement of words that achieves the task during the lecture. So, to conclude practicing better articulation really helps the speaker to deliver the lecture in a beautiful way.   

                                      Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

In the coming articles, let’s discuss about the other qualities like involving students during the class, speak a fun word, clarity of the topic that’s going to be delivered in the class and so on…

Does the passage of time heals inner wounds ?

As shown in our Indian movies particularly, where hero have wounded past and living a simple life and goes to flash back in second half of the movie where he had glorious past. But my this thought is against it. I believe that in maximum cases, passage of time gives relieve from the wounds and will create new opportunities, new goals, new life. The ‘new’ may be not more / less like past ( before wounds) but it will be definitely different from the state of panic. And, in my opinion, it is the amount or level of wounds that person experiences and how he / she takes it to heart  meaning, loosing a loved one for a person may not be that panic / painful for years. But for other it is a lot. It means they felt too bad and sad about. So, for the second case , it takes very long time to get relief from the wound.

                              'The very beauty of nature is ‘change’. Gone yesterday will never come. Think how it could be if, time is constant and we are in yesterday continuously. No relief from pain for the person experiencing yesterday, no end of joy for the person, no change of conditioning and so on…'

It is not only the time that may heals inner wounds but there are other factors contributing like change of place, meeting some awesome person, changing diet or medicine, reading an excellent book or a note that quickly relives from pain etc.. And , the other case , as I was mentioning earlier it takes a life time for some people to heal a wound. Psychologically, it is different from person to person. It was shared to me from one of good counselor and  church priest ( Rev.Fr. Kulandaisamy) that wounds in a person may originate at an age as early as when he / she was in womb. One girl, when he was counseling shared that the reason for her pain was her mother don’t want to give birth since she is a girl child. So, she listened to it at very early age and carried the thought throughout her life and feeling too sad over the years. For her time played some role but didn’t healed her completely. To conclude, time may heal the wounds of person since it is dynamic and ever moving, but in particular cases it is through prayer, meeting, sharing to people, getting counselled, forgetfulness, or self-realization that helps to heal and excel.   

Rejection : A stepping stone to get hired by better company

As well said, failures are stepping stones to success, in competitive market it could be a rejection that fuels strive for getting better job. Of course, no one wants to get rejected to go for another interview, but it is a positive notion that rejection means there could be another better opportunity waiting. In my personal experience,

                  I was rejected by 31 companies during a period of 10 months before landing in to my first job after my Electrical Engineering. 31 times ?. It is. I used to write each rejection details, things to learn, things that worked well on that interview, things that did not worked well and so on.
 

Picture courtesy:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/rejection

I’m not using this notes to glorify my self  or to say that I did a great effort. All I would like to say is, HOPE. No one can stop you if you have conviction, concentration and love. At my first interview, I was nervous, self low and weak. I still remember, I could hardly spoke for 10 minutes and waiting for the interviewer to send me out. He was about to laugh at me but controlled. After that experience, I was started to learn real things required. Started meeting real people, reading programming basics and so on. After 4-6 months, things were not at all working for me. Friends started back laughs, parents started blaming. But I NEVER LOST HOPE. NEVER. I started practicing more, speaking more English, tried to explain more during interviews. Tried to argue, tried to convence. That all efforts made me, the real me. Today I think, that was right journey I had gone through during that 10 months and given me an opportunity to learn strong basics of job market. After selected for job on 32^nd attempt, my strive for becoming better professional started and I would continue this entire career. Never to worry. Every rejection teaches you something in life. Either in professional or personal career. The way we take them and move on from there decides our graph. And believe the following,  
                “Rejection : A stepping stone to get hired by better company"

Self talk and Self motivation : Affirmations

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
                                                                                                        - Mahatma Gandhi
One of the techniques I have come across during my journey of great depression is 'Affirmations'. To put in simple words, affirmations are positive self encouraging words / sentences. We all have our inner talk , inner temptations and emotions. Sometimes they are on the negative side which results us to go towards negative thinking, suffering or helplessness. During that times, a positive self talk can make wonders for us. Initially it is very difficult for us to start a self positive talk because of the deep sorrow or pain that already built in. But, believe me guys, it works. A positive self talk like 'I forgive them, I forgive them, I forgive them...' may brings you peace and treat your inner wounds which people have created to you. So, I was taught by great people who are working for human wellness(Rev. Church Fathers) and famous book writers like 'Susan Jeffers' that a positive self talk during hard times works like a psychological medicine to treat you to come out or get some relief from the situation.

