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Central Bord of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) have been cancelled.

There will be no Class 12 board exams this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday, ending weeks of anxiety among students and parents over the Covid situation in the country. The decision was taken because of “uncertain conditions” due to COVID-19 and based on feedback from different stakeholders, said his office.

Students should not be forced to appear for exams in such a stressful situation,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office The health and safety of our students is of utmost importance and there will be no compromise on this aspect,” said the statement, quoting PM Modi.Both CBSE and CISCE Class 12 exams have been cancelled.

Government of India has decided to cancel the Class XII CBSE Board Exams. After extensive consultations, we have taken a decision that is student-friendly, one that safeguards the health as well as future of our youth,” PM Modi tweeted.

The CBSE will now take steps to compile the results of Class 12 students according to “well-defined objective criteria in a time-bound manner”, the PMO release said. Like last year, students who still want to take the exams will be given a chance when the situation improves, said the government.

The decision was announced shortly after PM Modi’s meeting with key ministers and officials from various related ministries and stakeholders.

COVID-19 has affected the academic calendar and the subject of board exams was causing immense anxiety among students, parents and teachers, which had to be put to an end,” said the PMO statement.

The decision comes two days ahead of a Supreme Court hearing in which the Centre is expected to file its reply on a petition seeking exactly this. The court had posted the hearing to June 3 after the Centre requested time.

At a meeting  on May 23, the CBSE had recommended that the exams be held between July 15 and August 26. It also suggested two options: regular exams in 19 major subjects at notified centers and shorter-duration exams at schools where the students are enrolled

A majority of states had favored holding the exam, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had said after that meeting. Mr. Pokhriyal was on Tuesday admitted to AIIMS hospital in Delhi with post covid  complications

The Prime Minister asserted that the decision has been taken in the interest of students and that the anxiety among students, parents and teachers must be put to an end.The CICSE had last week asked its affiliated schools to submit data, including average of marks obtained by Class 12 students in Class 11 and during this session.The board had postponed Class 12 exams which were scheduled from May 4 in light of the devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

The 12 Board exam cancelled . In the prime Minister “said” to the students safety and security it’s very important for the students.

By : G Gnana Priya dharshini

Abbreviation:

Symbols-Moral Themes-Contribution-Conclusion Literary history-Character analysis-Two versions of this epic-Similarities between this epic and the bible-Symbols-Moral Themes-Contribution-Conclusion

History of literature:

The Epic of Gilgamesh () is an ancient Mesopotamian epic poem that is considered the oldest extant noteworthy literature and the second oldest religious document after the Pyramid Texts. Gilgamesh’s literary history begins with five Sumerian poems about Uruk’s king, Bilgamesh (Sumerian for “Gilgamesh”). The “Old Babylonian” form, which originates from the 18th century BCE and is named after its incipit, is the first surviving version of this composite epic. The Standard Babylonian version was afterwards created.

Character Evaluation:

In this epic, the main characters are…

Gilgamesh Enkidu Humbaba shamath Ishtar Gilgamesh Enkidu Humbaba shamath Ishtar Gilgamesh Enkidu


GILGAMESH

Uruk’s King, the most powerful of mankind, two-thirds deity and one-third mortal, and the ideal embodiment of all human virtues. He is a valiant warrior, a just judge, and a visionary builder.

ENKIDU

Gilgamesh’s companion and friend. Enkidu was reared by animals and has a hairy and muscular body. Enkidu resembles Gilgamesh in appearance and is physically comparable to him. He wishes to be Gilgamesh’s adversary, but instead finds himself to be his soul partner. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are punished by the gods, who give Enkidu a lengthy, painful, and ignominious death for murdering the monster Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven.

HUMBABA

The terrifying demon who defends the Cedar Forest, which is off-limits to mortals. He is the epitome of awe-inspiring natural power and danger. Like an exploding volcano, his mouth is fire, he roars like a flood, and he breaths death.

ISHTAR

She is the goddess of love and fertility, as well as war. Ishtar is known as the “Queen of Heaven.” She is a caring mother figure at times and a bitter and vicious mother figure at other times, despite her unpredictability. She is the patroness of Uruk, which has a temple dedicated to her.

THE SHAMHAT

Shamhat works as a prostitute at a temple. She begins the process of bringing Enkidu into civilization by sleeping with him.

There are two variants available.

Two main versions of the epic have been largely reconstructed from the many sources discovered: the Standard Babylonian version, or He who saw the depths, and the Old Babylonian version, or Surpassing all other kings.

Version in Babylonian standard

The opening lines, or incipit, of the Standard Babylonian version differ from the older form. The earlier version begins with the lines “Surpassing all previous kings,” whereas the Standard Babylonian version begins with the lines “He who saw the deep” (“deep” alluding to the mysteries of Gilgamesh’s information brought back from his meeting with Utnapishtim) regarding Ea, the spring of learning.Gilgamesh was taught how to worship the gods, why human beings must die, what qualities make a good monarch, and how to live a decent life. The Babylonian epic contains the account of Utnapishtim, the hero of the flood myth.

Versions from Babylonian times

This version of the epic, known as surpassing all other monarchs in certain pieces, is made up of tablets and fragments from various sources and degrees of preservation. It is mostly incomplete, with several tablets missing and large gaps in those that have been discovered. They are given names based on their current location or the site where they were discovered.

There are some parallels between this epic and the Bible:

As a companion for Gilgamesh, the gods create Enkidu, who runs wild with the animals in the open plains. The Garden of Eden account in Genesis and the myth of Enkidu’s transition from nature to culture and civilization have some striking parallels. In both cases, a woman is blamed for causing a man who had previously eaten and drunk with the animals to become estranged from nature. When Enkidu is rejected by the animal world, Shamhat clothe him and teaches him to drink beer and eat bread, both of which are technological advancements that distinguish humans from animals.

Symbols include:

Religious symbolism abounds in Gilgamesh. Sacrifices, festivals, sex, dream interpretation, and shamanic magic were all part of Mesopotamian religious ceremonies, and they all feature in the storey. The hirsuteness of Enkidu represents the natural, uncivilised state.

Themes of morality:

The Epic of Gilgamesh has a number of moral themes, the most important of which is that love is a motivating force. The inevitability of death and the dangers of engaging with the gods are two more moral themes in this epic. Enkidu and Gilgamesh’s friendship motivates both of them to become better men in different ways.

Why career mentorship is very important for students to start at the age of 13?

Do you have a mentor, a career mentor in your life?
If not, don’t you think it’s late. Well not really nothing is too late when you are alive. When I passed 12th was fully confused regarding my career and future, I was thinking about what should I do next for building my career. At that time, I didn’t have any mentor but now have found my mentor.
What’s the role of a mentor and the importance of mentorship at the age of 13?

A mentor is a person who identifies your strength, weakness, talents recognize your ability. A good mentor inspires you to learn, to work towards your goals, and make sure you achieve success. A good mentor teaches you the art of thinking, enhances your thought process like the Chanakya did, and makes Chandragupta Maurya ” Great Samraat ” and helps in making Mauryan Empire.
Chanakya was the best mentor of all time. And mentorship is a relationship between a mentor and his mentee. It’s a process in which the mentor first identifies the strength, ability of his mentee finds out in which he is good, and at what he is lacking, and then gives advice and suggestions and reflects the mentee’s strength and capacity.
Most of the students face difficulty and problems in choosing a career, they don’t know what would be the best career options amongst all and in what subject they can do well.
Students don’t have self-knowledge that students need to explore themselves and a mentor could help him/them in that.
Career mentorship should start at the age of 13 because the study shows
Children aged from 12 to 18 (adolescence) start thinking.
They can do abstract and complex thinking they start raising questions on important issues. And they can think about the consequences of their action.
So we can start mentoring them about their career and help them to explore their strength and weakness.
Career, not a particular job or work we do, it’s a long-term process and journey, where you work, learn, improve your skills and get experience.
There is a beautiful quote about a  career.
” it’s a beautiful thing when a career and passion come together.”
So, to find out your passion for choosing the best career options and achieve success in life career mentorship is required at a very young age.

Who doesn’t like to play games? Nowadays, everybody plays online video games and If you play, you must have heard about twitch, or maybe you are a streamer or gamer on Twitch. It’s a free online gaming platform for all. It provides live streaming services, eSports broadcast, music broadcast, and much other entertainment-related stuff. Twitch is an American company founded by Justin Kin in 2011 and later in 2014 acquired by Amazon for $970 million. After that acquisition, it became famous amongst teenagers to aged people. On average, 15 million views come on Twitch daily and there are approx 8.5k channels. And you know the “Just chatting” category is dominating over Twitch where, users stream anything related to music, dancing, cooking anything that that hat means anything so it’s a little bit dangerous for children because people can do anything for popularity and a lot of trolls, irrelevant comments, etc. Like YouTube, Facebook, and several other apps it’s also earning money only by advertising, subscriptions, and bits, it’s a currency by Twitch. Buyers buy bits to support and to cheer up their favorite streamer, games, and eSports player.
Views and followers play a very crucial role in the growth of any channel not only over Twitch but also every social media platform whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Most of the gamers, streamers, YouTubers buy views, and followers.
So, what’s the need to buy views and followers?
Buying views and followers it’s not a new concept it’s quite old and common it’s called botting. Research propound that million of users buying views and followers regularly.
More the views more the followers and businesses and companies choose you to promote their products and you get paid. More advertisements more popularity, more money.
More views and followers create your brand image.
It will enlarge your profit through subscription and advertisement.
Get you up in the search results in all the Categorises.
You will have a large fan base.
The popularity of Twitch increasing day by day therefore, competition is high.
But there are lots of other ways to increase views and followers on Twitch buying is not the only option other too. For instance, using social media, streaming a lot, watching other popular streamers networking, connecting with others. Most of the well-known and famous streamers suggest earning views by effort instead add of buying. And still, you are buying views and followers it should be real, not fake.

Now the most important question is that, Does buying views and followers violate the terms and conditions of Twitch?
While buying views and followers make sure you buy real views and followers, each follower’s account should be authentic and active. This type of engagement doesn’t violate the terms and conditions of Twitch. But if your views and followers are artificially created or duplicated it called views botting and follower botting and it does violate the terms and conditions of Twitch and for this high chance of getting banned. So for the growth of your channels, you can buy views and followers but make sure it should be real.

We all require hard work at some point in our lives. It is difficult to reach greatness without putting in the necessary effort. In other words, if an idle individual wishes to sit and wait for something else, they will get nothing. About the other side, someone who works hard all the time will undoubtedly succeed in life, and this is precisely what the essay on hard effort will discuss.

Hard labour pays off, as history has often demonstrated. Edison used to work for many hours each day and would fall asleep on his laboratory table with only his books as a pillow.

Similarly, India’s late Prime Minister Pt. Nehru used to labour 17 hours a day, seven days a week. He didn’t take any vacations. Mahatma Gandhi, our great leader, laboured tirelessly to bring our country freedom.

As a result, we can see that all of these people’s hard work paid off. It is necessary to maintain a constant vigilance to work hard in order to achieve one’s goals. Man was created to work, as the saying goes. He sparkles in use and rusts in storage, much like steel.

We can achieve anything and overcome any difficulty in life if we work hard enough. Furthermore, knowing that we have given our all and given our best to whatever work we are doing might help us live a happier life.

Hard work is unquestionably the most important factor in achieving success. What we gain by sweating our brow brings us more enjoyment than what we obtain by chance. As humans, we aspire to accomplish a variety of goals.

To become a reality, these things require a lot of effort. Poverty isn’t the problem; ideality is. When we squander our time, time squanders us as well. Anyone can attain success with hard work. Great people were born in little houses and died in palaces.

As a result, it demonstrates how outstanding labour may lead to success. You will notice improvements in your life once you begin working hard. You’ll become more focused and disciplined in your task.

Furthermore, you will witness benefits in a short period of time. It’s proof that when you work hard, qualities like drive, focus, and concentration come naturally. As a result, nothing will be able to stop you from succeeding.

Success is more than just being well-known and wealthy. It is also a success if you work hard and live a nice life filled with love. Hard work should not be limited to the workplace, but should also be applied to your personal life. Life will prosper if you work hard at your job and in your relationships.

Nutrition and hydration are essential. People who consume a well-balanced diet have stronger immune systems and are less likely to get chronic illnesses and infectious diseases. To acquire the vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre, protein, and antioxidants your body need, you should consume a variety of fresh and unprocessed foods every day. Drink plenty of water. Reduce your risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer by avoiding sugar, fat, and salt.

Every day, eat fresh, unprocessed meals.

Consume fruits, vegetables, legumes (e.g. lentils, beans), nuts, and whole grains (e.g. unprocessed maize, millet, oats, wheat, brown rice, or starchy tubers or roots like potato, yam, taro, or cassava), as well as animal-derived foods (e.g. meat, fish, eggs and milk).

2 cups fruit (4 servings), 2.5 cups vegetables (5 servings), 180 g grains, and 160 g meat and beans (red meat 12 times per week, poultry 23 times per week) should be consumed on a daily basis.

Snack on raw vegetables and fresh fruit rather than high-sugar, high-fat, or high-salt items.

Overcooking vegetables and fruit can result in the loss of essential vitamins.

Choose canned or dried veggies and fruit that haven’t been salted or sugared.

Every day, drink plenty of water.

Water is required for survival. It distributes nutrients and chemicals through the bloodstream, controls body temperature, eliminates waste, and lubricates and cushions joints.

Every day, drink 8–10 cups of water.

Water is the best option, but other liquids, fruits, and vegetables that contain water, such as lemon juice (diluted in water and unsweetened), tea, and coffee, are also acceptable. However, excessive caffeine use should be avoided, as should sweetened fruit juices, syrups, fruit juice concentrates, fizzy and still drinks, which all contain sugar.

Consume fat and oil in moderation.

*Instead of saturated fats, consume unsaturated fats (such as those found in fish, avocado, almonds, olive oil, soy, canola, sunflower, and maize oils) (e.g. found in fatty meat, butter, coconut oil, cream, cheese, ghee and lard).

*Rather to red meat, choose white meat (e.g. poultry) and fish, which are often low in fat.

*Avoid processed meats due to their high fat and salt content.

*Select low-fat or reduced-fat milk and dairy products whenever possible.

*Avoid trans fats made in a factory. Processed foods, fast food, snack foods, fried foods, frozen pizza, pies, cookies, margarines, and spreads are all common sources.

Reduce your salt and sugar intake.

