Welcome everyone, oh It's working cool. My name is Rasmus count and I'll be presenting a bulletproof approach to theming Can you hear me everyone go As I said, my name is Rasmus, I'm a front-end developer. I work at the the wonderful company of pipes in Copenhagen We're a Drupal company and we do design development and content strategy and all sort of Drupal related stuff Yeah, so Yeah, and some of our biggest clients. Well, we work mainly with large media sites getting avian media sites and organizations so well That was me enough about me How do we define ourselves as steamers? How many here defines themselves as steamers sure have Joven and how many here are developers Wow, I did not expect that. Okay, cool. So are there any designers present? Cool and do any of you consider yourself as both a developer designer and a themeer Quite a few actually that's quite good. So My goals for this talk is to give you a set of tools and a workflow that can help Help decrease the amount of time you need to get a functional theme up and running And There's not going to be any silver bullets. I'm not going to present in this magical function. Sadly I've looked everywhere in the API and it's nowhere to be found and I guess if I someday found it It would just be a basic implementation of die, but yeah anyway so But we have no sort magical function What we do have is a set of a set of tools and we have a proper foundation and it's if we make sure to have Have if we prepare well and and make sure that we have the right foundation We are going to be setting ourselves up for for success and and we'll be able to reach our goal faster Does anybody know this particular case or scenario And bad timing and the indifferent back-end developer with little to no interest in presentation of markup I Know I've met this developer out of my present company, of course all my colleagues are nice guys and they understand me But sometimes you'll you'll come across the situation you'll be thrown into a project at a particular unfortunate moment and There's little you can do about that. That's that's not something you can influence but what you can influence is is stuff like clean code foundation and design and You know this this situation would be or this scenario would be okay, too. If If you had the chance to to do at least Regular code reviews in cooperation with the back-end developer because you know More often than not this back-end developer. He has interest in presentation and markup He cares about the final site and the final product. He is supposed to deliver. We all do We are all building the same product and the same side and if any part of the site suffers or lacks It reflects badly on the entire team and so of course he he's interested in this But it doesn't have the time nor should he be focusing on these Certain issues And But you know the fact in the matter is we have modules like views and we have modules like panels all these modules are Presentational modules to the least some extent and and therefore it requires at least Sometimes that they are being configured by a back-end developer and if this back-end developer doesn't have the time to to dive in the presentation or markup the views are probably going to be configured Wrongly and you will have to as a theme or when you enter the project you will have to go in and redo a lot of these configurations so Sorry So how do we deal with these scenarios? First let me say these scenarios. There will never be ideal For these scenarios to be ideal a theme or should be involved from the beginning and mainly because Themers has to know how the designer and the front and the back-end developer requires and And I know the previous session web systems. They touched about this a lot as well And it's all about identifying the standard elements and what Drupal requires from the beginning So the basic as a question you should let your theme or ask and you should let them ask the back-end developer Is does the output match the intended design? and this simple question it helps clear a lot of misunderstanding and In the end it doesn't require a lot It's it requires maybe a regular meetings one meeting per week or every other or every other day It doesn't require a lot But it's a simple question and they can help clear a lot of these misunderstandings and as such you help avoid these constant views configurations and and changes to these And in the end we all know this how many here uses the module features Well and we all know that if If we export a view to these features it is it's nice and we help ensure some some matter of consistency among the development platforms and and and decide we deploy to But if you have to change Let's say just a basic field in a view have to remove a label you'll have to You'll have to recommit this feature file again, and you'll have to commit it and you'll have to revert the components on on the side itself And that takes a lot of time easy. You'll have 10 minutes go by by this and and it's not It's not the best of situations But what what we need to do and also what we can focus on as theme is It's communication and particularly the communication from us to our team members Is both the communication to the back end developer or the developer? You're supposed to be receiving code from and the designer you have a unique knowledge of how tuple works What people requires from as is as you know is out of the box And it's it's your job to share this information. So how do we improve communication? Well A lot can go wrong when we start these projects and Often we work on large sites triple is a it's a multi-site platform and as such The sites can grow very large and also the themes can grow very large and there can be a huge amount of modules And that also requires a huge amount of communication between team members and as such Every time you have to communicate with a team member there is a slight chance that something might go wrong doing this exchange And if we focus on these exchanges, we might have a chance to improve the overall communication So basically focus how focus on how you can make a difference from your point of view It's easy to pitch and moan about The situation we're in but ultimately it's our own Responsibility to make sure that we can communicate the requirements we work with also if Your project manager out there any project managers out there my boss is Okay, and a few others and that's great Ensure that's a really simple rule ensure consistent communication and regular meetings with output and code reviews between your back and developer and your and your theme So but as a lot of you are designers How many here knows about style guides knows what a style guide is Cool, a lot of you do I'm a style guide. Well, if you ask Wikipedia a style guide is basically a style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document Simple and straightforward. So basically a style guide is a document describing a set of visual standards A style guide could be description of logo usage. It could be color schemes and how to use colors It could be typography it could be grids and so on and previously Styleguides that has mainly been used for brand guidelines. It has been used to ensure the proper use of a company's logo across different platforms and on different kind of media and But there is also a valid use for it in Drupal and as and for us as steamers and one of the best style guides I've come across During my little research Around the internet is the Skype brand style guide It's it's a great style guide. It's it shows Very well how to use their illustrations and and their logo and and generally how to communicate in all of their material And sadly, I don't have the link. I forgot to add it But I'll make sure to add the link on the slides when I upload them after the session And so one clear benefit of styleguides is that it ensures consistent usage of deliverables It ensures there's not insurance, but it helps clear the amount of misunderstanding that might appear between team members or also for for instance that if Let's say your website should be have a module added by an external developer. You will have a have a designer Or a theme or whatever and you will have a better chance of using what he he has in front of him So how could we use styleguides in a Drupal environment? well Print has this very huge advantage and print has a clearly defined visual canvas and it's an unfair advantage for some at least me And but you know in Drupal we have something similar something similar And the previous session again mentioned this And it's it's about the content framework that Drupal provides this content framework It's about the presentation of content and as such it provides a clear canvas Here to use so The typical workflow with with a style guide It depends on the website it depends on how large the website is And as I mentioned most of the website we work on at least in my experience are fairly large websites and fairly complex web websites So that's that justifies a certain amount of detail you put into this style guide Usually before I I start theming. I I sit down with a with a with a kickoff meeting With the external designer and often this is external designer But also we'll if we're lucky enough that we it's one of our in-house designers or