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Ananda Mahto ..:: school | randomness | work ::.. Skip to content Archives « Older posts Cases and Stories By Ananda | Published: March 30, 2013 Cases and Stories | By Dushasana Mahanta, Kunj Bihari Pratap, and Akhileshwar Singh | Edited by Ananda Mahto | Illustrated by Seema Shastri One of the elective courses sometimes offered to students at the Tata-Dhan Academy is “Specialized Writing”. In this course, students explore some of the different forms of written expression beyond the typical report, and one of the specific topics we usually cover is the overlap and differences between cases and stories. This booklet compiles “cases” and “stories” from three students from PDM 10 (Dushasana Mahanta, Kunj Bihari Pratap, and Akhileshwar Singh), and includes illustrations by Seema Shastri of PDM 12. Following is the introduction that I wrote for the booklet. Download the PDF to enjoy the cases, stories, and illustrations in their entirety. Read More » Posted in Workplace | Tagged cases , stories , Tata-Dhan Academy | Leave a comment Effective Communication? By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 12, 2011 When people begin the study of communication, their attitudes vary anywhere from “I think this would be a very important class: it is important to understand the communication process if I want to improve the effectiveness of my communication,” to “What a waste of time. I’ve been communicating all my life. Do I really need to take a course to understand communication?” Whether or not we take a course in communication, there is considerable value in trying to refine our understanding of communication. To demonstrate, I will present two class exercises. In describing the exercises, hopefully some of the jargon common in the communications discipline (for example, encoding, decoding, channel, and congruence) will become clearer, and you will be at least a little more sensitive to trying to verify the effectiveness of your everyday communication approaches. Read More » Posted in Workplace | Tagged classroom experiments , communication , sketches , spectrum , Tata-Dhan Academy | 2 Responses A Primer on Linking Disaster Risk Reduction with Development Efforts By Ananda Mahto | Published: June 10, 2010 I’m very happy to announce that the primer I wrote for the Advanced Centre for Enabling Disaster Risk Reduction is now available online . Here’s the abstract: When one surveys news reports today, mention of disasters seem to be commonplace. And, quite often, there is a lot of response to disasters. Aid agencies channel money or other forms of relief directly to communities who need it or to organizations who are better prepared to implement response work. Governments create plans to offer rehabilitation support, or find some other way to compensate those who are affected by disasters. Academicians write reports comparing one disaster to similar disasters, and theorize about what could have been done to minimize the impact of the disaster. But where is the community in this post-disaster scenario? And what about the communities who have not suffered catastrophes? Are they safe? Is that enough? Is it appropriate to merely respond to disasters, or is there a better way to approach disaster risk reduction? And what does this mean for a development organization? ACEDRR believes that there is simultaneously a positive and negative relationship between development and disasters. However, development efforts have incredible potential to contribute to disaster risk reduction and to help create a “culture of preparedness”. Development practitioners have a responsibility to be aware of this continuum and use it to guide their work and to build knowledge about disaster preparedness and prevention. This primer is by no means a complete account of the relationship between disasters and development. However, it is hoped that this primer can serve as an introduction for practitioners to become more sensitized to the relationship, and that they use this awareness to change from working in what is mostly a reactive manner, to working in a proactive one. It is also hoped that this primer can lay a foundation for further discussions and research—not discussions and research designed around communities, but ones which include the community as an integral partner and as a stakeholder whose traditional wisdom might be able to help us with some of the more complicated issues we face in our rapidly modernizing world. And, here’s the report itself . Posted in Workplace | Tagged ACEDRR , DHAN , disaster risk reduction , Tata-Dhan Academy , workshop reports | 1 Response An Individualistic Approach to Education By Ananda | Published: April 2, 2006 In comparing different learning theories in detail, one ultimately gets to the point that they realize that no one theory is right or wrong, but that each theory has something to offer. Learning theories are valuable because they are often revised and reanalyzed or tested in different contexts to see how well they stand up, effectively minimizing the need for teachers to spend too much time developing research projects and testing them for accuracy. Instead, teachers are given the opportunity to test the results of theories they find interesting or solidly designed and see how well each theory works as a predictor of outcomes. This testing of theories is important for at least two main reasons: (1) theories are often developed in a very controlled environment where the limited variables used do not always accurately reflect the “real world” and (2) depending on how old the theory is, it may be out of date and not applicable to many of the problems we encounter in schools today. Thus, even if we do not fully agree with the implications of a particular theory, it may be helpful to periodically review them and carefully consider their messages about human learning and behavior. Read More » Posted in Master's , School Papers | Tagged conditioning , education , personal narrative , the process of learning , UOP | Leave a comment Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory By Ananda | Published: March 26, 2006 From a very early point in the history of philosophy, philosophers have been asking questions about human nature and about how we develop. These questions have led to a range of theories about human development and have extended from the philosophical sphere into the realms of psychology and educational research. Along with this expansion into other areas of studies, the questions being asked are also changing. Earlier educational and psychological theories, for example, focused largely on behaviorism as the source of human development while recent theories have increasingly been integrating the role of cognition in the development process. Despite being only theories with flaws and without definite answers, these theories are very valuable to educators. There are three main categories of thought distinguishing these educational theories: developmental, environmental, and crossover. While there is variation in the ideas of theorists within each group, there are a few generalizations that can be made about each. The following paragraphs will give some very basic background into each theory to help illustrate the differences between them. Read More » Posted in Master's , School Papers | Tagged Albert Bandura , education , nature vs nurture , social cognitivism , the process of learning , UOP | 8 Responses Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning By Ananda | Published: March 25, 2006 Ananda Mahto | Patreca Pamela Hawkins In the education field, teachers often spend as much time engaged in classroom management as they do teaching. Additionally, it seems that teachers are being held increasingly responsible for teaching proper behavior. Because of this, it is important for educators to have an awareness and understanding of some of the theories regarding human development, especially those that are concerned with behavior management or behavior modif...