*Use less salt and high-sodium condiments while cooking and preparing food (e.g. soy sauce and fish sauce).

*Use iodized salt and limit your daily salt intake to less than 5 g (about 1 teaspoon).

*Salty and sugary foods (such as snacks) should be avoided.

*Reduce your sugar intake by avoiding soft drinks, sodas, and other sugary beverages (e.g. fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates and syrups, flavoured milks and yoghurt drinks).

*Sweet snacks such as cookies, cakes, and chocolate should be replaced with fresh fruits.

Eat at home as much as possible.

Reduce your interaction with other individuals and your chances of contracting COVID-19 by eating at home. Maintain a 1 metre gap between yourself and someone who is coughing or sneezing. In crowded social environments such as restaurants and cafes, this is not always practicable. Droplets from sick persons may land on surfaces and people’s hands (e.g., customers and employees), and with so many people coming and going, it’s impossible to detect if hands are being washed frequently enough, and surfaces are being cleaned and disinfected quickly enough.

On May 28, India’s Supreme Court issued a directive to the government on the protection of children orphaned during the second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. During the pandemic, days went by with no nourishment for the children. We don’t know how many children were affected during this time period. Orphaned children have long been at risk of sliding between the cracks of society. However, this issue has been largely disregarded, and the Covid crisis has provided us with an opportunity to revisit this issue.

The first issue emerges as a result of the child’s caste and family structure. Many times, after the death of the parents, the child’s relatives refuse to assume care for the child. Even if the child has a family, they may be unable to pay for the child’s education and well-being owing to financial constraints. In situations like these, the youngster may not receive the help and guidance he or she needs to succeed in life.

If a child enrols in an institute and finds a room in the hostel, he or she may not have someone to assist them with their concerns. A hostel could be the first and last resort for an orphaned child with no other family support. Unfortunately, many state governments prohibit children under the age of 18 from staying in a hostel. As a result, when they finish high school or college, they have nowhere to go. Many students have issues with official documents, such as Aadhar cards and Pan cards.

In this state of helplessness, kids frequently choose the wrong path, putting them in dangerous situations. Because the government is legally obligated by the Constitution to ensure the welfare of children, the state governments can be a key source of assistance. The Maharashtra government recently altered the norm, allowing orphaned youngsters to reside in hostels until they are 23 years old. Steps must be done, however, to ensure that future generations are not confronted with the same issues. The government can take the following steps in this regard: A yearly survey of orphan children will be conducted at the district and block levels. 

No child’s identity should be compromised, hence government paperwork should be delivered on time. Many government projects and initiatives that run parallel to the values of liberty, equality, and social justice should be established. A permanent fund should be established by the government and, if possible, local-level NGO’s to ensure that the child is not financially disadvantaged.

Every child has the right to an education and a happy life. The death of a parent or a loved one can have a significant impact on a child.

Because they have no one to talk to and express their grievances with, the child’s mental health may be harmed. All children should have access to counsellors via phone or one-on-one sessions with whom they can openly communicate their feelings.

Children are said to be the country’s future. So, how can we construct a positive future with 30% of children living in poverty? It’s past time to address and fix these challenges so that all children have equal chance to live a fulfilling life and contribute to society.

There is also the opposite side of the coin, in which such knowledge gave birth to destructive weapons such as guns, rifles, rockets, atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, and so on. It is science that has electric power, nuclear energy, and hydroelectric power, but atomic energy is not employed for peaceful reasons, as happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a result of science, and it is humanity’s curse.

Leaving that aside, another invention of science is environmental contamination. With the help of science, industrialization has poisoned the air, food, and the entire atmosphere. The ozone layer is sending out alarming signals. As a result, a person can consider science to be a curse.

Intra-family marriages are the leading cause of uncommon genetic diseases. Intra-family marriages are far too numerous, and first-cousin marriages have a higher risk of hereditary disorders.

When close intra-family marriages occur, more than 100 ailments are passed down down the generations. Marriages between cousins are far too common, both culturally and historically, and these disorders are passed down through the generations. Around 70% of marriages are cousin or consanguineous marriages, and hundreds of cases of genetic diseases are reported each year.

Although Islam, the state’s predominant religion, does not prevent people from marrying outside of their family or caste, many families prefer to marry within their own families due to illiteracy and caste difficulties. Because of their ignorant brains, dangerous infections are permitted to spread to newborns, which is considered criminal neglect.

Doctors recommend that every couple have a genetic test before getting married because deficits are stored in particular compartments of body cells. The material that builds up in each lysosome expands and takes up a lot of room in the cell, causing a slew of other issues with cellular function, which is how illnesses spread.

According to experts, if these disorders are handed down to a child, the child would develop abnormalities. This can include mental abnormalities or organ enlargement, both of which might cause a kid to die from a serious health issue.

More than 70% of all marriages are between members of the same family. This custom is observed as if it were a religious obligation, but it is not. The predominance of Thalassemia, a blood condition, in the country is a major result of this custom. Blood transfusions and iron chelation are two options for treatment.

In a recent interview, a doctor stated that if one parent contains a gene for an illness, the condition does not transmit to the child.

However, if both parents have the same condition, which is common in intra-family marriages, the defective genes are likely to be handed down to the child.

More than 50 children have perished in recent years as a result of genetic abnormalities that have arisen from first-cousin marriages. Three brothers were admitted to a hospital last year for treatment of a handicap. It was discovered that their family members were quite superstitious and did not approve of outside-the-family weddings. The three boys were born healthy but developed a handicap later in life.

Government funds should be set aside to study genetic problems caused by intra-family marriages.

Doctors believe that more people should be informed of the consequences of marriages within families. First-cousin weddings should be prohibited since they cause a slew of ailments that are destructive to the next generation’s future. The government is being urged to take action on this critical subject, and everyone should be able to pick their life partners outside of the family.

“As children, our cousins are frequently our first friends. Even if you haven’t spoken in a long time, no one will ever understand your eccentric family like your cousins.”

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is used in our daily lives for things like navigation and automatically setting your alarm clock on workdays. Artificial intelligence is one of the most rapidly developing disciplines of technology worldwide. AI is a type of technology that combines computer intelligence with the ability to think like a human to analyse data and make predictions, recommendations, and judgments. It’s a collection of technologies, algorithms, and methods. Since 2016, AI has seen a significant shift in public attitude, with people becoming more accepting of the technology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is exploding all over the world, particularly in Japan. With AI as one of its key components, Japan has achieved a major place in the high-tech sector. Japan intends to create the society of the future by devising a long-term strategy based on the new prospects that high-tech breakthroughs present. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a vital technology that allows for the processing of large volumes of data and the smooth translation of that data back to human users.

The Artificial Intelligence Industry in Japan
For the longest time, AI in Japan has mostly concentrated on robots as sub-domains of artificial intelligence, with AI being developed in particular in the fields of technology and medical.

According to the Nomura Research Institute, Artificial Intelligence in Japan is on the verge of exploding, with AI robots performing half of all professions in Japan by 2035. While the Japanese AI market has been focusing on robotics, other companies across the world have been focusing on software development, which is an area of opportunity for foreign companies trying to enter the Japanese AI market.

Japan’s AI Ecosystem

In Japan’s AI field, there isn’t just one sort of area that is the most important or dominant, but rather a collaboration of areas such as public, private, and research domains that are all interconnected.

The private sector, the public sector, and research facilities are the three types of areas. These three categories are interconnected, and the division between them is constructed in a highly schematic manner. As a result, the categorization into three sorts of zones is merely a simplification of the reality.

Japan’s cutting-edge AI firms
When it comes to the AI market in Japan, there are around 300 businesses. Large competitive organisations, small to mid-sized businesses, and start-ups are among them. The following are some of the significant businesses:

NEC
NEC, based in Tokyo, is a global leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, with a long history of AI research dating back to the 1980s.

NEC delivers sensors, computation, networking, and analysis to help society with technology solutions. Their active data solutions are capable of anticipating, monitoring, and resolving problems, as well as intelligently responding to bad situations.

Abeja

This Japanese company is a start-up that uses artificial intelligence. It was launched in Tokyo in 2012, and it has since assisted over 150 organisations in implementing AI in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, infrastructure, logistics, and retail. Machine learning and deep learning, as well as retail shop analysis, are their key areas of focus.

Tokyo, Paris, London, San Francisco, Boston, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, and Sydney are among its offices. SoftBank Robotics currently has over 35,000 robots in use in over 70 countries, with new applications in retail, tourism, healthcare, finance, education, facilities management, and cleaning.

Japan has devised a strategy for creating a future civilization that incorporates AI into practically every area of daily life. The reason for its rapid growth is that Japan’s home welcoming environment for new AI approaches is founded on collaboration between the Japanese government, the business sector, and, of course, their know-how.As a result, AI will be critical in transforming the information society into the society of the future, also known in Japan as Society 5.0, which is defined as “a human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems through a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space.”

“It was my father who instilled in me a sense of self-worth.” Dawn French –

A father is the child’s male parent. Fathers may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with their children, which comes with its own set of benefits and duties.

An improved father-child relationship may contribute to a child’s social security, academic performance, and other factors. Their children may also have better problem-solving abilities. Children who are typically raised by fathers perceive themselves to be more cognitively and physically acceptable than their classmates who are not reared by fathers. Mothers who raised their children with a father had fewer disputes with their children.

Internal events and behaviours can influence fatherhood as a legal identity.

“Anyone may be a parent, but only a special person can be a father, which is why I refer to you as dad since you are so important to me. You showed me how to play the game and how to play it correctly.” Wade Boggs (Wade Boggs)

Even if your father says he doesn’t want any gifts, you know it’s impossible for you to not give him something on such a wonderful occasion. After all, he’s the guy you’ve looked up to your entire life, so it’s only right to purchase him a Father’s Day present that reflects how much you appreciate everything he does for you. It’s challenging to choose the perfect present for your father.

So, here’s a list of present suggestions:

-Fragrances and perfumes
-Cakes and Chocolates
-Wallets, Belts, and Sunglasses 
-Shirts and T-shirts 
-Books 
-Cufflinks 
-Customized Mugs
-Diary -Grooming kit

Fathers’ Role

As previously stated, anyone can father a child, but it takes a lifetime to be a father. Fathers can play a unique role in the lives of their children that no one else can. This job can have a significant impact on a child’s development and help form him or her into the person they become.

Fathers, like mothers, can make a significant difference in a child’s mental well-being. Children look up to their fathers for a sense of security, both physically and emotionally. Children want to be proud of their parents.

When fathers are extremely loving and helpful, their children’s cognitive and communicative development is greatly enhanced. It also gives you a general feeling of well-being and self-assurance.

Fathers shape not only who we are on the inside, but also how we interact with others as we grow up. What a father looks for in other people is determined by how he approaches his child. The patterns that a father establishes in his interactions with his children will influence how his children interact with others.

For security and emotional aid, girls rely on their fathers. A father demonstrates to his daughter what it’s like to have a terrific connection with a man.

A Tiruchi-based engineering student has taken up teaching fundamental science subjects and computer programming to students in the United Kingdom, United States of America, New Zealand, and Singapore at a time when online education has become unavoidable due to the pandemic. K. Viswathika of Woraiyur, who is pursuing a B.Tech in Computer Engineering at a Bengaluru institution, didn’t realise she could earn money while studying when she taught chemistry and physics to her niece in California approximately seven months ago. Viswathika conducted a demonstration and registered her on an online education portal in response to his niece’s answer. Aliyah, a London Grade IV student, was her first love.

Viswathika received several referrals for coding programming and chemistry, physics, and maths through her.

She teaches 20 pupils from the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Singapore. She continues to receive inquiries from a wide range of pupils. Ms.Viswathika makes her classes interesting and participatory by incorporating her knowledge of information and technology as well as online teaching tools. I’m excited to use internet approaches to connect students from all over the world. Ms.Viswathika says, “It happened because of my enthusiasm for teaching.” She said that a short-term English training with the British Council in Chennai had helped her communicate better with international pupils.Despite her Indian accent, she had no trouble communicating with the UK students. She spent the daytime attending online lessons at CMR University in Bengaluru, where she is doing her B.Tech, and the evenings taking online classes. There is a lot of potential for online education to cross borders. “There will be recognised online schools in the not-too-distant future,” adds Viswathika, who has built two pharmacy management software for pharmaceutical corporations. She’s hired five MBA interns to help her discover customers for her products. In online classes, a girl from Trichy teaches. She told them that this is a fantastic opportunity for me and everyone else, and she was overjoyed.Because education is the most important power, all kids will do well in class. She is also a role model for me.

THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND BUSINESS LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY ACROSS THE WORLD AS A RESULT OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE According to Startups.co.uk, there were a record number of start-ups in the United Kingdom in 2014, with 581,173 enterprises registered with Companies House.

Are you considering starting your own business? Or do you want to advance in your existing position? You might want to explore getting a master’s degree in entrepreneurship or an MBA with a concentration on entrepreneurship to help you improve your business and management abilities. Changes in the work environment, as well as changes in how individuals connect and communicate, have all resulted in new opportunities.

There are an increasing number of examples of experts who have decided to start their own firm. While ‘starting a business is easier, faster, and cheaper than ever thanks to modern technologies,’ according to the Chairman of the Centre for Entrepreneurs, Luke Johnson, as stated on Startups.co.uk, 50% of UK start-ups fail within five years, according to RSA data cited by the Telegraph. This is a sign that such projects require highly-trained personnel to focus on long-term planning, operations, day-to-day company management, as well as innovation and employee motivation and engagement.

WHAT SKILLS CAN YOU GET FROM AN ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEGREE?

A master’s degree in entrepreneurship or an MBA with an emphasis on entrepreneurship is designed to enable inventive individuals to become entrepreneurial leaders in a global environment. Innovation management, organisational management, finance, business formation and development, marketing for entrepreneurial enterprises, and project management are among the topics covered in the classes. Their goal is to provide you with the entrepreneurial abilities you’ll need to succeed in a quickly changing globalised environment while also allowing you to grow professionally and personally.

The programmes emphasise personal communication skills, teamwork and people management, as well as presentation abilities, which are important for future entrepreneurs who must be well equipped to persuade investors, attract new company, and increase their chances of success.

WHAT DEGREES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU?

The most crucial step before commencing on this journey is to choose the correct programme to bring you to your future business profession, therefore learning about the options available is the first step. Business schools across Europe provide a wide range of master’s and MBA programmes in business and management, as well as entrepreneurship.If you’re considering the United Kingdom, the London School of Business, for example, offers master’s degrees in Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Organizational Behaviour; the University of Oxford’s Sad Business School offers master’s degrees in Organizational Leadership and Strategy and Innovation. You might also look into a master’s degree in Management Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Birmingham Business School, Manchester Business School, Imperial College Business School, Nottingham University Business School, or the Newcastle University Business School’s Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Master.