if it must if it's myself They already know this stuff, but if it's an external designer I find it highly valuable to just sit down and just supply him or her With a list of common items like typography lists from elements and so on and when you're sitting in When you're already sitting down with this designer And I suggest you also pinpoint common design elements like content boxes panels lists and views together Because basically these are these are often common elements and they appear on a lot of different pages on the website And as such they could be they could benefit from being included in such a style guide So specifically what should be including is If you see yeah typography It's a grids and baseline And it's important that you get a proper grid and baseline defined because you can use it for for instance JavaScript overlays And it can help you build the website in your browser And it helps ensure the correct usage of grids and and so on Also lists which in our case is views most oftenly also form elements and Form elements it can be a complex thing We have different design patterns. We have out to complete and stuff like this but it's all elements that we are more likely than more likely than not to To to come across when we theme our websites at least at some point point in this size life cycle So we might as well add them as well But also there's button use of colored color navigation and links and here I'm also talking about tabs and stuff like that Images and the usage of images and text on me and teaser lists. It's also important that the webs that the The designer defined markings and white space different states. I can't tell you how many time I've received a design from a designer and There's a lot of links on the page and that's all very well But we still need the the hover states and the focus states and so on and that goes for the form elements as well, of course So that's a general thing Here you see an example of a typography page in a style guy This is from our own upcoming website Pies I say upcoming because we've been working on it for some time where we can't seem to find the right amount of time to finish it But it's coming I promise And as you see here The headlines are defined. We have defined a deck or a teaser field and Specifics submitted by and category tags and general body body styles Also another example, it's from the great belt website Basically, we build a website for a bridge It was actually more complex than you can imagine, but that's a different story and here we We we pinpointed a table Tables are a common thing in Drupal as well We might as well pinpoint that and include them in the style guide also paging Dropdown and different form elements also messages and you see the tabs and the field set There's just some examples, but they are all examples that could benefit from being included in such a style guide Also another clear benefit of this is that when When you make sure that you all you have all these elements receive all these elements from the designer You enable yourself to to build these sites in the browser or as you go along and you You decrease the amount of the need for specific page design from the designer and and basically we don't need Specific page design from the designer. We don't want that because it constricts us and it Well at least from my point of view it makes my job boring. I hate doing that But if we're supposed to be working like that that that requires a certain amount of information architecture or wireframes At PyTecU we use Information architecture quite extensively actually and a lot of the time we put into a site We we focus a lot on the information architecture And it's a process We have one guy who who mainly works on this and make sure that it gets done But it's a process that involves the entire team And he's sitting there by the way. He's He helps ensure That the entire team is is being included and heard and it's important It's important that you make sure every team member is heard because they have Each team member have a certain amount of knowledge and experience that it can bring to the To this information architecture or this wireframe and it is important that we include this I'm not going to be talking a lot about information architecture or wireframes because it's not my area of expertise But I I want to just briefly mention it because it's an important aspect of it as well And it doesn't have to be overly complex As you can see this is an oversimplified example of an of a wireframe But just so you get an idea of what I'm talking about here If you make a simple wireframe and supply it with a with a list of output code And with a list of output. I mean a list of the different fields in a page You'll be setting yourself up In a better way and make sure and ensure that you can put a lot of these pages together in the browser so Yeah, okay, and I missed a slide here if the product project wanted you should keep a list of intended output for each page And again if the is the site is fairly small that might not justify this approach, but For the larger sizes. I think this is a good idea Because it provides a point of reference for the back-end developer So again if he's ever in the position where he has to set up a view a configure a view You'll have a central place where you can look up what this view is supposed to look like of the output And it makes those meetings a lot easier And So the benefit of all this is the replacement of page design in Photoshop with the design of content systems in Drupal and I when I when This process it doesn't necessarily have to take a lot a lot of time And it also clears up a lot of times with the designer because he doesn't have to redesign each page again in Photoshop But when all this is done I tend to a Move on to theming and I usually try and build a boilerplate a standard theme for the for the entire website and It seems like a no-brainer, but often I am I'm I arrive in projects where The theme has already been partly built by the back-end developer and as such it's very It's very easy to just slide in there and start theming on top of this theme So it would look like but in reality you're setting yourself up for failure because there's a lot of Elements in this theme that you do you you don't know about it. There's simply a lot of Outcomes that you couldn't have foreseen so just connect yourself from that theme and make sure you theme a standard Drupal theme And by standard Drupal theme, I mean Drupal out of the box It's a fairly simple thing and might seem like common sense, but More often than not I come across sites where this hasn't been done And also it is a sort of it provides a sort of documentation You will always have as the theme as a point of reference for the future So remember create a style guide keep using and maintaining it and make sure the site has a strong well-defined information architecture and help maintain it If you're providing a client with a theme for Drupal you should make sure it works on even the most basic Drupal installation simple I know but also sorry when you When you use this standard theme Build the standard theme it makes it easier for you to build on top of the modular nature nature of Drupal Drupal is a modular architecture and as such it's easier to latch on top of it and exploit it and as by modular nature, I mean You know the modules it's sort of like an object-oriented approach, but a lot of a lot of sites builds specific modules for user stories and these user stories are Are basically you know, it could be a blog or whatever But it's still a specific use case and as such you could you might as well hide all your theme files and your template files as Etc in this module and it will have this clear benefit that when Someday down the line the client doesn't need this blog module anymore They can just turn it off and the code disappears and as such as such You don't have to scour through the entire theme to find old redundant code And that's a good thing. It's a simple thing but still worth remembering so code structure again, this is simple but I'm not going to you know do a marix sort tag and starts making you know a theming nightmare Maric had a nice session in at the design camp Berlin Where he went over a site he had received from I think India or some other country And basically I think it had some something around 500 templates for fields and views and whatnot and they were all in the same in the same folder basically in basically in the team folder and Yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare and it can't be avoided by by you know simple things divide templates into folders like views panels notes, etc It's a simple thing, but it helps maintain the overview of the entire theme And yes code structure Again, I touch about this brief briefly But if and I'd like to mention it again but if you if you move a lot of your themes CSS and Styling and you use the new naming convention from double seven and by new naming conventions Conventions, I mean something like system.base.css if you use them and and put them in your in your module You're going to be doing yourself a huge favor Also, it makes it easier to override the CSS at another point in time, which is a good thing So yeah Yes, I don't know if you ever felt the same