Vol : 1 Edtion : 6

May 2009
 Seeking guidance from an experienced professional?......Remote Mentoring could be a possible
solution

Marcel Proust, a French novelist, rightly remarked, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” It therefore behooves upon every teacher in a university or
school, to act as a torchbearer and guidepost for their students. Verily, a great teacher is a role model,
who is academically competent, behaviourally upright, socially responsible, and spiritually inspiring. In
short, a true teacher is a beacon of light.

Higher education in professional disciplines, especially in the field of IT, demand holistic honing of technical,
behavioural and life skills, that fosters an inquisitive mind possessed with analytical and problem solving
skills.

With advancements in technology and improved connectivity, teaching pedagogy is witnessing a paradigm
shift. Today, an instructor is more of a facilitator than a teacher per se. Instructor-led teaching methods
has transgressed into learner-centric models. The name of the game is learner empowerment, largely
propelled by web based, e-learning courseware; self-paced and flexible curricula; with ingredients of real-
life simulated learning through story-centered, realistic case studies and collaborative project work tightly
meshed with stringent deadlines. In such a dynamic teaching environs, the role of mentoring and buddies
assume critical significance.
Fullerton and Malderez, see mentors having five roles, that of model, acculturator, sponsor, supporter
and educator. As a model a mentor inspires; as an acculturator, a mentor shows the ropes and acclimatize
the mentee to a particular culture; as a sponsor, mentor unveils opportunities for growth; as supporter, a
mentor acts as a sounding board; and finally, as an educator, a mentor focuses on enhancing the learning
process. However, in the scales and throughput of students engaged by technical institutions, it becomes
imperative to take recourse to distance mentoring strategies.

In the era of scattered expertise, the concept of remote mentoring has evolved to gain importance in the
field of academics and industry. Remote mentoring stands as an answer to the challenges we face in
getting the subject matter experts to the campus or sending the students to the place of experts/
practitioners, which is very expensive. But Information Technology (IT) has made a break through this
difficulty with its innovative inventions in this Internet and Go Global era.

It made people who are globally distributed and/or collocated to access Virtual class rooms and get
connected via the Internet technology and the mobile technology. It made the subject experts and the
practitioners available to the students via Voice over IP (VOIP), Video Conferencing (VTC), Skype and many
other open source free tools that support extensive transfer or media, data etc via the Internet simulating
an in-campus educational environment.

Nevertheless, a paradigm shift in the thought process is required to identify and recognize it as a viable
strategy. Remote mentoring has proved to be successful in the corporate too, where companies like
Microsoft and HP have benefited extensively. Encouraging individual’s life long learning process through
constant questioning and assessment can facilitate reflective learning. This kind of a personalized mentoring
via the remote technology of IT has been effectively employed in MSIT. At IIIT Hyderabad, many departments
collaborate with the industry practitioners, the subject experts from other universities, researchers and
so on; this methodology improved the quality of education in practice promoting new learning at both
ends. Pedagogy of this kind would help students equip themselves with necessary skills to facilitate their
ingress into industry.

Padmaja Naraharisetty
Principal Mentor
Soft Skills
 HAPPINESS
Life is nothing but uncertain. We always find ourselves dealing with it in some way or other. It
sometimes gives us immense pleasure and sometimes it hurts us. But what according to you is
happiness? I know I might sound like some spiritual guru but deep within every person is some or other
way a spiritual guru. Anyways talking about happiness, I always felt there are two kinds of happiness.
One which makes you cry and is etched on your heart and one which is very superficial and is very short
lived. For eg: buying new clothes or shopping might give you a high but for how many hours? I guess till
you wear that new piece of clothing and have got praises from your friends. Period. Happiness ends. It
was during this search of happiness I met the kids at the orphanage. I had no idea what their
background was, did not know any of them, but something struck me!!! When I started talking to
them, they told their stories. They told their experience while shooting for the film Gamyam. They took
us around and showed the places they had shooting. You should have seen the sparkle in their eyes!
Nothing can give you that high ( I can bet on that). How happy they were! They did not have parents,
they did not have money, they were having very basic education. Not wearing branded clothes, in fact
they would wear clothes which other people would give them after using them for years. Then what
made these small kids happy? Why on earth after having money, family, all the basic necessities in life
we are still struggling to be HAPPY? Why? Is it because we have stopped valuing small things in life?
People who have helped us, cared for us, loved us? Or is it that we have taken life to be granted......I am
still searching for an answer..If you have the answer……BE HAPPY!! :)

Sweta Padma
Associate Mentor.
MSIT

What’s in a name?

I take you at your word. Only call me “love,” and I’ll be baptized with a new name. From now on, I’ll never

be “Romeo.” (Romeo to Juliet - William Shakespeare). In this play titled Romeo and Juliet, the two main

characters Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love but face many obstacles because they are

members of two warring families. Romeo rejects his family name and instead agrees to be baptized “as

Juliet’s lover.”