If you’re seeking for an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship, look into Nottingham University Business School’s programme.

If you want to study outside of the UK and want to learn about entrepreneurship, look into master’s degrees or MBAs with a focus on entrepreneurship, such as the Global Entrepreneurship Program offered by EMLYON Business School in France or the Advanced Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship offered by Solvay Business School in Belgium.

You obtain competitive language skills, you manage to expand a global network, and you learn to appreciate and value diverse cultures through such internationally focused programmes.

You will learn how to work and live in a multicultural environment, which will benefit your business not just in local markets, but also in global business cultures.

WHAT ARE THE CAREER AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES?

The United Kingdom, particularly London, but also Manchester and Birmingham, is a significant draw for aspiring entrepreneurs. The practical aspect and link to the professional world are two of the main benefits of studying a business and entrepreneurship focused degree.

According to CB Insights’ 2014 European Tech Report, venture capital funding in tech startups increased by 78 percent last year.

According to the survey, the United Kingdom leads Europe with 225 deals, followed by Germany with 154 and France with 63.

There are several professional opportunities, and many corporations host start-up competitions or incubators to assist new businesses. Consider the London Google Campus, where entrepreneurs may study, discuss ideas, promote their firm, and attract investors or business partners; or accelerators and incubators like Seedcamp, Microsoft Ventures, Tech Stars, JLAB, or Telefonica’s Wayra.

Through campus events, incubators, and technology and innovation centres, universities and business schools also assist students in connecting with firms and investors.

A degree like this can help you hone your logic abilities and build strategic thinking so you can make a difference within an organisation by bringing in innovation, or even start your own business. You’ll be provided the tools and resources you need to hone your entrepreneurial talents and turn your business ideas into reality.

Check out the entrepreneurship and innovation programmes offered at institutions across the UK and Europe in the online directory at QS Course Finder if you’re looking for a degree focusing on entrepreneurship.

Have you ever heard of a school that charges a fee for collecting plastics?

Akshar school in Pamohi village, Guwahati, Assam, where pupils pay plastics as a fee in exchange for an education. The school only accepts a polythene bag full of plastic rubbish as payment.

Akshar is a model school that provides quality education to children from economically disadvantaged families. Parmita Sarma and Mazin Muktar launched the company in 2016. They began by providing free education in the community, but they soon found a high use of plastics in the area, and locals had developed a practise of burning plastics to stay warm during the winter.

Because of smoke from burning plastic, their classroom used to be filled with those hazardous vapours at times. As a result, they established a pricing structure in which students pay for their education by bringing 10–20 pounds of plastic debris to school each week. Students were taught how to successfully recycle plastic garbage, how to manufacture eco-bricks, and have already constructed a plant guarder in their school grounds.

They use a different format than the one used throughout India. There are both traditional and vocational subjects available. They instruct children on how to instruct.Higher-class students teach the school’s younger students, and they also receive a reward money, similar to that used in video games, that allows them to shop at the school store. The school has raised awareness about the dangers of plastic and transformed the thinking of the students’ families. Their class classification is based on IQ level rather than age, and students are taught lessons depending on their IQ level. They intend to grow Akshar School throughout India.

“Marketing is no longer about the products you create, but rather about the tales you tell.” –Blogger and best-selling author Seth Godin
Digital marketing, often known as online marketing, is the promotion of brands through the use of the internet and other types of digital communication to interact with potential clients. As a marketing channel, this comprises not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages. Simply said, if a marketing campaign includes digital communication, it is considered digital marketing.

The goal of digital marketing is to reach a wider audience than could be reached via traditional methods.

It aids in identifying the prospects most likely to purchase your goods or service. It has been observed that it is typically more cost-effective than traditional advertising, and that it allows you to track progress on a daily basis and pivot as needed.

It’s easy to get the terms digital marketing and inbound marketing mixed up. This is due to the fact that digital marketing makes use of similar methods to inbound marketing, such as email, content on an internet platform, and so on. Both marketing strategies attract prospects’ attention and convert them into customers throughout the buyer’s journey. So, what makes the difference? The area in which the views of the relationship between the tool and the objective in the two area.

The importance of digital marketing
Digital marketing can work electronically and online thanks to the internet. This opens up a slew of new ways for firms to connect with customers, including email, video, social media, and search engines.

Digital marketing has shown to be quite beneficial to one’s business and brand awareness. Almost every company nowadays has a website. Even if they don’t, they should have a social media presence or a digital advertising strategy. Consumers have come to expect and rely on digital information and marketing as a means of learning about brands.

Digital marketing types
There are several methods to interact with digital media, just as there are numerous specialisations within digital marketing.

SEO stands for search engine optimization.
Marketing with content
Marketing on social media
PPC (pay-per-click) affiliate marketing
Advertisement that is native to the environment
Marketing automation is a term used to describe a
Marketing via email
Digital marketing’s benefits
On a global scale, trading
For a modest investment, a website allows one to discover new markets and trade abroad.

Cost-efficient
When compared to traditional marketing tactics, a well-planned and well-targeted digital marketing campaign may reach the correct demographic at a considerably cheaper cost.

Tracking is simple, and the outcomes are measurable.
The results of digital marketing can always be measured or predicted. It enables the business owner to measure his or her online marketing with web analytics and other online metric tools, making it easier to determine the effectiveness of their campaign.

Personalisation
If your client database is linked to your website, you can greet visitors with targeted offers everytime they come to the site. The more they buy from you, the better you’ll be able to develop your client profile and promote to them more successfully.

Transparency
By engaging in social media and carefully controlling it, one can generate consumer loyalty and establish a reputation for quality

The value of social money
Using content marketing methods, digital marketing allows you to construct engaging campaigns. This content (pictures, movies, and articles) can generate social currency by being shared and going viral.

Digital marketing’s drawbacks

When it comes to digital marketing, there are some obstacles and disadvantages.

Having the Right Skill Set

To be successful with digital marketing, one must ensure that their workforce has the necessary knowledge and expertise. Because technologies, platforms, and trends change at a rapid pace, the staff must stay current with all of them.

Time-consuming
Optimising online advertising campaigns and developing marketing content are two areas that can consume a significant amount of effort. To secure a return on investment, it’s critical to track your progress.

The stakes are high.
Because everyone uses digital marketing nowadays, all firms are faced against global competition. Standing out from the crowd and grabbing attention amid the various messages aimed to consumers online can be difficult.

Gratitude has a bigger influence on our lives than we realise. We’ll look at what positive psychology has to say about the habit of offering thanks in this post. “Gratitude has a stronger impact on our lives than we think,” according to a related piece. Let’s have a look at what positive psychology has to say about the habit of expressing thanks in this article. The United States and Canada celebrate Thanksgiving, which was originally called Thanksgiving, on various dates each year.

On American soil, it is observed on the final Thursday in November, while on Canadian soil, it is observed on the second Monday in October. Its Beginnings In 1621, a group of pilgrims in Plymouth shared their autumn crop with the Vampanok Indians, who taught them how to cultivate.

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society” – Theodore Roosevelt 

All of us have grown up hearing the stories of “The Thirsty Crow” and “The Fox and the Grapes”.  We may have forgotten the stories, but the values still remain in our minds. From childhood itself, we have grown up hearing about moral values. And yes, they are so precious that they help us in becoming a good human being. Moral values are a set of principles that guide us throughout our lives. Moral values direct us to the right path to lead our lives. Imparting these from the early days helps one to distinguish between right and wrong. These values involve factors like loving others, helping others, respecting others, morality, honesty, etc. Finally, it helps to build a high minded person and to follow the path of righteousness. One can attain right and virtuous character only if he/she is able to follow moral values with complete honesty. Moral education should include the mental and moral development of an individual. As we grow up we keep on learning and transforming ourselves, so do our morals. We should keep in mind the fact that moral education can be effectively imparted to the younger ones mainly through examples and not by percepts. As kids are good observers, they notice everything we do. They keep on watching us, so try to be an example for them to adopt. Parents should also be aware of the type of companions they make. Teachers and parents should always monitor the behavior of kids. They should be able to apply moral values as it comes to practical life. The surrounding can also influence them, in building up moral values. Elders should remember to encourage and appreciate them for the moral virtues they hold. It motivates them to hold on to these values always. In the course of time, it becomes a part of them. The foundation should start from an early age itself, from home and is carried to the schools, colleges and also to the workplace.

The Benefits of Acquiring Moral Education are:

• Moral education helps one to distinguish between right and wrong.
• It gets reflected in one’s personality.
• It helps in building a good personal and professional life.
• It helps to eliminate problems like violence, dishonesty, jealousy etc from one’s life.
• It can wipe out bad influences in the society like violence, crimes, agitations, child abuse, disregarding women, etc.
• It also helps in building a positive approach to things, self-confidence, and motivation.
• It helps in finding out the true purpose of life. These values help one to be dedicated, unselfish, loving and caring for others.

The method of teaching moral values to students is universal. Teachers and parents have a key role in this. If a child misbehaves, it’s common for people to blame their parents and teachers for this. Children usually tell lies for personal gains. Teachers should give proper guidance and advice to them. They are the student’s greatest inspirations.  The students always tend to look at their teachers as ideal ones. So teachers should be able to be a role model for them to imbibe moral values.  Reading moral stories can also help in developing moral values. Even students from refined and cultural families lose moral values if their companions and school environment are not proper. Children should have a strong base of moral values.  Our curriculum must include the biographies of great personalities who followed the right path in life. If effectively implemented, Moral Education will help learners with tools of judgment making and leading them to make effective decisions and choices. Therefore, the importance of moral education is vital and also it should be an integral part of the school and college curriculum. Finally, moral values give us happiness, immense satisfaction and confidence to face life as it is. These values help to mold gentle humans who are beautiful in values and nature.

is an iconic show/ sitcom which aired on NBC in 1994 to 2004. Despite of the fact the show is a 90s production, it has never replaced its place from people’s heart. People of any age group can watch it and will surely love it and make it a part of their daily routine. It shows the story of six friends in the 10 years of their lifespan. This is the show, that people should watch at least once, there are a plenty of reasons for it. First of all it is a evergreen mood refreshing show, the comedy, the timings, the way they all speak are at their best and just make your day. As told above, it is a story of six friends – Ross Geller, Rachel Green, Joey Tribbiani, Monica Geller, Chandler Bing and Phoebe Buffay. Unlike other shows, where the main cast is the hero of the show, these people are shown as normal people, like me and you, who are imperfect in their lives, who don’t know what is going on but want to achieve something in the life. The most important thing is, when you heard of friends, you have a image of friends in school or college but here you’ll see these people are in mid 20s who had completed studies, doing job, or some getting divorced. Once you start watching it, you can totally relate to it. Here we can see such little- little thing that we should learn, like the way they solve their problems, the way the handle break- ups, the way they accept their mistakes, the way they are always available for each other, all are just splendid which we must apply in our lives.

Rachel Green, a sheltered but friendly woman, flees her wedding day and wealthy yet unfulfilling life and finds childhood friend Monica Geller, a tightly wound but caring chef. Rachel becomes a waitress at West Village coffee house Central Perk after she moves into Monica’s apartment above Central Perk and joins Monica’s group of single friends in their mid-20s: previous roommate Phoebe Buffay, an eccentric masseuse and musician; neighbor Joey Tribbiani, a dim-witted yet loyal struggling actor and womanizer; Joey’s roommate Chandler Bing, a sarcastic, self-deprecating IT manager; and Monica’s older brother and Chandler’s college roommate Ross Geller, a sweet-natured but insecure paleontologist.

The show was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, with an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. The original executive producers were Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane. Kauffman and Crane began developing Friends under the working title Insomnia Cafe between November and December 1993. They presented the idea to Bright, and together they pitched a seven-page treatment of the show to NBC. After several script rewrites and changes, including title changes to Six of One and Friends Like Us, the series was finally named Friends.

Filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. All ten seasons of Friends ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; it ultimately reached the number-one spot in its eighth season. The series finale aired on May 6, 2004, and was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most-watched series finale in television history, and the most-watched television episode of the 2000s. Friends received acclaim throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular television shows of all time.

Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness.

Some may find that their spiritual life is intricately linked to their association with a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Others may pray or find comfort in a personal relationship with God or a higher power. Still others seek meaning through their connections to nature or art. Like your sense of purpose, your personal definition of spirituality may change throughout your life, adapting to your own experiences and relationships.

You will notice as you read on that many practices recommended for cultivating spirituality are similar to those recommended for improving emotional wellbeing. This is because there is a connection between the two—emotional and spiritual wellbeing influence one another and overlap, as do all aspects of wellbeing.

Spirituality is the broad concept of a belief in something beyond the self. It may involve religious traditions centering on the belief in a higher power, but it can also involve a holistic belief in an individual connection to others and to the world as a whole.

Instead, it suggests that there is something greater that connects all beings to each other and to the universe itself. It also proposes that there is ongoing existence after death and strives to answer questions about the meaning of life, how people are connected to each other, truths about the universe, and other mysteries of human existence.

Spirituality and religious activity have been a source of comfort and relief from stress for multitudes of people. While people use many different religions and paths to find God or to express their spirituality, ​research has shown that those who are more religious or spiritual and use their spirituality to cope with challenges in life experience many benefits to their health and well-being.

Whether you are rediscovering a forgotten spiritual path, reinforcing your commitment to an already well-established one, or seeking a new source of spiritual fulfillment, exploring your spiritual side may help improve your well-being.

Spirituality is a very personal experience, and everyone’s spiritual path may be unique. Research shows, however, that some spiritual stress relief strategies have been helpful to many, regardless of faith.

Could it actually be that one person loves and hates another person in the same time? Today he says ‘’I love you’’ but tomorrow he says ‘’I hate the day I met you’’.

Could it be that even if a person loves someone with whole heart, he hates him for a couple of minutes? Of course it does and we all have experienced that in our lives.

Think about a person you love more than God, have you loved him every single minute of your life? Have you never said ‘’ I hate you, stay away from me! Don’t come! Never, never again’’ to a person you love more that God? Of course you did, that’s not weird at all, we are all humans. When a person loves another person, regardless on what that person means to him, there is always one piece of his heart that loves that person so much that no one can explain amount of it and one part that can easily be affected by frustration and anger.