way, but but sometimes Our job gets a bit it gets like a routine It feels like a job and most of us does this because it's supposed to feel like a hobby We love what we're doing and we love coding. We like designing and we like we like we like theming and But about a year ago and I Suddenly I felt tired about front-end design. I felt tired of cutting out images and putting them in my style sheets and everything was just sort of repetitious repetitious and I did it over and over again and it was just a routine and I started to start feeling like a job, but then I attended the conference called future web design in New York as a way of kick-starting myself And there I fell into talk with a lot of my like-minded individuals and then made me realize that Instead of being afraid to use things like CSS 3 and HTML 5 How many here uses CSS 3 and HTML 5 actively? That's a lot of you actually And I didn't at the time I was I was scared of using it. I was scared of what the client might might say might react to it But So I went to New York and I just in New York. I decided I should just go back and you start using it on a client project and This is the thing. I had to use it on a client project without asking for permission And it was a bit risky. I know but Such as life and and we went on with it. So we started implementing HTML 5 video Border radius and all these lovely new properties from CSS 3 and and and it was great It was funny and it gave us a new sense of flexible code And it was really it was really great Then the meeting came with with the client and and I dreaded this meeting with the client but what happened what had happened in the meantime was that iOS Android and General mobile usage of their sites It had sort We were talking about it was suddenly something about 10% and in the past. They have always been quite in They've always been reluctant to go this path and and start supporting all these new new properties But this new reality they were facing it required Some amount of use of CSS 3 and HTML 5 and at the current the current site couldn't They at with the current site they couldn't play HTML 5 video on an iPad for instance and We have just implemented HTML 5 video So we can just look at them and say but we already did that So basically we have already optimized their side for these new platforms and they were late it they loved this and And and as such because of this the conversation never touched upon things like progressive enhancement and all of these techniques you can use to To start using these new techniques The client just accepted it. It was just a fact of life. So I I Recommend that you just jump into it. I know it's a bit of a risk Just do it. Just start using it. Your life will be better for it There's some clear benefits of using CSS 3 and HTML 5 Specifically CSS 3 it's fast It keeps the code flexible and there's less need for cutting out graphics and Photoshop Cutting out graphics is repetitious. We hate doing it. At least I do And it also makes Makes the less this side less flexible Also, it leaves more room for prototyping and an iterative approach. That's it's not sensible to start prototyping and just Build a page as a test or small application in Drupal when you have to cut out or do the design first and cut out all the graphics and all that when you can just start using it in the browser, maybe have a A Small example of what it could look like and you could start as a steamer and start building it in the browser It keeps it more flexible And it has has an a more it makes iterations more More easy So adaption and needs of use And there's some amount of hurdles And there's a lot of new problems when you start using CSS 3 and HTML 5 one of these are vendor prefixes I don't if you've started using CSS 3 you have come across this problem it's a the extensive use of when the prefix is all over your style sheets and very easily your style sheets becomes very messy and and Generally, they they become Yeah, it becomes it becomes hard to gain a complete overview and and that's where CSS preprocessors come in Do any of you know CSS pre-sort processors? I know we've been touched upon it several times during the conference So, okay a few of you do I've mainly used less myself And and CSS preprocessors they are mainly an extension to CSS they help provide CSS with new capabilities like variables Mixings for instance Functions nesting and so on This is an example of a variable in less. Can you see this? Is this okay? Cool Basically, you just define your variable and you start using it Here's a color rule and you define you use your variable and it instantly inserts the color It's very neat, but also this is my favorite Mixings Which is basically, you know, it's like variables with classes You define your class and your parameters that you can pass by reference And as such you can start using it in your rules throughout the style sheets by you know Are the using the the class itself and adding that to to to the rule or the class itself with a new parameter So for instance, if you add it around the corners That's 10 pixels it will automatically Start using 10 pixels on all the corners And you can also do this for border ideas left and all that sort of thing and it's very neat and and it helps avoid clutter and you can and You can define your rules once and you can start using throughout your style sheets There is a small caveat though You have to include these less style sheets and on top of every style sheet in your dribble theme And but it's a small import rule and and it's no big deal really and there's also nested rules Which I never use it personally. I think the main reason for it or the main Justification for its existence is that it makes the the CSS more easily easily readable But I love CSS. I love the way CSS looks and and I love to use CSS so For me it doesn't make that much sense, but Maybe it does for you. I don't know There's also functions Again, I think this is a bit crazy I haven't I haven't personally had a real use case for it still but Some might have it. I don't know. I've actually come I'm actually considering doing a fork on on less and removing all these capabilities just so and Overseal is back in developer doesn't start using them in in their CSS files at some point It hasn't happened yet, but it's bound to at some time at some point And and is there a model for this? Yes Both SAS SAS I Haven't really used SAS, but it's it's very similar to less in in the way You use it and how you use variables and and it has the same capabilities It has the advantage of being included in the CSS framework called Compass and that's an advantage for some but I don't use that so it's it's irrelevant also Less has this neat little module and it's a great little module You just you turn it on and you add the extension dot less to all your CSS files And then it's just instantly compiles them and and it just works and it works with the CSS aggregation as well When you compromise your CSS files, which is a neat thing as well So, yeah final note Organizing your theme and and and your whole approach to this it goes a long way and And Really, but it what it all comes comes down to it just come and sense a lot of these these things but if you make sure you're prepared and And build your theme the proper way you're going to reach your goal faster. So and also The singular most important thing that you can do is take upon yourself to communicate the constraints and possibilities of Drupal It can be to the back and developer it can be to the designer or whatever but as such instead of just bitching and moaning as a wise guy what's called it you can take it upon yourself to communicate these these constraints and and also One of the main reasons a lot of deadlines tend to tend to When you don't meet deadlines, it's it can be for because of themers and developers who aren't involved in the project and As such I came across a great quote from the designer Andy Rutledge He says your designers should be running their own projects Do not place some non-designer in between them and their client You have a responsibility should shepherd your designers to our consummate professionalism to do otherwise is to cripple their professional development Perhaps permanently. I think this this rings true for themers as well developers Push them together and let them know they have this responsibility to communicate the constraints and the possibilities of Drupal because the project manager Justin has has this has this overview So but also push them towards the client because it will help gain a certain amount of responsibility and And it's my experience that you work that much harder if you know what's at stake. So Basically, that was it. Thank you It was a bit short and I was I've been told that the bus is leaving out from out front So you can go out there here at 4 p.m. Also to have any questions cool I have one sir Constraints. Well, it's fairly easy starting using HTML5. You can just change the duct type, but yeah soft constraints it's actually easier than then it sort of look like because you can you can go all the way in and start use all the HTML5 elements and all the semantics But it might not make sense for you And you can also just implement HTML5 videos and you can make it a graduate gradual thing And just