Is your name the only enemy to your beloved? Shakespeare points out at the triviality in a name but

Napoleon the Third, Emperor of France and nephew of the great Napoleon, boasted that in spite of all his

royal duties he could remember the name of every person he met. During the conversation with a stranger,

he took the trouble to repeat the name several times, and tried to associate it in his mind with the person’s

features, expressions and general appearance. The ability to remember the names is important in business

and social contacts as it is in politics. The first lesson a politician learns during the elections is to remember
the names of the voters. Parents do a lot of research before they name their child. In India, naming a child

is a ritual. The significance attached to naming a child make him or her more unique. The name sets the

individual apart and makes him or her unique among all others. We should be aware of the magic contained

in a name. A person’s name is to that person the sweetest sound in any language.

I cherish the taste of food items as soon as I hear the name of relishing dishes. Whenever I travel by train

from Hyderabad to my native place (Kerala), I keep my ears open only to listen to the names of the eateries

that the railway caterers yell out “chai chai chaiyae – coffee copee capeee” - biryani, vada, cutlet, samasos

and other relishing dishes. Though it is a disturbance when you are asleep, these railway caterers refresh

and keep our energy levels very high. I always reflect and question myself that in this era where everything

is identified by a name – am I with Shakespeare or Napoleon the Third?

George Mathew,

Soft Skills Mentor

MSIT IIIT.

Wireless ... excitments and challenges

Technology changes, networking lasts. The world of computer networks is changing faster than we
ever imagined. With the emergence of wireless, a new dimension has been added to the legacy wired
computer networks. Among the various wireless technologies operating in LAN, IEEE 802.11 Wireless
Local Area Network (WLAN) is perhaps the most widely used wireless LAN Standard characterized by its
simplicity, flexibility and mobility. ISM band operation of 802.11 Wireless LANs means that its deployment
neither involves any licensing issues nor frequency acquisition permissions. This has been one of the
major driving forces behind its proliferation and wide scale acceptance wherever wireless networking is
required. With hardware technologies getting better day by day, Wireless 802.11 products have become
cheaper and more powerful. This has encouraged its widespread deployment at almost all places namely
offices, campuses, factories, airports, shopping malls, residential houses, etc.

Wireless networking has been an enabling tool for convergence revolution. This convergence can
be viewed from two perspectives. First, from an end user perspective, it means communicating through
any traffic (voice, video, data) using any device (laptop, mobile, PDA) and from any location (home, office,
markets). Second, from network perspective, there has been convergence in terms of network medium
(wired, wireless), technology (IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.16) and range (PAN, LAN, MAN, WAN).
Wireless networks are poised to play a crucial role in this convergence phenomena and in provisioning of
ubiquitous connectivity in the next generation networks.

With the maturing of wireless technology, a whole new set of usage scenarios are possible. One
such scenario is depicted in Figure 1, where the last mile connectivity at either ends is wireless. Voice calls
can initiate or terminate at either locations (office or home) and will get routed through the public Internet
infrastructure using Voice over Wireless (WiFi) and Voice over IP techniques.

contd...
Voice call connection with wireless providing last mile

connevctyi

One of the most evident advantage (as some of you might have already guessed) is call rates going
drastically down. Perhaps the only running cost is the payment to the ISP for the Internet usage. In other
words, what it translates to is freedom from post-paid and pre-paid bills which are characteristic feature
of cellular service provider.

Having said that, it won’t come as a surprise to network designers, that scenarios like these are
manifested with a lot of challenging problems, some of which are described as under:-

1. Quality of Service (QoS): In simple terms, QoS refers to ability of network to provide some kind of
assurance for transfer of different types of traffic in accordance with their respective requirements.
Sending real time interactive voice which has stringent requirements in terms of delay and jitter
(variable delay) over the WiFi and IP networks is a challenge.

2. Security: Wireless comes with no protection and unless properly protected traffic over wireless
goes in clear. To prevent eavesdropping over the voice call, it is of utmost importance that voice
connection is encrypted with strong privacy schemes. Wired Equivalent Privacy(WEP), once in
use, is no longer an acceptable security since there are open tools available to break it. Recent
reports suggests that even the enhanced security mechanism like WPA-PSK has been cracked. So,
the challenge is to come up with a robust security mechanism to protect traffic over wireless.

3. Mobility: In order to increase the coverage of wireless at both end-miles in above scenario, we
could provide multiple Access Points (wireless switches which bridges wireless traffic to wired or
wireless interface). Challenge here would be to provide mobility i.e. seamlessly transfer the voice
call from one Access Point to another (roaming) without call breakages or interruptions.

4. Power saving: Since most of the times the end devices would be battery operated handsets, so it
becomes highly desirable that recieves and transmits are minimied in a transaction so as to minimize
power consumption.

Rishabh Kaushal,
MSIT Alumni