Love is not only loving someone, love is not only to be with someone you love, love is much more than that, love is when a person is worried about another person, when a person starts being angry because he is disappointed on the person he loves, when a person doesn’t think about words coming out of his mouth because love and everything that person has fought for has been hurt. If a person loves another person and in the meanwhile person has been hurt or disappointed from a person he loves, the only thing a person can get is huge and unstoppable wind which comes so fast and blows over person heart so that nothing can stop it, no one can think at something else but frustration, hate, anger and disappointment. That doesn’t happen because a person doesn’t love another person, it happens exactly because he actually loves that person, otherwise he wouldn’t care about that or be disappointed or angry.

One relationship between two persons can’t be successful without mixed feelings. You know why? Because that relationship wouldn’t be between two persons, not between humans. We are not created to have only one feeling in our heart, we are created to have mixed feelings, otherwise we wouldn’t exist, right? To have mixed feelings doesn’t always have to mean something bad, sometimes it can help in understanding of each other feelings. One human is not created to be robot, human is not created to be programmed, not to repeat same thing over and over without quitting or changing something. Of course that mixed feelings can lead to some bad stuff, like being disappointed or being angry, frustrated, but it cannot lead to an catastrophe, because if a person truly loves someone else, then relationship between them is unbreakable, then there is no problem that cant be solved for them, then there is no trap that cant be avoided, then everything is possible, even the things whole world thinks are not.

Its not possible for love to work if everything is peace and joy, love must be wounded, disappointed, cursed, hated, but still loved.

If it wasn’t for humans nothing would remain in the world- no business, no government, nothing! So, humans are a requisite factor for anything in this world. Yet, when it comes to human behavior it is something different. There have been many researchers on human behavior. These researches focus on understanding the way how humans make decisions, react, and plan. In fact, the contemporary technology has equipped these researches to get their hands on the human minds and behavior on a deeper level.

Yet, the major challenge faced in understanding human behaviors is on how human brains support the changing nature. Generally, humans are agents who focus on providing what the body needs including the mental needs by adjusting to the changing environment. The brain performances eventually support the cognitive process for the outcome of human behaviors. Keep reading to understand better.

An action relates to anything that you can witness through sensors or with your nude eyes. Thus, an action is based on the transition from one form to another. For example, the teacher says to close the books, then the students obey it, so it is an action based on sensors. The students heard the teacher which is why they performed the activity. Basically, behavioral actions vary, it can be food consumption, sweating, or even sleeping.

Well, emotions, cognitions, and actions will not connect together without one another. These factors need to be connected together to give life to human behaviors. These factors help you to listen to your mind, surrounding, and people around you. However, it is pretty tough to say what caused a human to behave in a certain way – whether it is emotion, action, or cognition. Finally, it is clear that human behaviors are a topic that unfolds further and further.

Global warming is a phenomenon where the earth’s average temperature rises due to increased amounts of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ozone trap the incoming radiation from the sun. This effect creates a natural “blanket” which prevents the heat from escaping back into the atmosphere. This effect is called a greenhouse effect.

Contrary to popular belief, greenhouse gases are not inherently bad. In fact, the greenhouse effect is quite important for life on earth. Without this effect, the sun’s radiation would be reflected back into the atmosphere, freezing the surface and making life impossible. However, when greenhouse gasses in excess amounts get trapped, serious repercussions begin to appear. The polar ice caps begin to melt, leading to the rise in sea levels. Furthermore, the greenhouse effect is accelerated when polar ice caps and sea ice melts. This is due to the fact the ice reflects 50% to 70% of the sun’s rays back into space; but without ice, the solar radiation gets absorbed. Seawater reflects only 6% of the sun’s radiation back into space. What’s more frightening is the fact that the poles contain large amounts of carbon dioxide trapped within the ice. If this ice melts, it will significantly contribute to global warming.

A related scenario when this phenomenon goes out of control is the runaway-greenhouse effect. This scenario is essentially similar to an apocalypse, but it is all too real. Though this has never happened in the earth’s entire history, it is speculated to have occurred on Venus. Millions of years ago, Venus was thought to have an atmosphere similar to the Earth’s. But due to the runaway greenhouse effect, surface temperatures around the planet began rising.

If this occurs on earth, the runaway greenhouse effect will lead to many unpleasant scenarios – temperatures will rise hot enough for oceans to evaporate. Once the oceans evaporate, the rocks will start to sublimate under the heat. To prevent such a scenario, proper measures have to be taken to stop climate change.

Winter is one of the most important seasons in India. It is a part of the four seasons that occur in India. Winters are the coolest season that starts from December and last till March. The peak time when winter is experienced the most in December and January. In India, winters hold great importance. In addition, the essence it has is admired by many people. Winters give you the time to indulge in various activities like snowball fighting, building snowmen, ice hockey and more. It is a great time for kids to enjoy their vacations and get cozy in their blankets.

During winters, schools usually take a break and close down. The days are shorter and the nights get longer. The chilly mornings give you a different sense altogether. Hot drinks like coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are enjoyed more during winters. The sun rises quite late and sometimes it does not.

Even when it does, it doesn’t get a bit hot. People long for a little sunshine as the cold weather sends chills down the spine. You see people on the roads burning woods and paper to get a little warmth. However, not many people prefer going out in winters. They like sitting by the fireplace or heater all day.

In the hilly areas, people experience snow during winters. They have to shovel it out of the way to make way for walking. The essence of winters is enhanced by Christmas as well. It sets the holiday mood for people and is admired all over the world.

But, there is also a downside of this season. The farmers, homeless people, and animals are most affected by this season. There is hardly any business in this season for farmers. Hundreds of homeless people die due to the harsh winters.

As the animals do not have proper shelter, they too lose their lives. In addition, many flights are also canceled during this season. Nonetheless, this does not make winter any less important. It is quite essential to maintain balance in the weather of our country.

Natural calamities are the calamities which are inflicted by God, or Nature, or man and his world. At these calamities, the unseen hand wreaks havoc in the part of the world it chooses to act upon. On these natural activities of nature no scientific or technological developments can wield any control.

They can occur as and when and where ordains it. Natural calamities can be of many different kinds, but the similarly in all, is their massive destruction in the area of their occurrence. The natural disasters are of many kinds, they are drought and famine, flood, earthquake, hailstrom and a cyclone.

In the wake of all these, in one sweep there is complete devastation and destruction, due to which normal life comes to a standstill. Loss of life is well nigh complete, and belongings of people get lost, blown away or swept away. The scene is one of the awe, of some unknown power that appears to wreak some revenge on the people of the area.

One feels that, there will never again be life in the area, there will never again come up any construction in the area. But, nature plays its part in this also, and even after the most ghastly disaster, life has come up blooming as ever as before in areas of such devastation.

Even though the importance of time differs for everyone, it is nonetheless important. Once we grow up, our childhood never comes back. Similarly, a student always tries their best all through the year for getting good grades.

Similarly, people make use of their precious time for different purposes to do their best to fulfil their wishes. It is because we are aware that time will not wait for anyone. We all get to live our life once.

Thus, it is up to us as to how we will use it. We can spend it by gaining a lot of achievement or we can spoil it by wasting the precious time given to us. Intelligent people strive to make the most of their time but living each moment to the fullest. Thus, we must all strive for the same thing.

It is clear by now that time is more valuable than money. Millions of people believe in this and it remains a fact. It is because once you lose time, you will never get it back, not even a second of it.

Time can be used to make money but money cannot be used to make more time. Thus, all the money in the world does not matter if you do not have enough time. Do you know the difference between successful people and failures?

We all get 24 hours in a day, no matter where we come from or how much money we have. It is not using all 24 hours that matters; it is how we use those hours. A successful person will always use their time efficiently to make progress in life.

Time is something we get and we have all the right to use it just like money. But, what’s different is that when we lose money, we can always get it back in one way or another. However, when we lose time, we can never get it back with any amount of money.

A patient in need of medical attention understands the value of time and that it is valuable than money. Similarly, an entrepreneur will take the fastest mode of travel to travel for a business deal to save time and seal and the deal. Thus, we see that time is indeed more important than money in life.

Love is difficult to define, difficult to measure, and difficult to understand. Love is what great writers write about, great singers sing about, and great philosophers ponder. Love is a powerful emotion, for which there is no wrong definition, for it suits each and every person differently. Whether love is between family, friends, or lovers, it is an overwhelming emotion that can be experienced in many different ways.
People experience love for the first time by being part of a family. Family love is demonstrated through lessons of sacrifice, concern and compassion, from the cradle to the grave.There are many different levels and conditions of family love. It is the love we cherish between our intermediate family and our…show more content…
A close-knit loving bond between two people can begin with a friendship. Whether it is a friendship between two males, two females, or one male and one female, these friendships.will develop into love. In no way is it a romantic love, but this type of love connects and bonds friends. Friends may move away or friendships may wane, but the love between the two people burns on forever.

Air pollution is a serious issue and a cause for major concern in today’s world. A report published in 2014  by the World Health Organisation states that 4.21 million individuals died prematurely in 2012 as a result of air pollution. Air pollution existed much before humans, in the form of volcanic eruptions and forest fires. However, it became much more prevalent after the Industrial Revolution.

Rapid industrial growth, unregulated emissions and a host of other issues significantly contributed to the rise in air pollution. In some cases, the severity of air pollution reached an extent where government intervention was necessary. The Great Smog of London, 1952, was an extreme case of air pollution where visibility was severely hampered. It also caused a host of illnesses and the consequent deaths of countless civilians. In November 2017, the levels of air pollution in Delhi were ten times above the safe limits. For reference, the healthy air quality index is between 0 to 50, but during that particular time period, the air quality index hit 500+. This event is now called the Great Smog of Delhi.

An air quality index of 500 and above indicates that the air is heavily polluted and will cause irreversible lung damage and a host of other illnesses to everyone who is exposed to it. Therefore, to avoid such situations in the future, relevant actions must be implemented.

Water harvesting is a technique of increasing the recharge of ground water by capturing and storing rainwater locally in sub­surface water reservoirs to meet the household needs. There are various reasons for water harvesting such as:

To meet the ever-increasing demand for water, reducing the run-off which chokes drains, avoid the flooding of roads. Apart from these augmenting of the ground water storage, raising water table, reducing groundwater pollution and soil erosion and supplementing domestic water requirement during summer and drought etc. are important reasons for water harvesting.

However, the water harvesting can be very beneficial where ground water levels are declining on regular basis and the availability of ground water is inadequate in lean months. This can be helpful in urban areas where due to rapid urbanization, infiltration of rain water into subsoil has decreased drastically and recharging of ground water has diminished.

There are several low cost techniques are available to recharge the ground water aquifers. Among them the water harvesting, refilling of dug wells recharging of hand pumps, construction of percolation pits, bunds and stop dams on small rivulets.

In urban areas, rainwater available from roof tops of buildings, paved and unproved areas goes waste. This water can be recharged to aquifers and can be utilized gainfully at the time of need. The rain water harvesting systems needs to be designed in a way that is does not occupy large space for collection and recharge system. The roof top rain water harvesting can be a very effective tool to fight the problem of water shortage particularly in urban areas.

Pollution is a term which even kids are aware of these days. It has become so common that almost everyone acknowledges the fact that pollution is rising continuously. The term ‘pollution’ means the manifestation of any unsolicited foreign substance in something. When we talk about pollution on earth, we refer to the contamination that is happening of the natural resources by various pollutants. All this is mainly caused by human activities which harm the environment in ways more than one. Therefore, an urgent need has arisen to tackle this issue straightaway. That is to say, pollution is damaging our earth severely and we need to realize its effects and prevent this damage. In this essay on pollution, we will see what are the effects of pollution and how to reduce it.

“RESPONSIBLY INCORPORATING TECHNOLOGY INTO LITERACY INSTRUCTION”

TAG : INSTRUCTION
CATEGORY: TECHNOLOGY

The use of interactive computer programs in an educational setting is often intended to motivate students (Boyle et al., 2016; see also our previous blog post on technology use to motivate young readers) and offer more individualized learning to meet the diverse needs of students (Vasquez & Straub, 2012). In recent years, the quality and quantity of computer programs have increased so dramatically that their use is now pervasive in K-12 classrooms (Gray, Thomas, & Lewis, 2010). The investment in educational software and digital subscription services in United States schools already totaled about $8 billion in 2013, the last reported record of expenditures (Harman, 2014), and it continues to rise.

Digital tools and opportunities commonly are integrated with face-to-face instruction to create a blended learning environment (Greer, Rowland, & Smith, 2014). Multiple review articles looking at the current state of blended learning research across various ages of students and settings have found significant positive effects. However, most research has been with college students, while the number of studies conducted in elementary or secondary schools remains small. In one meta-analysis, only 5 of 176 studies reviewed were conducted in kindergarten through Grade 12 (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones 2009). Another review found only seven studies in elementary or secondary schools that employed a rigorous research design capable of assessing the effectiveness of blended learning (Brodersen & Melluzzzo, 2017)

The limited number and rigor of studies make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the benefits of blended learning. In addition, some researchers caution that students may struggle to comprehend large blocks of text that require scrolling or navigating among multiple screens (e.g., Mangen, Walgermo, & Brønnick, 2013). It is important that teachers understand how to capitalize on the benefits of incorporating different types of technology in literacy instruction (e.g., electronic books, reading intervention programs) while minimizing the potential pitfalls.

Educational technology versus assistive technology
Educational technology that all students might access as part of the normal course of literacy instruction should be distinguished from the subcategory referred to as assistive technology. Software and hardware that are purposefully identified for use by students with disabilities in order to complete academic and everyday tasks are considered assistive technology. A student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan should include any assistive technology needs, and the purpose of that technology should be made clear to the student’s teachers. Once properly described in this manner, allowing the student to use the technology is not optional, rather a legal and ethical obligation the teacher must fulfill (Assistive Technology Act of 1998, 2004).

If the use of assistive technology is necessary in some instances but counter to the student’s learning goals in other ways, the team developing the IEP may specify when the tools are or are not appropriate for use. For example, a student with dyslexia may need to use audiobooks or text-to-speech recognition when learning content for subject area courses. Without the assistive technology, the student may not have the same opportunity as his or her peers to learn or demonstrate an understanding of the material. However, it may not be appropriate to use those tools when the student is receiving reading instruction intended to help him or her work on the particular reading or writing skills for which the assistive technology is being relied upon. To put it another way, if a student with dysgraphia is working on an IEP goal to improve handwriting skills, it would not make sense to complete handwriting lessons using voice recognition software on a digital device. Similarly, if a student with dyslexia is working on improving decoding skills, it would not make sense to have the decodable text aligned with a phonics lesson read to him or her through text-to-speech software.