Picture courtesy:
http://www.freepressjournal.in/featured-blog/gandhi-jayanti-10-quotes-on-mahatma-gandhi-by-popular-personalities-around-the-world/1145459

Affirmative talk is not new to many fields like Army soldiers. They were trained to talk themselves during hard times to achieve that particular mission. When they want to do a particular challenging task, they speak to themselves like this,"this task was achieved by many in the past who were less stronger than me, less skilled than me. and it is not an impossible task." So friends, I have experienced through this and would like to share. Go for it always even to achieve more in your path. What we teach or feed to our subconscious will reflect our daily lives. So we need to have habit of self positive talk. Because, as Bapu himself said, "A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes".

My Virtual Journey :: Austria

Today I have started my journey to Austria. One of beautiful nations of Europe. I have started my journey through beautiful 'Vienna' (Austria's capital). I'm deeply impressed by and loved the city's culture and Architecture and life. Below are some of the photos taken that speaks the beauty.

pictures courtesy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx_N-Uhpq0Q

pictures courtesy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GZI93jd-M

Time to improve HOPE and keep moving forward in GOD

Yaa, I believe this is the time to make my things settle down. Great war of depression, hopelessness and all other feelings that made me pain are vanishing slowly. This 3 months journey had given me a lot in. As someone said, problems(no failures) are stepping stones to success, the above problems given me an opportunity to look inside of me sincerely. We all have inner fears, inner thoughts and inner consciousness. One day or the other we have to face them. I believe, I have faced it to considerable amount till now.
During the time of facing my inner fears, I have great support from friends, family members, elders, our church Rev.fathers and philosophers and books. I strongly believe this is the time that I sincerely moved towards God. Great reading of books, specially about and towards God, towards inner strength and personality development and financial discipline. Great discussions with church fathers about various topics specially, soul clean, inner strength and faith on GOD. Great reunion with old buddies, great laughs and long talks and so on. I'm still in the process of regaining inner strength but I strongly believe , the growth of fruit is already originated.

We always face tuff period once in a while during various times . At that same time, we need to have inner courage, strong conviction to wait and great patience to let the storm cross by. We have to move out and speak, we have to move on and try something else. try something else. We should not let our brain to think much in to pool of unnecessary thoughts which interrupts our progression. During my tuff period I had great battle of thoughts all day. But firm belief on God,family and friends made me to come out of the situation and I moved on. Now I need to move more towards GOD. He rises us and makes our lives more beautiful.

Time of self realization and exploration

I have been exploring my inner self from quite good time (Last 2-3 months). It's completely new journey altogether. A jounery of extreme difficulties that I have never experienced. It is the jounrey of cutting the moving rope and tying with fresh and new rope which is much modified, compared to the past. My woke ups changed. Hobbies changed. Dreams changed, life style changed and totally the way I'm looking at the things changed. Initially, I was wounded by surroundings. I thought I can take some deep breathes, guided confidence and move on. But, from there on words the petals of new explorations about life, aspirations, skills, thinking and many are opened. I experienced deep inner thinking, deep inner thought fighting, deep mental observation and so on.

It was all started with the way surroundings reacted with me in the month of April. Things suddenly started moving in almost reverse direction on my path. I have to look deep in to the wound. I have to deeply think about the on going things. I have to deeply keep my self active about the surroundings. In the process, I started realizing my own self. My confidence. My exact state in the surroundings. My thoguht process towards day to day things . I have met the people I never thought of. I have experienced the thought process I never thought of. I experienced the fears I never thought of. On the positive side, I started moving towards Almighty god Jesus Christ. I started reading Holy Bible. I started getting solutions to the problems that we generally think, we don't have an answer. I started looking real things. I started spending time with mom. I started getting counseled by Rev.Fathers, people of personality development, people of good wisdom. And, I started reading great books with great concentration and with great zeal to learn. I started conquering inner fears, inner weaknesses. Above all it's God's call and intention to change the path and to keep us in ACTUAL direction that he wanted to.

Devops series-article-02-Change is the basic nature of Universe. What makes Devops so special?

Yes. Change is the basic nature of universe. As we are, from infant to adult and old... . Universe changes continuously to never ending time. Our systems, practices, knowledge changes from time to time. If you can see, much things are automated on mobile from last 17-20 years.
        Around year 2000, a mobile phone can be used for very regular purposes. But, today, using the same mobile phone we can hand the universe. Think ? . How many things included in to it automatically for many of day to day activities. In the same way, our software cycles, systems and practices automated time to time.
       The age old story is, many people used to work for each activity in an environment. One needs to depend on other. For example, there should be at least one resource in the team to place new build in the test environment. There is another resource who can run basic test scripts on the build. So on... . A software life cycle includes many phases, coding , building, testing, performance analyzing, running, so on. "What if we automate most of the phases activities using tools available ?". There comes the Devops. It is all about integrating available tools either open source or commercial to automate the build activities that improves reliability, efficiency and also saves lot of time and money to the organization.
       Devops automates an organization's purpose using its tool set that makes so many things move on their own. It doesn't mean that there is no human intervention but it does mean that "a message carrying Dove once.........., is replaced by the mobile signal that carries information today. YES. "Change is the basic nature of Universe" .

