Khan Academy set to launch content in regional languages
GO DESI The online provider of educational videos will offer content in Gujarati, Bengali and Hindi by next year
NEWDELHI: Khan Academy, a nonprofit education organisation, is set to launch content in Indian languages. By 2018, the online provider of educational videos is expected to release content in Gujarati, Bengali and Hindi. “Currently, the content on Khan Academy’s portal which is also tailored to the Indian curriculum is available in English,” said Sandeep Bapna, managing director, Khan Academy India. “The vernacular content will not be dubbed but will be recustomised in local languages to tap the hinterland market in India.”
To this end, Khan Academy entered into an agreement with the Karnataka government which will be recreating the content in Kannada for use across government schools in the state. According to Bapna, collaborating with the state government is one of the fastest ways of scaling the content available on the portal in local languages. “This content will be hosted on sub-domains and students can choose whether they would prefer content in English or their mother tongue,” he added.
Explaining the need for recreating the content in local languaarts Bapna said that this was not just a content library but more like a personalized tutor. “The portal has content which tracks a user’s progress and suggests recommendations accordingly with the audio in the background sounding like one’s friend,” he elaborated.
While the portal provides content related to maths, science and engineering, computing, and humanities, economics and finance as well as preparatory material for tests such as SAT and GMAT, only the maths and physics content has been mapped to the Indian curriculum.
This includes roughly 5,500 videos and over 20,000 exercises across the two subjects. “While the focus is on maths and physics currently, we plan to map other subjects such as social science as well to the Indian curriculum By the end of 2018,” said Bapna.
An estimated 1 million users from India access the content on Khan Academy. The content is also accessible over the app where users can access lowbandwidth videos.
Further, the second edition of an India Talent Search has been launched to scout for content creators in English, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi and Tamil. The search is aimed at identifying those who could create lucid explanatory videos for complex concepts.
“We are not going to judge entry videos for production values but on how one chooses to explain a concept,” said Bapna. The last date for sending entries is 17 December. We often talk about what we think or believe in, what our attitude is towards various causes… But how common is it for us to talk about our emotions, the way we feel, and what could be the possible implications of our own emotional understanding? The importance of the role played by emotions is not hidden from any of us. And more important than the role played by them is the need for us to be able to identify, express as well as regulate these emotions effectively in our day to day lives.
Given the technological invasion in society, it is common for us to rely more on the use of emoticons to express ourselves via various forms of social networking sites or social media platforms. However, it is essential for us to be comfortable in not just talking about our own emotions, but also being able to hear out another person venting his or her own emotions as well.
The following are some points which we could keep in mind to help improve our emotional well-being:
BUILD ON YOUR EMOTIONAL AWARENESS
RECOGNIZE MANIFESTATIONS OF SUPPRESSED EMOTIONS
Yes, such suppressed feelings could be externalized behaviourally. If a person tends to suppress one’s emotions and feelings within himself or herself, it is likely to lead to an externalization of these same emotions in other indirect expressions, which could be in the form of increase in somatic or physical complaints, crying spells, temper tantrums for children or increased irritability in adults.
OFFER OUTLETS TO VENT EMOTIONS
While human communication can take many forms, words tend to dominate most of the communication in our society.
However, human experiences cannot always be entirely reduced to words, as some experiences and emotional states are
PROVIDE A LISTENING EAR
We need to make sure that we do not miss out on any effort made by another person to express his or her feelings.
Therefore, we need to be willing to be an active listener, so that we can serve as an available source of support with whom the person can engage comfortably and freely.