The sections that follow describe limitations of two types of educational technology, and some considerations to help use the technology in beneficial ways that are complementary to core literacy instruction. These tools might be made available to all students, not just those with an IEP, during literacy instruction in a blended learning environment.

Electronic books and readers
Electronic books (e-books) include digital textbooks, novels, informational articles, and other supplementary reading materials, delivered via an electronic reader (e-reader), computer, or tablet. Texts can be purchased individually or can be obtained through a paid subscription. They were widely used for independent reading in the Iowa Reading Research Center’s study of intensive summer reading programs (Reed, Schmitz, Aloe, & Folsom, 2016). During these segments of class, students most often were observed sitting in front of laptops, wearing headphones, and listening passively to the audio of the book or article being read to them while yellow highlighting moved over the words on the screen. This activity did not make students responsible for applying reading skills, and the yellow highlighting even removed the need for students to track the print themselves.

In addition to potentially turning students from active readers into passive listeners, e-readers have been associated with students reading less frequently (Merga & Mat Roni, 2017). This may be partly due to getting off task using the other features of the devices such as online content or other applications not associated with reading the digitally delivered text. Properly designing blended learning activities, as discussed with greater detail later in this post, can ensure the technology does not become a distraction or disruption to literacy learning (Kennedy & Deshler, 2010).

Digital reading instructional programs
The use of digital curricular programs is believed to help teachers with individualizing reading instruction and intervention for students of different ability levels (Cuevas, Russell, & Irving, 2012). Unfortunately, there is not a lot of evidence that using digital programs actually results in improved outcomes among students with and at risk for reading disabilities (Stetter & Hughes, 2010). The standard for establishing that technology “works” traditionally has been based on whether the tool operates as intended, rather than on rigorous research evidence of effectiveness (Edyburn, 2013). An operational tool is not the same thing as an effective tool.

Teachers still play a critical role in planning appropriate instruction, regardless of the types of materials or resources used in lessons (Regan, Berkeley, Hughes, & Kirby, 2014). Without the supportive guidance of and interaction with a teacher, some students who have experienced repeated reading failure and other challenges report feeling dismissed by being sent to the computer for their instruction (Reed & Wexler, 2014). For those students, the use of computers depersonalized the instruction.

Improving the use of digital tools in the classroom
Educational software and other digital tools are far more sophisticated than those that were available even a decade ago. Use of these tools in the classroom offers new avenues for increasing efficiency, individualization, and student motivation (Boyle et al., 2106). However, simply replacing traditional print-based books and instructional materials with digital formats cannot guarantee that those resources will be used wisely.

Educators might take several steps to ensure the digital activities remain the complement and not the core of their literacy instruction:

Always provide the assistive technology for a student with a disability as prescribed in the IEP.
Disable the audio, highlighting, and hyperlink functions of e-books unless a student’s language and learning needs (as outlined in the IEP) specifically warrant such high levels of support. If the functions are used, consider the circumstances and timeline in which they should remain enabled. Then, make a plan to assist the student with transitioning away from needing those functions.
Plan face-to-face instructional activities based on the materials students read on e-readers or the skills they learn on a computer program. This might include fostering discussions about the important ideas in a text, incorporating the transfer and application of skills to reading in other content areas, creating opportunities to explore and apply key vocabulary words from the digital text, writing predictions about or reactions to the digital texts, and making connections to other lessons or reading materials.
Consider computer programs as one component of a blended learning environment in which the teacher and peers are still the primary sources of interaction and instruction for students. Situate the time spent on the computers as a segment of independent learning and practice. A small group of students may work with the digital resources while the teacher is instructing another small group. Have the small groups rotate through stations of teacher-led instruction, computer-led instruction, and peer collaboration.
Digital tools can be powerful augmentative resources for differentiating literacy instruction, but they are not yet able to supplant the important role of the teacher.

– Jerisha. S

“EDUCATIONAL GAMES, MOBILE QUIZZES AND DIGITAL BADGES ARE TRANSFORMING LEARNING”

TAG: LEARNING
CATAGORY: EDUCATION

Behind the buzzwords:

Gamification, Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki explains, means to enhance systems, services, organisations and activities in order to create similar experiences and motivations to those experienced when playing games, with the added educational goal of affecting user behaviour.

Practical implementations of gamification include a variety of elements and techniques, which can be, for example, points, leader boards or challenges.

Game-based learning is about acquiring knowledge or skills by playing a game, thus making the learning process more interesting, meaningful and effective. Games can be anything from digital- to real-life role-playing games.

“When we play games, there is a purpose and challenges and tasks that appeal to us. As we proceed in the game, we become more effective and begin to recognise our abilities,” Isabella Aura explains.

Games have been played throughout the history of mankind, and there has always been more to the process than pure entertainment.

For example, the development of a child’s brain relies heavily on playing, and societies would malfunction if we were not capable of working together or competing against each other according to mutually agreed rules – skills and attitudes that we learn by playing games.

So game-based learning is by no means a new invention. Digital educational games have been around for a while, too.

Issues with user-friendliness
I recall playing educational computer games as a kid at school. In one of the games, the player had to point and click at European countries on a map. By trial and error, I learned to locate mysterious countries like Albania and Liechtenstein.

It was the 1990s, so this was a fresh exception to regular classroom learning. However, the games were not a lot of fun to a 10-year-old – at least compared to any of the popular PC games we used to play at the time.

“Sadly, the same setting still exists,” says Isabella Aura. “We all know that games designed for entertainment tend to be more engaging and multidimensional than games that are solely for educational purposes.”

Oliver Šimko has come to the same conclusion. He says that finding an excellent educational game that meets today’s game industry standards is still challenging.

“If you look for good examples of educational games, you’ll find that many of them were designed as games in the first place, and educational value happened almost by a happy coincidence. Educational games are too often designed based on the needs of the client or the business, forgetting to consider them from the learner’s perspective.”

Be that as it may, game-based learning is here to stay.

Mandatory training can be more engaging
The business world is embracing gamification, which is quite easy to understand if you have ever had to sit through a lecture on company values or health and safety policy.

According to Isabella Aura and Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki, the most common gamification procedure for companies is to create different types of simulations, for example to introduce new employees to the company.

“Some large tech companies are also using digital badges to recognise learning and, for example, the consultant company McKinsey uses a game during its recruitment process,” adds Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki.

The potential is huge, because you can turn something that people don’t even want to attend into a pleasant experience

Oliver Šimko notes that gamification can be particularly useful in mandatory training.

“The potential is huge, because you can turn something that people don’t even want to attend into a pleasant experience. However, it is easy to fail if you misjudge your audience.”

Gamification has also reached the world of science. A good example of this, Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki says, is a crowdsourcing game called Foldit. The idea of the game is simple: to identify the structure of proteins.

“You don’t have to be a scientist. You just need to be able to see patterns,” she explains.

A delicate balance for adult learners
Compared to corporate training or scientific research, the setting of non-formal adult education is very different.

“Adults who have voluntarily enrolled in a course tend to take responsibility for their learning. However, this doesn’t mean that they don’t need any additional motivation or entertainment,” says Isabella Aura.

She believes that one way that adult education could benefit from gamification is by using individual learning paths, for learners to get the most out of the course.

“Individual learning paths can be enhanced with badges or other rewards, individual tasks or avatars, for example.”

If a game is well designed and user-friendly, you don’t have to have any pre-existing knowledge or skills to be able to play it.

Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki points out that there is a fine line between giving too much or too little guidance to adult learners.

“There is a really important balance between the autonomous, self-learning process, and the guidance which is needed to avoid getting lost in the learning process. At this point. techniques like flipped learning or gamification can be really helpful.”

“Learning is a serious business”
One thing to keep in mind is that not all learners are eager to take on new learning routines. Oliver Šimko brings up some common obstacles, such as viewing learning as a serious business not to be undermined by games, in his blog post on EPALE.

He says that these obstacles can be overcome by careful game design and knowing your audience. Instead of demographics, he speaks of psychographic segmentation and taking into account that there are different player types.

“Some people want to win and some like to see others lose. Some play to express themselves and others just want to feel the social elements of the game. You need to prepare game mechanics that work for all of them.”

Many people who oppose playing games believe that you have to be a so-called digital native to enjoy them. Isabella Aura notes that the whole concept is rather misleading.

While some children grow up surrounded by digital devices, they do not automatically know everything about technology, and all skills need to be learned. Also, if a game or gamified feature is well designed and user-friendly, you don’t have to have any pre-existing knowledge or skills to be able to play it.”

What will the future bring?
While it is understandable that not everyone embraces the idea of having more technology in our lives, it seems inevitable.

“Distance learning is now the new reality,” says Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki, “and this creates more opportunities for gamified solutions. There is a call for games that are nicely integrated with all of these meeting platforms and are able to engage or get the attention of people, because you get very tired of just sitting in front of a screen.”

She also expects to see a stronger role for VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), especially in statistics and data visualisation.

I saw the change in attitude and behaviour take place before my eyes. It was the surprising miracle of education.

In addition to these immersive new technologies, Oliver Šimko sees huge potential for gamification in a world that is increasingly interconnected.

“The digital world is blending into the personal world, for example in how our social media accounts are connected to pretty much any service we use nowadays. Gamification could become the key element in motivating and nudging people in this new environment,” he says and gives a few examples of gamified solutions that help us make better choices for ourselves and others.

“There are recent fitness apps that nudge users towards walking an extra mile and improving their health. An app called Headspace uses cleverly gamified techniques to help you start meditating, and Waze nudges you towards becoming a more proactive and caring driver who contributes to road safety.”

However, advanced technology combined with extensive user data can also be used to control people.

“We can see the nightmarish scenario emerging in China, where the social credit and point system is in fact a gamified citizenship that in my opinion resembles an almost totalitarian future. I hope that gamification will never go in this direction.”

After this thought, it might be useful to end with a less threatening example of gamification.

Success in small steps
A gamified learning experience does not have to be digital at all, or the digital element can be just a tiny part of it.

Nikoletta-Zampeta Legaki noticed the value of gamification while she was teaching forecasting techniques to a postgraduate class in Greece.

“People came to the course after 8 or 10 hours at work, which meant that the last thing they wanted to do was to listen to someone explaining mathematical equations,” she says.

She created a mobile quiz on Quizizz, and saw the tiredness vanish.

“It was really simple stuff. After a wrong answer, some music or a meme might appear. But suddenly the students were excited, speaking to each other and wondering what had just happened.”

For the teacher, the experience proved that game-based learning has great potential.

“I saw the change in attitude and behaviour take place before my eyes. It was the surprising miracle of education.”

Jerisha. S

“25 CONTENT AMPLIFICATION TOOLS FOR MARKETING PROFESSIONALS”

TAG : MARKETING TOOLS
CATEGORY: DIGITAL MARKETING

There is so much content out there, now that Google has made the creation of quality content mandatory for high rankings. It means that creating great content solves only half the problem; the real job is getting that content noticed by the right audience at the appropriate time, which is extremely important if a business will achieve its goals.

Content amplification is that arm of content marketing that is concerned with pushing blogs, articles, infographics, web pages and other content/messaging onto discovery platforms.

These platforms include social media sites and other high –traffic networks, where your target audience will be attracted by your headlines, come to consume your content and hopefully convert to help you achieve business goals.

BENEFITS OF CONTENT AMPLIFICATION TOOLS:

Content amplification spells huge benefits for everyone involved. The following are just a few examples:

For marketers: providing something valuable to your target audience enables a marketer to unobtrusively develop meaningful relationships/engagement with the audience, which results in higher ROI than conventional advertising.
For consumers: Effective content amplification places the consumer at the center of control regarding what he/she chooses to consume while simultaneously adding value and addressing their daily issues.
For businesses: Engaging unobtrusively with consumers by solving real-life issues through high-quality content is a great way to build brand awareness, attract links and hence increase traffic and conversions rates that will ultimately improve revenue generation..

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT CONTENT AMPLIFICATION?

The first step of learning effective content amplification is accepting these hard realities:

Your content is not special
Yes, you’re creating excellent, in-depth, well-articulated content, but so are a billion other sites on the Internet. No matter how good it is, you’ll need active promotion to get your work before the audience that matters. Consider this: in just 24 hours, there are over 4B new Facebook posts, almost 500K new WordPress posts, over 100K hours of new YouTube feeds and over 144.8 B new posts.

Great content does NOT promote itself on merit; this is the greatest fallacy in content marketing.

You are not special
Unless you are Justin Bieber, Buzzfeed, Wall Street Journal or The Oatmeal, you don’t have a drone of audience hanging onto your every word – unless you worked to do that. Unless you have the kind of following, reputation and resources that they have, you won’t get too far with just push-publishing.

The ugly truth is that people care about who wrote a piece, even more than the piece itself. That’s why even terrible content from the right influencer can spread like a bushfire. But for the rest of us, you have to work extra hard to build trust and credibility before your content has a chance of pushing itself.

Sharing is the least of your goals
Unless you are in the content business, share numbers are not your goal. Your goals begin with what happens after the content is shared – leads, links, subscriptions, brand awareness, sales, etc. Ultimately, you want to ensure your content is not just reaching a mass of people, but rather a mass of the right people. For that, you need active, strategic promotion.

INTRODUCTION TO CONTENT CREATION:

The foundation of content amplification is content creation. The first step is to work in creating great, targeted, relevant and value-adding content that will be the basis of your content amplification strategies.

Types of content
There are many types of content you can write, and you need to delve into as many different types as you can to cater to a wider demographic, even within your target audience segment. You don’t have to do all at once, but you should be afraid to venture into a new field just because they’re new to you. Create a schedule to plan how often you will churn out different types, and stick to it to add spice and variety to your blog.

Below are just a few examples of these:

Infographics – this is a visual representation of data/information, and it is very popular across the board since it condenses a lot of information into simple, interpretable figures and stats. Infographics are shared up to three times as often other content types.
Memes – these are easy to make, hilarious and have huge potential for virality. However, they’re more geared towards a social audience rather than for your blog.
Videos and podcasts– there’s a host of choice on video content, but the key is to ensure the video is of good quality and delivered succinctly and memorable. Videos can be exceptionally persuasive if done well.
Guides and how-to’s – in-depth, detailed, practical piece with text and relevant images. Visual elements are important to enhance the comprehensibility of this type of content.
Book and product reviews – opinion pieces on various books and products that people in your niche would be interested in. Share both good and bad aspects, and why they made it to your list, which gives a better understanding of you and humanizes you before the audience.
Opinion posts (rants) – these are extremely effective in building discussions and engagement, but they must be used very carefully. Ensure comprehensive research to avoid putting your foot in your mouth and losing credibility with the audience.
Useful tools and resources for content creation
Creating content doesn’t have to be as taxing anymore; there are many ways, tools and resources to get high-quality content without breaking your back. These content amplification tools can also help when working on visual-based content, which is where most people have a major problem.