                                                                                                               Signing off,
                                                                                                               Raju Shikha,

Devops series-article-01-Sample devops flow that demonstrates CI/CD

Hi Folks,

In this article, I would like to present a simple Devops flow . Basically, Devops works on two concepts, Continuous Integration and Continuous deployment. In a nutshell, Continuous integration is integrating different tools and services in the in the environment on the fly and deployment  refers to building, checking, deploying and running the build in the environment.

Continuous Integration and Continuous deployment Flow:

1.       Let’s start from the scratch. Let’s have dvcs(distributed version control system) where different teams commits the code check in.  Once the code is checked in, A Jenkins job starts and clone the code

2.       Once the code is cloned, we need to build it using a build tool. Popular and legacy build tools are ANT and Maven. For suppose, using ANT, we need to generate build file(build.xml) that generates archive files like .war file. To achieve this task Continuous integration server(e.g: Jenkins ) has the plugin, ANT

3.       Now, after the war file is ready, Continuous integration server(e.g: Jenkins ) integrates profiling tool like SonarQube and starts the profiling job. Profiling checks for code leakages, best practices etc.

4.       After profiling, Continuous integration server(e.g: Jenkins )  start the job for  environment provisioning . To achieve this, we need to add configuration management and environment provisioning tools(AWS Cloud, Chef server, Docker) plugins in Continuous integration server(e.g: Jenkins )  .

5.       Now, Continuous integration server (e.g: Jenkins ) starts the job for environment provisioning. Minimum steps to achieve at this stage are Spin up virtual machines, Install OS level services, Install application level services, Install web/application server

6.       Once the environment is ready,  Continuous deployment server(e.g: Jenkins) starts the job that installs application on web/application server which demonstrates application fully up and running on given environment. 

 

Above diagram demonstrates a sample CI/CD flow. Note that I have not added the add-on services like Continuous monitoring(e.g: Nagios), email notification service at different levels.  As a series of articles I will keep on improving above flow and  include other services.

Like any other species

I strongly believe that this existing human systems are the result of continuous evolution of human thoughts . Like any other species, humans born with flesh and blood, lead their natural life with respect to nature, may try to change nature towards his intelligence and finally leave it forever and ever.
               Sometimes I introspect my self for the reason being, why am I more interested towards the formation and continuation of human systems which is an integral part of society. I believe it may because I read some philosophy, some life experiences, may be I have some cowardliness. May be...!!!
               Coming to the discussion, I believe there is no big reason or special occasion that nature creates for the birth of any human being. There is no pre compiled life written programming for the path of his life on the earth. Of course, on the other hand, there may be scientific genetic reasons for him/her to think towards or move towards particular life. Because I think, human brain which is integral part of genes may think towards some specific life because of its very formation. This may apply to all other species.
               Therefore, in my view, the resting bones in tombs or the ashes that mingled into air are lived like any other species on the earth, lead the life according to their heart and brain and left this active world for ever and ever, like any other species. We are doing the some like any other species.

Mental and Thought conflicts among Human Systems

As I have raised my understanding and opinion on formation and continuous initiation of human systems in my previous article, in this article I would like to  throw insight in to human mental and thought conflicts on human systems.
This is the origin of the problem.For suppose a system is present among a group of humans and they are following it, there are people of that system who have concerns and issues with it. So they rise the question and that may lead to origin of issue or conflict in case they did not get required change or satisfactory answers. In a party, they are serving the non vegetarian dish majorly. Couple of vegetarian guys have issue with it since they feel that not much importance given to veg items. This is one micro issue among millions and billions of conflicts and issues runs in the human systems.
                          Whatever the conflict or issue raised among any group or country of people on the globe , there is a question, reason and may be possible needed debate on it. People living in slums may have various issues and conflicts about their daily living and societal procedures around them. So its all human thought process that originates the problem and conflict. The problem may have REAL(need debate on it, what is actual reason and what makes human brain something to believe as REAL ) reasons behind it. So overall in all as humans have their way of thinking and reasoning, In my view, there never be any human system, that satisfies all the humans without any issues or conflicts.

Human Systems - Evolution and Developemnt

Before writing in to the actual thought, I'm thinking about the origin of this thought. People satisfy or feel comfort by speaking or chanting philosophies or Vedatha's to overcome their present state. Now, does I'm in that condition of some misery and developing this thought ?  or my brain really developed or matured to write this type of thoughts ? i don't know.!!!
                                            Coming to the actual thought. I see the moving world around me as the product of human developed systems. Buildings, machines, huts, marriage ceremonies, medical equipment and all material and traditional systems are results of human systems.Like a bird makes its nest and started living in it, human generated their own systems and living their lives on the earth.Its all human systems that run the show of the world.Different systems at different places , continents and so on.