do it as you go along But just by take and I'm not kidding just by changing the duct type you change a lot of things So there really were no constraints for us at least There are is the constraints about you know older browsers like i7 and i6 and images and specifically gradients We I love the use of CSS gradients, but you know, it's not really widely adapted yet so if if you have to Cut out these images and you have to implement images you can just do it in the end So we just we just cut out hold it all this Nonsense malarkey or whatever Britain you British guy people call it and stop focusing on it and and That action alone helped remove a lot of these constraints for us So Anyone else? You one more time Yeah, it's cash. It's cashed. Yeah And and no That's the great thing about it. It just works and and there is no drawbacks about it The only drawback about using less is that you have to include it on each of your CSS files and when I first started using this and I Couldn't understand why it didn't work. I thought I could just you know have this as a CSS file And it will automatically be included in my info file and it would just work magically, but it didn't so that's small constraint small include What Sorry Yeah, it's about the whole workflow. I define all my border radius and stuff like that I didn't find them in a single file and add them in for example a less folder in my CSS folder And I import them at the top of my CSS files where I'm supposed to be using border radius or the functions or whatever So you just you just define them at on the top and it just works so any other Okay, I did not know that so The the it's he said it's worth noting that less creates the file separately from yeah It creates less optimized file in a separate area from the other CSS files and yes, I hadn't really realized that so but yeah It's worth noting because it adds to the amount of CSS you have to download on each page Yeah So it was not so much a question as a recommendation. It's the lady She recommends that we use the less app instead of using the module because if we add a Wrong declared less declaration. It breaks the entire site And that's true really Personally for me that workflow didn't work for me, but I Know about the less app and it's a great app. You can also use it from the command line if I'm not mistaken. Yeah And that that's neat as well and that might fit the developer types in here a Bit better than using an app. I'd prefer the app, but but yeah Thank you anyone else So, thank you. That's it also Small little thing. I've been asked to give a little shout out to the front-end United Camp in Netherlands in 2012 from Jesper and he helps organize this thing And if you want you can get these neat little cards up here And they're free and you can take as much as you want and give them out and that's so so thank you


So you just don't know how to mask, not a problem. Face mask allows you to mask an area by left clicking it. Depending on your target is where it will mask. If you want to mask specific areas, just hold Alt and left click. If you're on all polygons, it masks everything. If you're on polygroup island, it only masks faces that are the same color. And if you're on polyloop, it masks the entire edge loop. Hope that helps then as always. Hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


As you observe the target here, there was a flight of two F-16s from the United States Air Force. They have now been told where the target is. They have identified it. The lead aircraft is going to engage it here momentarily with a 500-pound bomb on the target. At this point, they're making an assessment as to whether or not the target had been fully engaged and whether they need to re-engage it one more time. The decision has been made now by the commander, the pilot in charge up there that they are going to do a re-attack and you'll see the second 500-pound bomb going shortly. Okay, thank you. Following this strike, Iraqi security forces


and hope everyone is safe and healthy. Today we have Professor Shashidara with us, who will be talking on national education policy 2020 and the role of teachers in an increasingly digital world.  He is currently Professor, Biology and Dean of Research at Ashoka University. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, specializes in genetics, molecular biology and evolutionary biology. Prior to Ashoka, Professor Shashidara worked at CCMB, Hyderabad and Aisar Pune. He has served and is serving many apex committees with the government of India and science and technology organization. And is the recipient of numerous top science award. He's an elected fellow of science academies of India and the European Molecular Biology Organization. And currently the president of International Union of Biological Sciences. In today's talk, as I mentioned, he will talk about NEP, which is expected to take the nation towards a development mode that ensures equity and sustainability. He will be dwelling upon two challenges teachers are facing and would continue to face in the coming years. Exhausted by the pandemic. The first one is the need for online education with high quality content and visuals to increase the reach and efficiency of learning outcomes. And second one is preparing the students for this increasingly digital world, which is beyond the imagination of most of the current educators. He will also touch upon the critical need of teacher preparations to address these challenges and to prepare them. Since we are on tight schedule, over to you, Professor Siddharah. Thank you, thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. Okay, good. So thanks, Mashu, for this kind introduction and first for invitation to speak to all of you. It's more of a discussion because I'm also a learner. I'm not an educator the way you people are talk about innovation in pedagogy and teachers training. I'm more of a sort of a freelancer in a way you can say, I met you. Trying to sort of organize large number of teachers workshop. Many times the kind of workshop that I organize for teachers are all to enable teachers to teacher interaction so that they can learn from each other rather than trying to impart a particular pedagogical method because I myself not very familiar with all the methods. Many times there are many experts among the teachers themselves who help other teachers. And particularly I'm thankful for many of my friends here who have joined Dr. Ravid, Dr. Jayeshree. It's a privilege to talk to all of you at this time. And I hope all of you stay safe in this very difficult period. And we always used to read in the history of as a biologist, as an evolutionary biologist I always sort of interested in understanding how speciation occurs and how population dynamics change in the context of diseases. Because in many times, geoclimatic changes leading to population changes is what we normally try to study and simulate. It's always difficult to study influence of pathogens in shaping the populations. You know, there are hardly good fossil or archeological evidence for large populations particularly in the older species extinctions or changes in the population dynamics. Those are the ones which are better studied in real time. Didn't realize that human species will go through such a period post-modern molecular biology era because the previous pandemic was close to a hundred year old or more or less exactly a hundred year before this COVID-19. And in that context, you know, it's irony that we know so much about viruses, about immune response, how what are the very different physiological burden when we are fighting a pathogenetic body and how we transmit from one person to another and how it affects the population level. But we don't have much information or strategies or defense mechanisms that the population level to protect lives, you know, of course there are two aspects to this. One is exasperated because of our social interaction, social infrastructure, which is extremely inadequate to deal with such large pandemic. We have seen this in the last one year. So much of the solution come from, part of the solution come from sciences, particularly like biology. A second part of it comes by understanding the complex system which mostly mathematicians or physicists are trying to help and provide by making some mathematical modeling.  