For research
Google Drive Research Tool – helps you conduct Google search while on your Google Drive window.
Site:search – this is a Google search option that limits only to specific websites. The site search formula is “ site:domainexample.com [search query] ”
Google Search Console – formerly Google Webmaster Tools, GSC is helpful for data augmentation related to SEO and keyword research.
For writing and editing
Evernote – the free version is extremely helpful for everything from the creation of to-do lists to writing entire article content and editing. It’s also available as an app for mobile allowing you to sync work across devices.
Word2CleanHTML – useful for those who create drafts on Word and other word-processing software rather than the CMS. This tool helps filter and fix those little quacks that happen on HTML when content is copied from external sources into the CMS window.
Grammarly and Correctica – apart from human editors, you need a grammar tool to triple-check your content prior to publishing. Both tools are free, and Grammarly can even check for plagiarism.
Write My Essay – dedicated to providing all services related to content creation, in case you want to outsource content creation rather than do it yourself.
25 Tools and Resources to Make Content Amplification much easier
Once you have your high-quality content, you are now ready to embark on content amplification. Below are 25 tools and resources you can use to get your content noticed by the right eyes:

Contently
Contently is a content creation, optimization and distribution company in New York City. You can use the expertise of more than 30,000 content specialists to move your content through paid distribution, email, and social media channels. Contently is trusted by a few major brands, including American Express and General Electric.

Buzzstream
Buzzstream is a software suite specially designed for B2B content marketing specialists, and it enables content amplification via social media, PR, and link acquisition. It is popularly used by both large and small businesses to jumpstart outreach, build credibility and track communications throughout online platforms.

Cision
The content marketing suite by Cision is intended for top tier websites with engaged audiences to drive traffic to content and increase brand exposure. It’s an easy-to-use tool for PR campaign strategy enhancement. B2B marketing teams can use this tool to reach the largest audience possible by targeting channels frequented by potential customers.

Edgar
The Edgar app is intended to offer optimized visibility for businesses’ posts on social media. Given that most updates will only be seen by a fraction of your followers, Edgar app is set to automatically repost archived content, and it uses algorithmic analysis to schedule update posting at the most optimal high-traffic times.

Buffer
Buffer is a tool for social media management and is popular as an easy tool to maintain the freshness of your LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and Twitter profiles and share content on these platforms. Using Buffer, you can set times for your social media posts, which enables you to post at the optimal times for your followers located across different time zones.

OnePress Social Locker
This is a WordPress plugin that is set up such that viewers can access full content only after they have shared it on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. For otherwise engaged audiences, you can use OnePress on select posts. It is an easy-to-install plugin that is very affordable – just $24 – even for startups.

Outbrain
Outbrain is a convenient traffic-driving tool that enables content promotion by embedding links with high-authority publishing sites. Each time you browse the web, you’re likely to encounter something from Outbrain. It’s simple to sign up, all you need is to commit a specific budgetary allocation and leave the work to Outbrain.

Storify
This tool helps you to collect content from social media, pages and blogs throughout the web into a single location. It also makes content viewer-friendly and connects you to related, story-worthy sources while you’re creating content. There’s a free and Business Pro version, the latter with enhanced privacy, customization and support options.

Listly
Listly is very useful to advertising your content by sharing, publishing and planting lists to help viewers gain quick access to relevant and related information and links (your own included). It is a widely held resource for content marketers, mostly for its ability to link audiences with relevant, interesting information.

PR Newswire
PR Newswire is particularly intended for the newsworthy content, being a high-authority news source. It offers subscribers up-to-minute videos, press releases, audio and images to help them stay current. Also, it is useful for content distribution and to boost the social visibility of updates and scheduled content.

Taboola
This is a content discovery tool intended to recommend your content to high-authority/quality, related third-party websites. When the visitor clicks on your content, it will be viewed through YouTube, social media, your site or another third party site. It also includes analytics and free resources for campaign optimization, performance stats as well as one-on-one support to enable business goal achievement.

Gravity
Another content distribution tool intended to create a personalized web experience for visitors. This is done using their Interest Graph technology, which organizes content according to relatable interests. It analyses your content and only shows it to interest readers in the form of personalized endorsements. They also have free browser extensions for readers who recommend your content as they interact with other parts of the web.

Zemanta
A tool that enables automated aggregation and indexing of your content, which is then distributed in the form of in-stream ads, promoted recommendations, sponsored content and in-text links in select, quality third-party sites. It includes a dashboard with analytics on performance and efficacy of your content and match content display with viewer interests.

SimpleReach
This tool enables content distribution and measurement. Their analytics tools offer insights into real-time content performance, with predictive tools to determine which are likely to perform best. Real-time reporting and prediction enables you to know in advance which content is likely to drive highest engagement and traffic, so you can focus on those.

Triberr
It’s a social network of influencers and blogger, grouped according to interests. Members join and can share content with the group to drive social shares and comments. There are both free and premium options, the latter allowing access to more features and larger tribes. It includes features for Influencer Marketing campaigns.

GaggleAmp
A social media marketing tools which helps content distribution with your key players i.e. customers, employees and partners. A group is gathered and they agree to share company-originated content within their social accounts. It also offers powerful social activity analytics, including ROI information on traffic, engagement and revenue generation.

Zapier
Zapier provides a single platform that connects all your web apps, where you can automate and coordinate tasks. Over 300 aps are supported, and then you can set up automated events and triggers (called Zaps). The dashboard allows you to monitor activity and manage all your apps. It can also be applied for content distribution, given that it includes most popular social networks and CMSes.

AddThis
AddThis gives website administrators a chance to build traffic by making it simpler for user to share content. It provides for increased audience engagement with users not on the site, and allows content distribution on most social networks and third party platforms.

ShareThis
It’s a comprehensive solution that allows site users to share content with their networks through a number of channels, including email, IM, SMS and social media. It also provides insights and real-time analytics for social intelligence needed by content publishers, developers and brands.

LinkedIn
Through its publishing platform, LinkedIn allows marketing teams to post content to the site, which posts are useful in increasing traffic to the brands social media profiles and official sites. Companies on LinkedIn can maintain blogs on the site to create a strong signal as industry leaders.

Facebook Ads
Facebook ads on average reach 91.3% of your target audience, unlike other online ad campaigns, which means you’re getting a good deal for your investment. Ads may be targeted according to demographical characteristics, location and interests among other options.

Promoted Tweets
These tweets are deployed to potential followers and current fans of the brand. You need to have compelling content, which will be shot at the right audience using a variety of filtering options on Twitter. Targeted users receive the tweets on their timelines.

MailChimp
A free/premium email marketing/web-based platform that enables content sharing through email newsletters. There are pre-designed templates for newsletter creation making it easier to use. It can be integrated with WordPress and Twitter to enable you build email lists throughout the web. Also includes tracking and metric analytics capabilities.

Hootsuite
This free/premium social network dashboard enables management of multiple social platforms and profiles and measures performance of content shared to the various platforms. All major networks are supported with provisions for additional integration with other networks through their HootSuite App Directory.

Conclusion
You are now armed with all the tricks and tips to create and sell high-quality content. Go forth and be great!

-Jerisha. S

“CONCRETE STEPS TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES TO FIND A JOB”

TAG : WORKING
CATEGORY: JOB

When you find yourself unemployed, whether you knew it was coming or not, you have to set yourself up for success to increase your chances of finding your next position.

With today’s job market, competition if high and there are hundreds of people applying for one open position.

Have concrete steps to take can improve your chances of finding your next job. Here are some to consider to help put you on the path:

Make Finding a Job Your Full-time Job

When you initially become unemployed, it is common, and often necessary, to take a few days to evaluate your situation and process what has just happened.

This is normal. What isn’t normal, or healthy, is to commit only a couple of hours a day to your job search. Your job search needs to become your NEW full-time job.

It can become tempting to start binge-watching that new Netflix show or start working on those projects around the house. Resist!!

Instead, set a daily schedule for yourself including online searching, networking, LinkedIn (LI) posting/commenting, etc. Every day your schedule should reflect your job-hunting efforts.

Revamp Your Resume

If it has been more than 5 years since your resume was updated, it’s time. In this competitive job market, your resume is your marketing piece that will get you in the door.

A hiring manager spends on average 10 seconds scanning your resume to determine if they may want to invite you for an interview. That means your resume better stand out to catch their attention.

You want to have more than one resume when applying for jobs, so it helps to have professional resume writers review your resume and make needed changes.

Depending on the job you’re looking for, you will need to highlight different aspects of yourself on your resumes. Professionals are great at creating different resumes for every client.

Customize a Cover Letter

Think of the cover letter as a quick handshake introduction to a prospective employer. Your cover letter should be unique to the job you are applying for—don’t send out a cover letter addressed to “Sir or Madam”, you want it to be personal and show that you put some effort into the process.

Highlight your skills that will set you apart from other prospects, and address a pain point for each specific company. Never ever use a generic cover letter. HR managers can spot those a mile away.

Develop Your Networking Plan

Networking must be a key part of your job search plan. Networking is still the #1 way people find jobs. Determine how you will utilize LI and other social media sites to communicate the fact you are in an active job search.

Be sure your LI profile is job search ready before you start connecting with people again…if it’s been a while. Consider joining a trade industry, as well as LI groups relevant to your industry.

Let people know that you are looking for a job–there’s no shame in asking if someone is hiring. Other professionals can often connect you with HR managers when your skills are qualified.

But you need to do more than just network online, get out and go to some networking clubs or events. You can meet more people over a drink than you can with blasting out your resume to Facebook friends.

Begin Expanding Your Search

Sending out resumes in one industry may have worked in the past, but that’s simply not the case. Today you have to be well-versed in many different fields.

You never know what your next platform for success will be. If you have experience in marketing, then your next career may be in sales or advertising. Just try to branch out and see what’s out there.

Creating a specific job search plan with will help to keep you on track. Use these steps as a guideline to keep you motivated and moving forward toward your next position.

Jerisha. S

“WHY NOW’S THE TIME TO EMBRACE FLEXIBLE WORKING”

TAG: FLEXIBLE WORKING

CATAGORY: JOB

In a flexible working arrangement, an employee has some say over how, where or when they work. Whether this involves working from home, working part-time, job sharing or having another kind of flexitime arrangement, generally workers benefit from an element of freedom to define a working arrangement that supports their lifestyle.

Tom Neil is a guidance writer for ACAS, the non-departmental body of the Government that works throughout the UK to prevent and resolve employment disputes. “All employees who have worked for their employer for more than 26 weeks are entitled to make a request for flexible working,” he explains. However, whilst half of UK employers offer flexible working arrangements, a recent CBI report found that just one in 10 job listings mention flexible working. “More work needs to be done on understanding the benefits that flexible working can bring to an organisation,” says Neil.

So, can flexible working arrangements benefit both employers and employees? And, what are the barriers preventing our workplaces from adopting these practices on a much wider scale?

The benefits of flexible working

Neil explains that for employees, the benefits of flexible working are often focused on improving their work-life balance, as well as looking after their health and wellbeing. However these arrangements also impact positively on productivity. “Research from the CIPD has shown that implementing flexible working practices can improve staff engagement and motivation,” Neil says. Natalie Pancheri, HR Policy Adviser at the London School of Economics (LSE) agrees. “The benefits of flexible working are well established, from increased employee engagement to better performance,” she says.

LSE has won recognition for its initiatives to support parents and carers in the workplace, recently being noted as a pioneer in Shared Parental Leave by the charity Working Families. While flexible working has historically been seen as a female or parental issue, Pancheri explains, “The benefits can and should apply to all staff whether you are disabled, a carer or simply seeking a better work-life balance.”

Pancheri describes flexible working as: “recognising that individuals have different needs both inside and outside of work.” This is true for Sharon Ellis, a working mother in her early 40s whose 13 year old daughter has special education needs (SEN). “Outside of school hours, it’s very difficult to get support,” says Ellis, explaining that with limited funding for transport and sparse local resources for after-school care, she often has to do the school run, which impacts on the number of hours she can work each week. Ellis was employed through Randstad to work as a mental health support worker at Preston University. Luckily for Ellis her employers support her need for a flexible working arrangement. “They’re really flexible,” she says. “I can manage my own timetable to suit my needs.”

Mandy Garner is the editor of workingmums.co.uk, a site set up in 2006 to act as a bridge between employers and women looking for new, flexible work positions. The site has since expanded, offering a section for dads, support on employment issues and a home business section. “Most of the workforce are likely to need flexible working at some point in their career,” says Garner. “Technology makes it increasingly easier to work flexibly (therefore) it makes no business sense not to offer it.” Garner has four children and has worked in various flexible arrangements, including working from home, working part-time and freelancing. “I basically work all the time, but flexibly so I can pick up the kids and deal with holidays, sickness, inset days and the like,” she says.

It’s not only employees who benefit from flexible working. As Neil explains, flexible arrangements often benefit the company or organisation, too. They can “help to reduce absenteeism, increase productivity and enhance employee engagement and loyalty,” he explains. “It can greatly increase the pool of applicants for vacant roles, while helping to retain the experienced and skilled staff already there.”

Pancheri echoes this, explaining that for companies, offering flexible working arrangements means “attracting, retaining and developing the best possible workforce.” At the same time, it can benefit a company financially. “We also know from research that staff can often value flexibility over other more traditional forms like remuneration, so there’s a positive financial implication for organisations to consider too,” she explains.

According to Pancheri, offering flexible working is also about doing the ‘right thing’. “Embedding a culture of flexibility begins to chip away at the types of issues that can prevent women from advancing their careers, as well as making sure that this becomes the norm rather than ‘special treatment’ that may be resented by others,” she says.

What are the barriers?

Ellis used to work as a joiner, but after having her daughter, she knew she’d have to find a job which offered a flexible working arrangement. Ellis went back to college as a mature student and retrained as a counsellor. She began working for a charity that was supportive of her needs, but was later made redundant as a result of government cuts. “It took me from May till September to find a job that allowed me to work around my daughter,” she explains. None of the roles Ellis initially applied for in that interim period were willing to offer job splits – all wanted one person who could work full-time.

