Binomial –Problem Solving Class (12th Nov, 2010)

We had a Binomial Theorem-online Problem Class today (12th Nov, 2010) but unfortunately this could not happen. I am feeling bad that more than 220 students were waiting for the class but due to the technical problem it did not go through. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you specially those 15 students who went all the way to VMC for attending this class.

Actually I should have taken the signal yesterday that this class has a jinx. My son (18 months) lost my tablet PC pen. I spent 4 hrs but could not find it. He must have thrown in the garbage :(. For a moment I decided to cancel the class (I should have done that) but did not give up. I have another tablet PC, a bad one with windows 7 installed. I spent 2 hrs configuring the software used for taking remote classes. 3 minutes job took couple of hrs. It was another sign that there is a jinx to this class. But again I did not give it up.

When I got up at 2.30 AM in the morning, I saw internet link is down. I was shocked that “it happens in US also”. I was remembering “Mera Bharat mahaan”. It never happened to me in past. Also never heard of such thing from anybody else. Those who were waiting for the class would know that we waited for the connection to come up and started our class at 3.35 Am. I should have listened to Sandeep who was strongly insisting to cancel the class. But for the third time, I did not give it up.

Finally 4th attack came when students were able to see the movements on the screen but failed to listen my voice. My voice went down !!.  I was passionately teaching, sitting in my home office, then suddenly no voice messages start flowing all over the screen.

It was unbelievable that bad omens can go so far for not letting this class happen. I wanted to try again but after few failure attempts was not in a negotiating position with Sandeep.

Finally we had to cancel this class.

We will have it next week. I am very confident that it will be successfully conducted next week. I have already taken 5 such classes before and all of them went very well. Only this time we lost the fight with bad omen.

Best of Luck for the HRT.

-Manmohan
  VMC

Problem Solving Class on Probability – 9th Nov 2010

Today I took my first full fletched problem solving class online from remote. It was fun to teach more than 200 students at 3.00 AM in the morning sitting in my home office. All credit goes to technology. Thank God it was evening for those who attended the class.

The best part of the class was that people attended this class from their homes sitting on their desk in very comfortable position. You know Delhi traffic. It is killing. It does not make sense to travel all the way from home to VMC to understand few questions.

This initiative was one of those things which I always do to make my day-today work interesting.

Initially I was worried as the group was big. But class went very smooth.

I discussed around 25 questions based on probability in the class. It was the third probability class. Earlier two classes were taken in VMC.

For those who attended this class, I would request you to provide me some feedback either positive or negative in the form of comments to this blog. This will help me in improving future online classes.

One negative comment I already got from a student was that duration of the class should be little short. This one went through for 3 and half hrs. I understand how difficult is to sit with concentration for such a long time. If anybody else has any opinion on this, please share.

-Manmohan
VMC