Future of Education: Moving beyond traditional schooling

TED 2013 winner Sugata Mitra has a very strong point in driving the debate of moving away from the traditional schooling we have all being nurtured until now which was designed during the empire regime, it was limited to developing specific skills and sadly it has not evolved much since then to match the pace of skill requirement we see today in a fast advancing world driven by technology.

Such idea's are powerful enough to shake the very foundation of formal education which requires change across the entire educational set up and the idea of remote/home schooling is something parents could be very apprehensive of picking up when we all know that a basic graduation degree is the minimum qualification required to get a job. 

Watch his 2013 presentation at TED conference which awarded him the winning prize this year and links to some site which have featured details on his initiative for further reading. Don't miss the kind of standing ovation the entire audience present at the conference gives at the end of this video.

TED page | Hole in the Wall Project | Wired Article | New York Times Interview

Want to get serious with your workouts?

If your fitness plans keep flying out of the window, and the couch potato feeling takes over all your motivation to stick to workout plans which looked promising while joining the nearest gym, you surely would be eager to try something which would get you back on that treadmill and get sweating.

A lot of us using smartphones now have a plethora of options in health and fitness based apps that are loaded with features which track your physical activity, allow sharing of achievements with friends on social networks, reward you with virtual badges on accomplishing your fitness goals, sometimes even this is not enough to get people exercising for their own benefit.

You now have that last chance of making good use of your gym membership. GymPact is a service that utilizes the gamification approach with real money that would get any fitness atheist on his feet working out to save his money. GymPact aims to incentivize your exercise commitments by engaging users to dedicate a minimum 30 minute workout per week and be ready to shell out $5 through your credit card in case you fail to meet this target, so where does the money from defaulters go? it pays up the one's who fulfill their exercise schedule. This service was launched by Harvard students Yifan Zhang and Geoff Oberhofer, they have got a good response to this service garnering 20,000 users within 2 weeks of launch. They were expecting a slightly longer break even period of around 6 months, which was achieved in just 1 month of launch.

You can sign up to this service online or download the iPhone app, GymPact is aiming to increase reach of this service by tying up with corporate partners, I feel this is really an innovative service of getting people on the right track with their fitness, on the lighter side of this service I think it's true that guys get jitters with the word "Commitment", however an equal fear of losing money on their credit cards would linger on their minds similar to the situation when they go out shopping with their girlfriends or spouse which is enough to get them serious with their fitness, ladies are you listening to this!

Visit GymPact for more information