And somewhere all of us not been able to handle this so well in the process we have lost many, many lives. In fact, this pandemic is also a lesson for all of us to learn that how we need to bring in real life problems in our classrooms to help students to learn the concepts better. And so that they actually can, you know, not only the learn basic concepts of any particular discipline and also learn how to apply the knowledge to solve the problem. That's what innovation is all about. And if you learn the concept better and also you learn how to address the unknowns because you will learn, you know, certain methods of research and scientific methods to address those problems. So this is sort of one way of looking at it, how we can address a pandemic. The second is how we can use whatever is happening today to, you know, change our education system so that tomorrow will be better off. But this thinking, while it is sort of made, there's a current pandemic made with thinking an urgency to implement. But the thinking was always there. Thinking was there for the last 10 to 15 years. We continuously talked about that there is a urgent need to reform the education system. For two reasons, one is increased number of students endowing both in the school and higher education. And there is a need to improve the quality. And with the fast changing world, large sections of the society were not being able to cope with the changes and they are left behind. So there's a huge inequality in educational outcomes as well as their, you know, future career prospects and livelihood. So obviously there was a huge demand for change in the education system. And, but as you know, any complex system, the change is always slow and any big change may lead to more problems than actually solving the prevailing problems. So people are always afraid of how much one can change. For example, digitization, which is today's topic. Everybody was talking about digitization of education. There was always a, you know, worry that what extent it will affect the quality of teaching, to what extent it will begin the absence of a teacher, physically present, living, you know, blood and flesh teacher, not present or not mediator of learning. How would a student who is another human being would learn only using the digital methods? So these are the kind of issues we are always confronted with when we are discussing about education. Now there are certain things which have become inevitable. For example, in the last more than a years of experience of trying to do digital learning, we also understood so much of inequality to access, you know, digital learning resources, internet signal, bandwidth and inability to understand through digital methods. And now the divide between, you know, the have and have nots in terms of digital access to inequality in educational outcomes is increasing and that's why we need to worry about how to improve this. And teachers are back in the center stage now because without teachers in mediation, these problems cannot be solved. Only using technology, these can't be solved. So that means teachers need to train themselves to bridge this digital divide. So that's sort of way I'm going to sort of reach the today's discussion. Let me share my slides. So for this particular audience, Omibaba, you know, science education, Omibaba Center for Science Education, I don't think I need to sort of explain most of it because these are all you are the experts. In fact, you may correct me, there are anything missing or anything wrong in what I'm going to discuss. So based on variety of discussion that I was involved in in the NEP and also in the later another policy document was prepared for by the government of Punjab which I was involved in each Science and Technology Innovation Policy 2020. And one side is the education for masses and to help them to understand the world, help them to take up a livelihood, improve their career opportunities, improve their, you know, living conditions and so forth on one side. The second side, of course, education also about equality and sustainability. And the second side is to what extent science and technology innovation can be used to address both the problems in education and the problems in wealth creation in a sustainable way and also equity in the distribution of the wealth within a country. So in that context, you know, both are sort of complementary and using sort of information from both sides I'll try and bring out some salient features. I'll be very quick.  So I'll try to sort of use these slides in about 20 minutes or so. So one is of course the school education. One is the still large population is not fully sort of have access to education. School education is somewhat better. But when it comes to higher education as you can make out as of 2017, 2018, the data was released only in 2019 late of the 2017, 2018. We don't have the data for subsequent the last one or two years. Last year anyway is completely washed out. So we are about 26% of the eligible students can come to higher education are coming which is compared to the world, world average is 30%. And you know, average GR in place of cross involvement ratio in developed countries is somewhere between 60 to 70%. And China is somewhere perhaps 40% or so. It's definitely above the world average. And so of course, one can always ask to how much of the higher education is really important and to what extent school education should be proved in such a way that the end of the two 12 years of schooling one will have sufficient learning and training to lead a comfortable and prosperous life, sustainable way, environmental friendly and so forth. These are the some of the points that we can sort of take this forward in our discussion. But still assuming that a country like ours considering the so many societal problems, inequality problems, we need to improve our agriculture, we need to improve our health system, we need to improve our air quality, water quality, so much of networking we need to do amongst ourselves. So there is a huge demand for highly skilled human resources at all levels, at all non-disciplines. So perhaps 26% of GR may not be good enough. And so we need to improve both the number as well as the quality. So obviously I'm focusing more on higher education coming from the higher education systems. Many of you may be working on the school education. Some of the topics which I'm going to talk about later will also be applicable to both school and higher education. This I'll skip because all of you know, increase incidence of epidemics and pandemics. Pandemic was added now in the last one year of these slides but increase incidence of epidemics was always there in these kind of discussions. And increased human migration, exchange of commodities and there is increased confrontation between countries, communities. There are so many different types of problems our students will have to face as they go in the future. And so there is the current model of development is not sustainable in the context of not only inequality in the globe as well as the climate change. Now, from the basically what is that education should be? The students should basically we have the ability to solve problems using knowledge, let's say science and technology but not necessarily should simply know the facts, right? Because that's where the digitization helps that you don't need to remember everything, right? For example, DNA double helix. Today, all of us are doing RTPCR to diagnose COVID. When the COVID pandemic outbreak happened, India had just one lab to RTPCR based testing that's the NIV in Pune. And then they set up three or four, one in Mumbai, one in Delhi and so forth and one in Chennai. And these are about three or four centers for COVID testing. But within a month or two, we had more than 2000 testing center. Most of them were actually academic institutions like ISERTS or IITs or universities and colleges. It's simply because the basic understanding of the RNA to DNA reverse transcription, DNA replication that what happens during PCR. And then, you know, this all technology we always use day to day in our research in our teaching also for undergraduate level when in school level many times people do PCR. So this basically knowledge was already there. We applied this for COVID testing. And that's how India could actually be testing initially for few hundred samples a day. Now we can actually test more than a million or close to about two million tests a day, right? Of course, we should further increase and ramp up considering our population and considering the second search that we are facing. But whatever that could happen because people knew how to apply the knowledge to a particular problem. But most of the people who are doing the RT-PCR phase testing including me who I teach DNA replication to evolutionary biology and genetic variation and so forth I cannot explain anything about reverse transcriptase. You know, it's biochemistry of river transcriptase or biochemistry of DNA polymerase leading to function of DNA polymerase and DNA replication. But now most of those facts I don't need to know. I can always refer to a digital resource and then try and help understand some of those points which is required to design an experiment, right? So that's why we don't need to remember all the facts. As long as we know, that takes any conservative method of replication of DNA as a concept, right? So as a teacher, my job is also should be that rather than teaching what I, whatever I learned yesterday or long, long ago to students who are tomorrow's citizens and for a career that even doesn't exist today. So they may have to prepare themselves for a career which may get created later. So what's the point in certain kinds of, a certain method of teaching or certain content of that we teach today for the students' purposes? So this understanding, if you have, then we can actually simplify the teaching as much as possible, right? And make sure that students have fun in learning at the same time, learn how to learn rather than continuously worry about what to learn. So in that context, these are obviously again, the good old, maybe even more than 100 years. In fact, I'm sure Ravi and Jayashri, some of you may have