Ellis’s situation is not unique. According to an annual survey conducted by workingmums.co.uk, the lack of flexible working options, along with childcare costs, prevent mothers from returning to work. “Our recent survey showed 18% of mums had been forced to leave their work when flexible working was not allowed,” confirms Garner.

It’s not only a problem for working mothers. “Research shows that dads also want more flexibility,” says Garner. “Enabling dads to work flexibly is crucial to greater workplace equality,” she insists. Furthermore, Garner’s surveys indicate younger employees are starting to expect and want flexible working arrangements too.

According to Neil, many employees are not fully aware of their rights regarding flexible working. “To actually ask your employer to change your working arrangements can be a substantial and potentially uncomfortable concept,” he explains. “However (workers) should feel reassured that they do have the right to ask to work more flexibly and are protected from suffering any detriment related to it,” he adds.

Whilst employers have the right to reject a flexible working proposal if they have a good business reason for doing so, employees can make a claim to an employment tribunal if they believe their request has not been fairly handled. “Understanding the issues that the business may have with your request can be really important,” says Neil, who sees finding a flexible working arrangement that suits both parties as an important hurdle to overcome. “It means that you are better prepared to suggest ways that any negative impact on the business can be mitigated.”

Future hopes for flexible working

Neil believes that for an organisation to attract and retain a happy and productive workforce, employers need to think beyond the basic legal requirements around flexible working. “That means running a business in an open-minded and adaptable manner,” he says. “Most roles can accommodate some sort of flexible working arrangement … compromise from the employee and the employer can often lead to an outcome that works for everyone,” he adds.

Garner agrees. “Flexible working is most effective if it works for all parties … there has been a lot around recently about employers using flexible working to basically exploit workers,” she cautions, referring to the insecurity that comes with zero hour contracts. Looking forward, Garner adds: “As people stay in work longer and have to balance that with caring responsibilities for older relatives, the need for flexible working will only increase.”

Today, Ellis runs her own private counselling and psychotherapy business alongside her role as a support worker at Preston University. She also volunteers locally, supporting other parents who have children with disabilities. “You’ve got to work for it, but it is possible,” she says. “I’m really pleased with how things have worked out.”

Pancheri believes that in order to make flexible working a national success, the pre-existing culture, habits and mind-set of many organisations needs to be challenged. All of which takes time. “We are in the early stages of looking at ‘agile working’ and what that could look like at the LSE. Agile working is a bit of a game changer but appears to be gaining support so far,” she says. “Flexible working isn’t about being a parent anymore; it’s what the millennial generation of workers are coming to expect and it is something organisations should be embracing and seeking to embed wherever possible.

“THE BEST APPS FOR IPAD PRO CONNOISSEURS: 10 ESSENTIALS TO DOWNLOAD RIGHT NOW”

TAG: MACHINE

CATAGORY: TECHNOLOGY

Right out of the box, an iPad Pro can do plenty it lets you create doodles, send emails, watch movies, browse the web, check your schedule, and more. But Apple’s premium tablet really shines when you start adding third-party apps to it.

We found the very best apps for the iPad Pro, ones that will simply supercharge your essays, art, and music. These essential downloads prove the power and versatility of Apple’s top tablet.

1. Procreate:

We could do a whole feature just on digital art apps for the iPad Pro. Out of all of these options, Procreate wins for its breadth of features and intuitive interface. The app offers a wealth of advanced tools well over 100 different brush and pen types, with more than 50 different customizations available on each one. These help you create some seriously brilliant results, from basic digital sketches to advanced computer-generated artwork. Despite this multitude of options, Procreate still manages to avoid making its interface cluttered-looking or difficult to access. It really is a pleasure to use.

Procreate costs a one-time fee of $10. But to get the most out of it, you should also invest in an Apple Pencil ($130 from Apple).

2. Paper:

Paper helps you scribble digital doodles, with an emphasis on taking notes and making plans rather than creating artwork (though the app can do that too). Like actual paper, it lets you organize everything in a series of customized “notebooks.” In another similarity, the interface is very simple to use: It keeps the workspace as the main focus.

Sign up for a Pro subscription ($8 per month), and you can add cross-device syncing, multiple brush sizes, unlimited color swatches, and more features. While you’re buying, be aware that, like Procreate, Paper benefits from the Apple Pencil accessory.

3. Pixelmator:

Pixelmator is a comprehensive image editor for the iPad Pro, and it offers oodles of bonus features, including pixel-by-pixel editing, a vast range of tools, layer support, automatic adjustments, Photoshop compatibility, the ability to drop in text and shapes, and more. Create your own digital artwork from scratch, or make your existing photos look their best: The app can remove blemishes and imperfections from images, clone areas of a picture, blur or sharpen specific regions, and apply a host of color and brightness filters.

This thorough set of options comes with a price tag of $5. Add an Apple Pencil and Pixelmator becomes even easier to control.

4. Microsoft Excel:

Apple is eager to promote the iPad Pro as a serious computing device, and few apps demonstrate this better than Excel. Although it may not be as capable as the full-fat desktop version, Microsoft has been incrementally improving this competent mobile adaptation of Excel over the years and it’s significantly better than it was at launch. For example, the company added the ability to edit two spreadsheets side-by-side earlier this year.

The free app includes key formatting and sharing tools, but you will need an Office 365 subscription from Microsoft to make edits (rather than just view spreadsheets). That’ll set you back $7 per month.

5. YouTube:

This essential video player should be one of the first apps you download onto your new iPad Pro. Whether you want to catch up on the latest sports highlights or learn to play guitar, you’ll find yourself turning to the YouTube app. You can also upload your own video clips straight from an iPad Pro.

With the free YouTube app for the iPad, you’ll have access to content from livestreams to music videos, as well as any shows and movies you’ve purchased from Google. If you pay $12 per month for YouTube Premium, you will also get an ad-free experience and access to some original web shows.

6. Evernote:

Evernote is widely regarded as one of the best note-taking apps in the business. Part of its appeal is that you can adapt it to so many different uses, from taking lecture notes to editing a shopping list shared between multiple family members (everything syncs seamlessly across multiple platforms). Because its interface is easy to navigate on a touchscreen, and it offers support for handwritten notes—whether you scribble them with a finger or an Apple Pencil—Evernote works particularly well on the iPad Pro.

Plenty of these features are available free of charge. If you need access to more features, such as offline support and plug-ins for other mobile apps, you can purchase a premium subscription for $8 a month.

7. LumaFusion:

If you plan to do some advanced video editing on your iPad Pro, Apple’s own iMovie is a decent (and free) choice—but LumaFusion is better. It offers a traditional, timeline-based interface, as well as a host of drag-and-drop functions you can use to split and combine scenes, while adding filters and effects. With a set of comprehensive tools for creating titles, mixing and syncing audio alongside your clips, and introducing effects like slow or fast motion, LumaFusion guides you from the first steps to the final export of your movie masterpiece.

Admittedly, at $30, the price of entry is relatively steep. But if you want your iPad Pro to help you with serious video editing, this app won’t let you down.

8. Notability:

The iPad Pro makes a great note-taking tool, particularly if you download Notability. Your digital scrawls will never have looked so good and well-organized as they are inside this app. It lets you enhance your handwritten text with different pen styles and colors, find search terms within a digitized version of your notes, drop in images and typed words, and import and annotate PDFs. In other words, this is a complete sketching and note-taking solution.

At $9, Notability costs more than a less visually-dazzling option like Evernote. But the iPad Pro was designed for apps like this—it really makes the tablet shine.

9. Google Docs

If you think there are too many note-taking apps for the iPad Pro, just wait until you check out the selection of writing programs. You might opt for anything from Apple’s own Pages to the beautifully-designed Ulysses, but we’ve selected Google Docs. When you write on an iPad Pro, you need an app that focuses on core features like formatting and collaboration without including so many elements that it appears cluttered on screen. Google Docs ticks all the relevant boxes: It’s lightweight, user-friendly, and versatile. It also works offline, so when you lose Wi-Fi or LTE access on your iPad Pro, you can keep typing that report.

Like most Google apps, this one is free to use, and it lets you access your essays from any other mobile device or web browser.

10. Things

If organization buffs plan to manage their tasks and to-do lists on an iPad Pro, they can’t do better than the Things app for iPadOS. It’s almost as fully-featured as the macOS version, which means it gets two thumbs up from us. With simple and intuitive tools for scheduling, sorting, and searching, you can stay on top of all your projects, small and large alike. Choose your favorite view and use it to review what you need to do today and how far along each project is. Meanwhile, integration with the iPadOS Calendar and Siri makes this productivity app even easier to use.

This marks another relatively expensive app in our list. But if you think about the years of use you’re going to get from Things, and the time you’re likely to save with its help, we think the app is worth the outlay.

“LONG-LIFE LEARNING AND THE AGE-INTEGRATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION ”

TAG: ABOUT LEARNING

CATAGORY: EDUCATION

Universities are among the most age-segregated of institutions, catering almost exclusively to young people in their late teens and early 20s, even as new demographic realities render this educational model obsolete.

With unprecedented numbers of adults living longer, many want or need to learn and earn longer too. A new life stage—an encore to conventional adulthood—is opening up between the career- and family-building years, and the frailties associated with old age. Most people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s are healthy, energetic, and often surprised to be pushed into retirement or laid off with few job prospects. While some want to move into full-time leisure, the vast majority seek new pursuits, whether paid or unpaid, that offer meaning and purpose. But they find few roadmaps and few options for long-life learning at universities.

This reality represents a lost opportunity for all parties—older adults and younger ones, universities and society at large. Older and younger adults, both grappling with increasingly ambiguous and uncertain futures, must find their own way without the benefit of each others’ experiences and perspectives. By focusing only on young people, universities pass up a chance to add a new source of revenue, diversify and enrich campus life and learning, and leave a bigger mark on the future. Society, perhaps, loses the most, as younger and older adults represent largely untapped pools of talent that can be marshaled—individually and together—to respond to the social, economic, and environmental shocks characterizing life in the 21st century.

Introducing Multigenerational Initiatives

In 2017, we launched the University of Minnesota Advanced Careers Initiative (UMAC) to help older adults discover new futures, bring the generations together, and reimagine higher education as a welcoming place for people of all ages. UMAC connects multigenerational learning with social impact work, bringing younger and older students together in classes that address issues like inequality, climate change, global health, and social justice. These classes have fostered collaborative, cross-generational relationships that often extend beyond the classroom.

The University of Minnesota is one of a small but growing number of universities that are bringing encore adults to their campuses to help them prepare for engaged, longer lives. Unlike conventional continuing education programs—such as Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, which offer age-segregated, enrichment courses for retirees—these initiatives intentionally mix their older and younger students in classrooms. They also encourage older students, often known as fellows, to plan second careers in the nonprofit sector or as entrepreneurs.

Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, launched in 2008, led the way with this model. Its year-long program targets corporate executives with at least 20 years of experience who are ready for their next chapters. These fellows take classes with younger students, attend some seminars together, and develop a plan for “a program, an organization, a foundation” with the potential for “significant impact on a major problem.”

Meanwhile, Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative, and The University of Texas’s Tower Fellows Program emphasize exploration, personal growth, and purpose. All attract professionals with distinguished careers seeking a new trajectory for their lives. These programs encourage fellows to take courses in subjects they haven’t studied before or that didn’t exist when they were younger, attend campus events, and share their transition challenges with one another.

Cost represents a major barrier, however, with 2021 program fees starting at $53,000, depending on the program, plus housing expenses. While scholarships are sometimes available, these programs are designed primarily for people of means. By contrast, UMAC’s nine-month program, the first multigenerational university program at a public university, costs $16,000. As growing numbers of people seek encores to their careers, we need to make programs like these more accessible to a broad mix of older adults, including those with modest incomes.

Layers of Learning

In the grand scheme of university life, these programs are all nascent, enrolling relatively small numbers of students and still learning a great deal about what constitutes success. Over the past few years, UMAC has exceeded expectations in some ways and fallen short in others. But the work has shown that universities have a great deal to gain from offering programs that engage older adults in the fabric of higher education.

The lessons we’ve learned can serve as guideposts for those at other colleges and universities who want to begin to move from age-segregated institutions to age-integrated ones.

1. Create an intentional, intergenerational learning community. Connecting learners of different ages in the classroom melds experience and exploration, often with transformative results. At UMAC, a retired neonatologist brought practical insights from his experience with infant care to a global health class. A realtor contemplating next steps gained new understandings of structural inequalities around race and housing, learning from the experiences of younger students in the class. An advertising executive collaborated with students in a community-organizing class to uncover parallels between the lived experiences of people involved in the 1960s civil rights movement and today’s Black Lives Matter movement.

In intergenerational classes, older and younger students share their skills and knowledge, providing reciprocal mentoring and creating strong bonds across generations. The simplistic framing is that older adults offer career expertise, such as interviewing skills and professional networks, while younger students offer technological savvy. But age-integrated classes help create much deeper connections across the generations.

Some encore adults and undergraduates who meet in courses discover they both share a passion for the environment or early learning and decide to collaborate on a class project or meet for discussions outside of class. Others realize that despite their age difference, they’re both grappling with what they want to do with the rest of their lives and can benefit from exchanging advice. And many form long-lasting friendships that challenge age stereotypes.

2. Build on existing infrastructure. Using existing resources and curricula helped integrate UMAC into the overall university community, alerting others to the program’s presence and paving the way for deeper impact across the university.

As an example, we leveraged the university’s Grand Challenge Curriculum, a collection of interdisciplinary classes focusing on contemporary issues. At first, we encouraged a few faculty members teaching these courses to invite UMAC fellows to join the classes. In addition to doing course work, the older fellows served as volunteers, helping undergraduates with projects or professors with research or other administrative tasks. We then approached colleagues in other university centers and institutes to open their doors to UMAC fellows, too, spreading the knowledge and skills older adults bring to a wider audience. A UMAC fellow with a background in investment banking, for example, joined the university’s Venture Center business advisory team, bringing valuable expertise to early-stage startups.

On the flip side, we built UMAC within the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, an interdisciplinary research institute. But while aligned from a research perspective, we had to look elsewhere for grounding when it came to spreading the word.

3. Determine funding needs and sources before launch. UMAC intentionally started small and under the radar. By launching as a pilot, we gained the flexibility and time to experiment with program design, learn what worked, and implement best practices. But our unobtrusive launch hindered financial resource development, compared to a bolder unveiling. The result was a skeleton staff with limited bandwidth for internal promotion, external marketing, and recruitment.