read, there is this speech of Max Muller, it's available, text of that speech is available on internet. He spoke to a batch of ICS officers, the Imperial Civil Service officers who were selected in UK and they were supposed to go to India and all of them worked for the first time going to India. So Max Muller was basically was trying to explain to them about India before they land in India. And in the first 10 minutes of his speech, he only speaks about whatever you are learned, you should unlearn before you go to India because none of you are learned here will be useful to learn a complex system that India has. And one of the things he says is, these are the good features of a good education and Cambridge has failed. He's talking about more than 125 years ago, which we can still consider Cambridge University as the number one university in the world. Cambridge has failed to impart good education to our students. So analytical ability, critical thinking, solving problems and so forth, right? These are the issues that he was talking about. I'm a audible to all of you, in case there is any internet issue, please someone has to flag this. Mashul? Yes, yes, you are audible, I hope. I'm also visible in a small box. Yes, everything is fine, slides are also perfect. Okay, thank you. So when NEP was sort of framed, none of us are thinking that in less than a year, there would be a pandemic, right? So NEP had, looking at if there is an higher GR, then the inclusivity and equitability access will be an issue, how to ensure that there is both inclusivity and equitability in your campuses, how to improve the quality and integrity of educational resources, and how to make sure that your pedagogy is learner centric rather than sort of some kind of an examination centric and so forth, right? Skills, values, other things, but values are all, anyway, relative. Each one may define different values. I think there are certain kinds of skills which are universal and transferable across disciplines. Now, as a teacher's role, again, many people have talked about it, most of you already know about it. As a teacher, a teacher's job should be more as a facilitator because it's a lifelong learning for any student. So students should learn how to learn rather than certain specific topic that they have to learn during, in their education, whether in the schools or in the college, but school education, the particularly early school education purpose is very different than the higher education. Early school education, the purpose is a student should know what a social world would like because typically a student would be always, before coming to the school, would be with parents and with the immediate family member. They may not know how to deal with an external world with the alien people, right? Anybody who is outside the family is an alien person. So how to deal with this, how to do numerical, how to get the numerical skills and so forth. Then they start learning how to understand the world, which is complex and beyond our understanding of using our sensory perception. For example, how do you know whether the earth which is moving on the sun or the sun moving around? Because our sensory perception says it's the sun which is moving every day from east to west. But the science, which is trying to understand a true world beyond our own sensory perception has taught us that it is the other way around. So how to discover or how to understand a world beyond our own perception? Much more than how to understand the world, at least the reality that the world is beyond our own sensory perception. That reality, if it comes to students during school education, you have done a fantastic job. I don't think we need to do anything more than that, of course, other than the early middle school level, whatever the learning outcomes that I spoke about at some time ago. High school level, I think if students understand that there is a world beyond our own perception, like for example, how much of the behavior, inappropriate behavior in the context of COVID-19 is simply because most people cannot comprehend that how viruses can move from one person to another person because it's indivisible, right? And it's very difficult for them to comprehend how from one person it can get into a geometrical progression to hundreds and millions of people within a short span of time in a crowded environment in like a city, right? So these are the kind of understanding students should gain from the education that there is a world which is beyond our comprehension, but there are methods to understand the world. There are mathematical methods. There are some experimental methods. There are other rational methods to understand the world. That's what a teacher need to impart on education as to her student during education. So teacher job is again, more as a facilitator. So that students learn how to learn rather than trying to sort of do a more, you know, a top-down sort of approach to learn. Okay, I'll skip this. This is finally once you do all of these things and they will learn, you know, how to solve the problem in their own way. Now, until about four or five years ago, all of these thoughts were there amongst all the good educators who are thinking about this and particularly, you know, many, many, many hundreds of teachers at school and at college that were across the country. They were all genuinely concerned about the educational system and how to improve education. Many teachers are trying on their own way how to improve the quality of education. There are many, many experiments, in particularly in many NGOs run schools and also in many colleges. And there are many programs for teachers training in these kind of things. But in the absence of a curricular or structural change, most of them became a passion of few people or a curiosity for some people and then they forgot about it because it's simply because it's not implementable because you are demand on, you know, part of the curriculum and syllabi was so much that you couldn't do anything from your new learning. So what NEP has sort of suggested is a structural change, the curriculum and syllabi and pedagogy all three such that, you know, many of the good practices that we are always preaching could be brought in as part of the system, right? And obviously when you say part of the system is so large and so complex and implementing overnight it's going to be either almost impossible and at some time if you don't implement properly it's going to be disastrous. So there is always an implementation issue. So right now NEP is still at the, you know, some amount of, some part of NEP is being implemented but still largely implementation is on hold. Of course because of the pandemic there's not much discussion happening on some of the issues of implementation. So one aspect of curriculum is of course bringing liberal arts and then second one is the, let me change this. And the kind of, you know, syllabi that we use the kind of, you know, skills that we impart on the students and the kind of, you know, advanced information we ask students to learn should we have a sort of contemporary and has to have a global acceptance because we are now global citizens. Irrespective of whether you work in India or anywhere in the world you would be working together with the rest of the world particularly in the context of pandemic it has become much more evident that what a global community means, right? So we need to align our education to the global level and obviously then our comparison of education is not within India who is number one or number two who is good, who is bad. We should compare with ourselves and the rest of the world and see how good our standards are at the global level. Of course there is a lot of local connectivity we should have. So we should be locally rooted to deal with the local problems and local need for local solutions with the help of knowledge within science and technology otherwise. But should be globally relevant and based on the global standards and global knowledge. Now, coming to the digital aspect because of the increased number of students and because there is so much to know and not everything can be known and also a lot of solutions to the problem come from the very different knowledge resources and those knowledge resources should be accessible to everybody and all the time. So the democratization of the knowledge and ease of access to knowledge is something which is again is part of the digital learning and digital pedagogy, right? So today most of the time a teacher need to tell the students not only how to learn using certain pedagogical methods the second is how to even find out which is the most reliable resource for any piece of knowledge. You cannot be a WhatsApp, it cannot be a Twitter or it cannot be even Google or Wikipedia. How do you query knowledge whether it is true or false whether it is reliable or not reliable. Itself needs to be taught to students because of the increased transmission of unsubstantiated source of information and many times information can also be fake, right? So while we need to teach students in using digital methods, I mean digital divide itself is a separate topic, I'll come to that in a minute. What is there in the digital resources itself is there's a big question mark, right? That we all need to be aware of when we are talking to students because we are talking about now so many different digital repository of information. We are talking about making digital lesson plans giving links to very different source of information and in the process we ourselves should not give it to a wrong place to the wrong source and at the same time, it's impossible to always find a correct resource, right? So there must be a way of verifying what is the right source and students should learn how to verify it, right? So I can give you an example. I'm sure Ravi knows about this, right? You were part of this discussion once when Mohan initiated, you know, some time ago there was, I'll not mention the, some, you know, private, the chain of private schools they had their own notes, what are called notes for the 10 standard examination, sort of a summary of everything that students should know before they go to the board exam numbers, notes. And so there is something about Big Bang. It's a completely wrong information. So it starts with, at the time of Big Bang, you know, the whole world was small. That's all they say. It was only had a hydrogen and helium. And from hydrogen and helium, you know, everything else sort of came out kind of some information. There was fundamental, you know, many, many fundamental mistakes in physics of Big Bang in that notebook, in the way. And if you just take the paragraph and do a Google search, it basically went to a website of a creationist created in which they had talked about this in a negative way, saying that this is what scientists claim, but it is not just so the world was like this or the world was never like this kind of thing. And so neither the creationists use that as a real world, nor scientists use this as the beginning of the, you know, current universe. Somewhere this was picked up and it went into a part of the school education, right? Although it was not supposed, not within the NCRT textbook, but somewhere it was there circulating. So this is the problem of sometimes, you know, digital learning, one has to be extremely careful how do you source information? Because all of us, we may have to do lesson plans, either at the school level or undergraduate level as a teacher, and then how do we actually make a lesson plan on a topic in which we may not be, have done any research or we may not have studied for 20, 30 years and so that we can out of, you know, our own memory, we can write something, you know, but sometimes we may have to source information from a more reliable sources. So if we can do it, why can't students do it? So that means we need to teach our students how to verify the knowledge. Some of these things, you know, the lot of problems in implementation, how you become a learning facilitator in a digital one. So first of all, there is a technology thing. That means teachers may have to become a little bit of technology savvy whether we like it or not. So the students should at least learn some basics of digital learning, you know. So that means some amount of technical skills that we all need to have. And so then there need to be a somewhat different instructional design, what we call as lesson plans. You know, it's in a different way because sometimes it's easier. It helps a lot in a digital world than in a regular classroom because taking from the previous lecture to the next lecture, the continuity of lectures is easier in a digital world. You can just show your lesson plan of the previous class and where you ended and which logic, you know, logical question that comes after that. And that's where you are continuing to the next one. Right? So some of these things which typically in a dialogue that you normally do if you have three or four hours of lecture continuously, instead if you want to divide each lecture into one hour at a time and only two hours in a week and next two hours in another week, then you students will lose the continuity. In a digital pedagogy, many times that continuities can be maintained very easily with the help of the digital resources that you have. So more importantly, we keep talking about teachers, learning new skills, teachers development, pedagogical training to teachers and so forth. But in a complex, fast changing world, it's almost impossible to catch up with these kind of training. So no system, whether a UGC or the school in CBSE can continuously organize teachers workshop for teachers to learn how to teach in a changing world. So what is important is you give certain kinds of leadership skills to teachers to be master of their own. They learn on their own what is to be done. They understand the problem in their own way. Also give them, empower them to be autonomous so that they are answerable to the learning outcomes of the student rather than to some management saying that, you know, why didn't you do this? Why did you do this? Why didn't you do this? We are that way. Only measure the learning outcomes, leave it to the teachers how to teach that learning outcome and so forth. And that's where some leadership skills comes to teachers and then teachers can be a lifelong learner in their own way to teach as you can. Last point is in a, all these things can be achieved if you change our examination system which is also MEP wants to implement. So rather than some kind of a, you know, examination oriented we should have a completely different method of assessment and that below examination system should also sort of align very well with NEP and the new teaching methods, right? Now one aspect of Indian particularly the, you know the board level of school examinations 10th and 12th grade and also our UGC mandated university level education examination system. There is a dichotomy in teaching and evaluation. So I teach someone else evaluate. It's actually even worse than that. I use someone else's textbook to teach my student because it's written by someone else. Then students will, you know, write answers to questions asked by a third person and another fourth person is the one who is going to do the evaluation. Though they are all complete four islands, right? And teachers, sorry, students have to jump from one island to another. And easy for them to jump the teachers, you know because they are not bothered about teaching, teachers teaching in the classroom because they're worried more about what examiner will ask the question and how another evaluator will answer the, I'm sorry, evaluate the answer, right? So they are trying to match there and the textbook is anyway the reference for everything that nothing comes out of the, outside the textbook or outside syllabus what the students keep talking about. So the teacher's role becomes minimal. If teachers evaluate based on what they teach then they will become more responsible in their teaching because their evaluation has sold to be, you know and if also know how I'm going to evaluate I also know how to teach. So I think students should be involved in evaluation. Of course there should be a, you know unbiased third-party evaluation but doesn't mean that I don't evaluate my students whom I'm teaching because if I don't do that my teaching will never improve and I will not have any motivation to even improve. So this is what I was trying to see learning how to assess all of our teachers should learn how to assess that's very important. This I've already spoke about more self-learning than taught by teachers students should, you know there are more debate, discussion, peer learning we should involve real life problems like field and laboratory work whether it is in social science and humanities or science and technology, it's all the same. And there should be sufficient infrastructure if you want to do more of digital learning digital pedagogy than infrastructure on the schools and buildings and campuses whether it's school or higher education should be pretty very good. We need to have better internet terms of high bandwidth internet throughout the country. Otherwise the digital divide inequality in education is going to only worsen rather than informatics. Just to in the last three minutes all of these things what we are thinking what we are discussing in product educational policy and change in education system is applicable whether it's pre-corona world or post-COVID world or whatever. It's only that the COVID-19 pandemic has made all these things much more urgent and accelerated the need for improving it. But we also, the future is as unpredictable it was two years ago because we are always talking about climate change and environment degradation is making the future much more uncertain. The inequalities will drive the development in a different way. There'll be more conflicts between economic conflict I'm not talking about war kind of a conflict between countries and that will sort of change the dynamics for every five years if not more frequent than that. So in a fast changing modern world basically we want to customize the education outcome among the students rather than a factory model that will continue even with the post-COVID world. But one thing that has changed is the world has become somewhat more closer to each other. The global village we keep talking about anywhere all the time because of the modern economy and interdependence