We received modest funding from the University of Minnesota’s provost to launch, but the $16,000 fellows pay in fees doesn’t cover ongoing operational costs. At this point, we need to admit at least 40 fellows to be sustainable.

The challenge is to find a way to garner necessary resources while simultaneously having room to try out various approaches. Given our experience, we recommend that new multigenerational learning programs solicit assistance from existing institutes or centers at their universities to contain costs. They should also consider raising as much financial support as possible from leaders, trustees, alumni, or other sources before launching, especially if they plan to keep program costs for participants low. A financial cushion and/or partnership with another institute or center on campus would have given us the opportunity to invest in areas like marketing and recruitment from the beginning.

4. Encourage an ongoing alumni network. Multigenerational university initiatives build age-integrated communities for encore adults at a time in their lives when they’re separating from familiar work environments and need new support networks. These new communities foster relationships among older students and between older and younger ones, creating bonds that last beyond time on campus and opening doors for fruitful alumni connections.

Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), for example, invites alumni to return to the campus for periodic visits and alumni gatherings. In 2018, it created the dciX program to promote ongoing connections between current fellows and alumni, while offering a conduit for continued engagement with Stanford University. UMAC fellows also stay connected with each other and with undergraduate students they continue to mentor. Many maintain ties with the nonprofits where they volunteered as part of their fellowship.

A Blueprint for the Future

Younger and older adults, from their late teens to their 80s and beyond, confront two common sets of choices: how to fashion their own futures in a world of ambiguity, hyper-change, and risk, and how to respond to the pressing societal problems of our times.

Universities can help both generations grapple with these choices together instead of on their own. Based on our experience at UMAC, the resulting multigenerational learning is richer for students of all ages and life stages.

Universities have long histories of age segregation, and while innovative ideas for integration abound, they often topple under the weight of established practice, bureaucracy, and institutional inertia. Change eventually occurs, organizational scholars say, when the costs of doing nothing outweigh the costs of change. As leaders of higher education come to recognize the imperative to address urgent societal challenges—including the shift to a world with more people over age 65 than under age 18—that time is now.

“MEDIA BUYING AND MEDIA PLANNING”

TAG : MEDIA

CATAGORY : DIGITAL MARKETING.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, the list goes on and on of the different digital media channels out there, and these are just the social ones.

As media continues to grow, it can be hard to keep up. A busy brand doesn’t have the time for that. Understandable.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to help you create a media strategy and then another person to implement that strategy for the best price?

That’s exactly what a media planner and media buyer does. Here, we will walk through the basics.

What Is Media Planning?

Media planners are the people figuring out which media platform to use for a new campaign. To make the most effective decision, they will complete research to figure out how to achieve what the client wants.

They will then set a budget, outline objectives and goals for the campaign, and choose more than one platform if necessary. A media planner will have certain skill sets to get the job done, such as:

Attention to detail

Negotiation skills

Commercial awareness

Understanding of numeracy and data analysis

Confidence

Organizational skills

Interpersonal and communication skills.

The process of media planning includes these four steps:

Internal Market Research:

Conducting internal market research involves learning everything possible about the client. A media planner will soon understand the client’s brand identity to figure out what their unique selling point is.

External Market Research:

External market research is about looking at what the competitors in the same industry are doing. A media planner will explore how a brand is currently creating ads and how it compares to the competition.

They’ll also take a look at the intended audience and what attracts them. This will help them decide on what media outlets to use.

Setting Objectives and Goals:

A campaign is created with the combination of what the client wants and what the media planner believes they should achieve. A media planner can make every dollar of your marketing budget work in your favor.

By working with media buyers, a media planner can create objectives and goals that they can reach for a brand.

Creating a Budget:

Determining the message of a brand is just one step of the media planning process. A planner will then allocate funds to ensure the message is seen on the respective platforms.

While creating a budget, the media planner will allocate a percentage to each channel. For example, a brand may spend 50% of the budget on social media and leave the rest for mobile ads, billboards, radio, etc.

What Is Media Buying?

Media buyers will receive the strategy created by the media planners. Once they get that strategy, they will work on the most effective media channels and look for cost-effective options.

A good media buyer will have a complete understanding of the current marketplace. They are also responsible for creating relationships with vendors.

Media buyers and planners may be integrated under the same roof, but media buyers sometimes come from a separate agency. To be a great media buyer, these skills are necessary:

Communication and negotiation skills

Decisiveness

Understanding of media analytics software

Organization skills

Ability to multitask

Attention to detail

Ability to understand a lot of information at once

Identification of target audiences

The specifics of the things that media buyers do are:

Creating Contacts:

Media buying is a lot about who you know. A media buyer can create the best return on investment for a brand because they have access to the best deals through their relationships.

Knowing About Media Channels:

Knowing the right people is important as a media buyer, but understanding media channels is also a huge part of the job. There are different target audiences that media channels are best for.

A media buyer will have the best knowledge of media channels to find the perfect space for a brand. They will also have the negotiation skills to ensure a brand gets the best deal possible.

Ad space will have a price based on the traffic and exposure of the space. It’s no wonder why Super Bowl commercial spots are pricey.

If the media planner allocated the budget correctly, the price tag will be worth the return. A media buyer must use their negotiation skills to buy a specific ad space below or at the budgeted amount.

Tweaking Campaigns:

The media buyer is responsible for the strategy after the media planner sends it off. The media buyer will then keep a close eye on the channels being used to make sure the campaign is effective throughout its lifetime.

A media buyer is flexible during this process as they gather data about the performance of the campaign. If the project gets off course, a media buyer can use specific tools like programmatic advertising to keep the campaign aligned.

After the campaign is finished, a media plan will be created. This plan is the collective results from the final campaign evaluation.

Media Planning and Buying Terminology:

When working on an advertising campaign, you’ll come across many different terms that you may be unfamiliar with. The terms that correlate to media planning and buyer are:

Inventory

Inventory is another word for ad placements that can describe the amount of available ad space. This could be an amount based on what a publisher can sell or what the media buyer actually purchases.

You’ll hear this term in traditional and digital advertising.

Media Mix

Media mix refers to all of the media channels a brand will use to achieve its campaign goals. For example, your media mix could be online videos, radio, social media, and SEM.

Whatever you use for a campaign to reach your marketing goals is considered your media mix.

Scheduling

A media planner and buyer will schedule certain ads at a time and on a specific day for various media channels. Scheduling will depend on the target audience.

Targeting

Targeting is one of the more common terms you’ll hear in marketing. A media planner will identify the ideal audience that should hear the campaign message through internal and external market research.

Target Audience/Market

This is another common term you can’t go without hearing in the marketing world. Once targeting is complete, the audience that has been chosen is the target audience/market. These groups can be specific or broad.

Manual Bidding

Manual bidding is not the same as automation or programmatic buying. In fact, it is the opposite.

Manual bidding involves changing the bid on ads based on engagement, keyword performance, cost, etc.

Automatic Bidding/Programmatic Media Buying

Automatic bidding, otherwise known as ad programmatic media buying, is an automated process of buying and selling ad space. If done in real-time, it is known as real-time bidding (RTB).

It replaces a manual negotiation as it is based on algorithms in digital technology. We’ll go more into detail about this term later in the article.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Real-time bidding is when ad impressions are sold by media vendors through an ad exchange platform. Every impression is sold when it becomes available in real-time, hence the name.

As the market conditions change, advertisers can adjust their bids.

Guaranteed Inventory/Direct Buys

A media planner or buyer can secure bulk ad placements at a fixed CPM (cost per thousand impressions). This method guarantees that certain people will see the ad from their campaign.

The guarantee comes at a higher cost, but since there is no risk, many brands find it worth it.

Non-Guaranteed Inventory

Non-guaranteed inventory is sometimes interchangeable with real-time bidding. It works similar to an auction as advertisers bid against each other to secure the best ad placement possible.

It is called a non-guaranteed inventory because the ad placement is not guaranteed. Guaranteed inventory will have top priority for the best ad placements over this method.

For those with smaller budgets, this method may work best. However, it involves a lot of monitoring of the ad performance in real-time.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

CPM refers to the cost of an ad per 1,000 people that see it. The price will be higher if more people are going to see it and vice versa.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

An RFP is a document that a media buyer or other member of an agency will submit during the bidding process. The intent is to express interest in ad placement by reaching out to a media vendor.

The Media Planning and Buying Process in Simple Terms

Simply put, the media buying and planning process takes just five steps to complete. Those steps being:

Identifying a target audience through market research

Understanding the interest of the audience

Finding the audience at their most receptive times

Delivering content that drives the audience to take action

Testing ad placements over and over to see what is and is not working

The five-step process can help a brand connect with its audience as they are going through the buyer journey. The four stages of a buyer’s journey are attract, convert, close, and delight.

During the attract stage, a brand can reach the audience through any of the following media buying tactics:

SEM

SEO

Social media

Digital display

Outdoor

Radio

TV

Print

PR

At the convert stage, brands will target the audience using social media, video, content, retargeting, and landing pages. They are then led to the close stage where lead nurture campaigns, email optimization, and CRM database management can be used.

Last, we have the delight stage. This is where a customer really falls in love with a brand after it has worked so hard with media planning and buying. This stage typically involves client communications and social media engagement.

How Media Buys Are Negotiated

To get a brand the best deal, a media buyer must know how to properly negotiate a media buy. After receiving a strategy from the media planner, a media buyer will execute the plan in the following ways:

Research

During this process, the research never ends. The more information that is known, the better. Like media planners, media buyers must complete research to know the answers to these questions:

What is the cost of leads in the industry?

What is the standard cost of ad placement on various channels?

What types of ads and sizes perform best on those channels?

The answer to those three simple questions can help a media buyer understand how to create a successful campaign.

Budgeting

During each negotiation, a media buyer will have detailed information on the budget. For premium spots, brands may be willing to up the ante.

Before getting to the negotiation process, it is essential to know the overall budget. A media buyer will figure out how to make the most of that budget while understanding the wishes of the brand.

As a general rule of thumb in media buying, a professional will make their first bid lower than their target price. This opens the floor up for negotiation and may lead to leftover money in the budget.

Backup Plans

A good media buyer will always have a backup plan and multiple relationships with vendors that they can reach out to. Even if the brand has its sights set on a specific TV network or publisher, the spots may be filled or out of the budget.

When this happens, a media buyer should already have additional options to come up with a fast solution to the problem. A brand needs to know when they should back away and try a different option.

Lead Generation

This is an essential step in the media buying negotiation process. A buyer should always consider what they want their lead filters to be before the negotiation ends. You can’t always adjust filters after.

Value Add-Ons

A media buyer with a good relationship with a vendor is more likely to get value add-ons free of charge. This provides a brand with more exposure than what their budget originally aimed for.

The Contract

Anything that was negotiated with the media buyer and the vendor will be stated in a written contract. Without this, a vendor may not provide what was negotiated.

Negotiation Types

The two main types of negotiations used in media buying are zero-sum and integrative.

Zero-sum negotiations happen when one or both of the parties cannot compromise on an agreement. This is not a great negotiation style as it can ruin the ongoing relationship with a media buyer and vendor.

Through integrative negotiations, both parties agree so that each side gets a good deal. Because both parties are happy, this is the most effective media buying negotiation type.

Media Buying Tactics

As mentioned above, many different media buying tactics can place an ad in front of the ideal audience. A media planner will decide which one to use based on what the research suggests about the audience.

It is not enough to target an audience one time. Even after you convert them into customers, it is essential to continue advertising to them.

When you connect to your target market over and over again, you’ll have a complete inbound marketing strategy that relies on media planning and buying.

Information about dried fruit is very conflicting.

    Some say it is a nutritious, healthy snack, while others claim it is no better than candy.

WHAT IS DRIED FRUIT?

Dried fruit is fruit that has had almost all of the water content removed through drying methods.

The fruit shrinks during this process, leaving a small, energy-dense dried fruit.

Raisins are the most common type, followed by dates, prunes, figs and apricots.

Other varieties of dried fruit are also available, sometimes in candied form (sugar coated). These include mangoes, pineapples, cranberries, bananas and apples.

Dried fruit can be preserved for much longer than fresh fruit and can be a handy snack, particularly on long trips where refrigeration is not available.

Dried Fruit is Loaded With Micronutrients, Fiber and Antioxidants 

Dried fruit is highly nutritious.

One piece of dried fruit contains about the same amount of nutrients as the fresh fruit, but condensed in a much smaller package.

By weight, dried fruit contains up to 3.5 times the fiber, vitamins and minerals of fresh fruit.

Therefore, one serving can provide a large percentage of the daily recommended intake of many vitamins and minerals, such as folate .

However, there are some exceptions. For example, the vitamin C content is significantly reduced when the fruit is dried.

Dried fruit generally contains a lot of fiber and is a great source of antioxidants, especially polyphenols .

Raisins May Reduce the Risk of Certain Diseases 

Raisins are dried grapes.

They are packed with fiber, potassium and various health-promoting plant compounds.

Prunes are Natural Laxatives and May Help Fight Diseases

Prunes are dried plums.

They are highly nutritious, being rich in fiber, potassium, beta-carotene (vitamin A) and vitamin K.

They are known for their natural laxative effects.

This is caused by their high content of fiber and a sugar alcohol called sorbitol, which is found naturally in some fruit.

Eating prunes has been shown to help improve stool frequency and consistency. Prunes are considered to be even more effective at relieving constipation than psyllium, which is another common remedy.

Dried Fruit is High in Natural Sugar and Calories 

Fruit tend to contain significant amounts of natural sugars.Because the water has been removed from dried fruit, this concentrates all the sugar and calories in a much smaller package.For this reason, dried fruit is very high in calories and sugar, including both glucose and fructose.below are some examples of the natural sugar content of dried fruit.

Avoid Dried Fruit with Added Sugar (Candied Fruit) .

To make some dried fruit even more sweet and appealing, they are coated with added sugar or syrup before being dried.

Dried fruit with added sugar are also referred to as “candied” fruit.

Added sugar has repeatedly been shown to have harmful effects on health, increasing the risk of obesity, heart disease and even cancer.

To avoid dried fruit that contains added sugar, it is very important to read the ingredients and nutrition information found on the package.

Sulfites are added to some dried fruit to preserve color, which may cause adverse effects in sensitive individuals. Dried fruit that is improperly stored and handled may also be contaminated with fungi and toxins.