for in the supply chain pipeline. But you know the modern world post-COVID or during the COVID now you can't think of post-COVID in the middle of the second surge is when the virus was discovered it was discovered sometime in the 2019 December by January we all knew what is this virus how it sort of invades human lung cells. And within about a month or so we knew so much about what happens once it's inside of a lung cells and within two months people started thinking of vaccines, drugs and so forth. And within three months sometime in the beginning of March people also knew how our immune system is violently responding to this what was cytokine storm and what are the kind of treatment you have to give why there is a sudden change in the oxygen saturation and so forth. And while a large number of people have died indeed and much of that is inadequate health infrastructure and our lack of preparation sometime lack of attention to the details we should have given particularly now the second surge. To large extent current pandemic also has provided an opportunity to use you know collaboration, cooperation and use of modern science to address the problem. And but at the same time the modern communication methods also spreading a lot of unverified information fake news all kinds of quacks coming out with their own solutions medical solution or non-pharmaceutical interventions. So of course the problem is compounded because of some of those things but at the same time we also have realized where one can solve the problem and what are the shortcomings in finding the right solution or even if you know the solution how to apply the solution to sort of pandemic problem. So in that context there is hopefully these learning which all of us have learned you know most of the time it would be a few policy makers or some thinkers who have thought about some of these things. Now everything is coming inside our mobile phone television at home some of these discussions. So hopefully more and more teachers are going to be aware of the need for customized educational outcomes among the students and the ability of the students to learn and anything from the room. But just to end with some more specifics rather than too much of generalization in the post-COVID world there are going to be certain kinds of not only because of COVID-19 but also because of climate change and environment regulation and the importance of biodiversity and conservation. We need there are going to be huge demand for statistics because economics is also you know quite good number of statisticians. Population studies, epidemiology, public health experts sustainability experts, biodiversity and conservation experts experts in environmental law and climate justice particularly because of the Paris Agreement now which is back in the limelight after Trump lost his election. Then communication expert with again and again it has become extremely important that we need a good communication experts to communicate and disseminate right information. So these are all the kind of domains, specific areas in which we need huge number of human resources and that's where some new career opportunities for our students and all of them are interdisciplinary as you can make out. None of them are very, very specific to our physics or chemistry or math or biology. Now of course, transferable skills in communication cells have running analytical ability, critical thinking are important among all of the students. I'll stop here. Sorry, I took longer than I thought but I am happy to take some questions. Thanks Shashi. Now we will take up the questions. Please raise your hands or type in the questions. We have one in the comment box. Surevi, you want to speak? Since we have very little time I would request everyone to be brief and to the point in the question. So Surevi is asking, during the pandemic time with the digitization of imparting education suddenly the students of lower economic strata relate schools have less access to the internet's smartphone are suffering the most. It's been more than a year. So what are your thoughts on how we can address this issue? Yeah, yeah, it's definitely that's a problem. So now, this is more of a socio-economic solution than there is any specific educational solution to this. As a teacher, how much I can do? My job is only to teach, right? How to learn or what to learn? So one way is almost all the students particularly young students coming from lower socio-economic strata and who have access to education has been a problem should be given some additional opportunity. It's like one or two additional years with fully supported education system so that they catch up with the last time, make up for the last time and also catch up with the people who had access to the internet. We also have realized I'm teaching two big courses in Ashoka University in this semester. Many kids of super-rich people living in metros to the people in rural areas without even having good access to mobile phone or a good laptop. Of course, somehow we created that opportunity so that reduce the gap. But still, the digital learning as a method of learning is actually very poor amongst all students. Even if those who are born, in earlier days we used to say born with silver spoon, these days even those who are born with smart phones or a MacBook Air or Apple, right? I think there is still digital learning is very poor amongst human beings. I think it's unless they are good in learning otherwise, in a regular human-human interaction, the digital learning is not going to make it any more better. So digital learning is only another aid for the teacher. That's what we are always talking about is digital learning is supposed to be an aid for teachers to teach better rather than a student to learn better. We have realized that. Sorry, I don't have a really clear solution to what to do with a large number of Indians who kids who have actually lost a whole more than a year now in the education system. Another thing, you have mentioned the importance of interdisciplinary thinking. Now definitely there are a few people in our premier institutes like ICER, TFR or IIT Sandal who have this exposure in interdisciplinary thinking and talking about that. But how difficult and what are the challenges do you think? This has to come right at the school level at the plus one, plus two level, the silos of physics, chemistry, biology all just being separated. That has to be broken right from the school level. And do you think we have there is a crisis of expertise on how to do this at that level? Of course, I mean, there is a lot of things happening at that level. So it's not really so it's actually much simpler than we thought initially. It's all depends on how you make your lesson plan for the teacher. So if you look at, of course, the interdisciplinary thinking starts only actually, the division starts only in the high school. We really until seven standard, there's nothing like physics, chemistry, mathematics. You have social science or not even social science. You have basically geography and science is kind of a thing not so much. And then something about civil science or something. But if you look at, if you make a lesson plan in such a way that you can actually bring in interdisciplinary very easy. Let's say I'm an economics and I want to teach, let's say microfinancing or I want to teach something about what is GDP. So in your calculation, you can always give assignments, but you can give an assignment in such a way that assignments yet the students have to learn some data skills or students have to learn certain kinds of mathematics or students have to learn some aspects of dynamics. And many times the complex system dynamics are the same whether it is a physics, you know, nonlinear dynamics or in the social structure knowledge and dynamics is the same for the way you approach. So actually interdisciplinarity can be brought together very easy. It all depends on what kind of problems you bring in. For example, as part of a climate change education, we have a project in which we want to bring climate change across the curriculum and all across all disciplines.  And then you may address different aspect of that problem whether refugee problem or rainfall, increased rainfall or reduced rainfall or increased sea level raising. So you can bring in this narrative by combining in a very nice way in the lesson class. Ravi has a question. Yeah, before that, KS process, Sambat Kumar had I mean, he has sent me a message. Yeah, Sambat here. Yeah, how are you? Okay. So I have two short questions. One question is the digital learning process, particularly these days during pandemic days. How does one, how does teacher ensure that student really learned what has been taught today or this week? I mean, earlier days, you go for assignment, collected they'll correct today. Many people cannot access for scanner. People don't even, how do they ensure that? I mean, only privileged class will be benefited now. You have to ensure the student really understood. Second point is, of course, is that as you and me know that we have so many students we are training, college, school level, when you put them on interviews, hardly one person would answer even fundamental questions. Is there any need to really reduce a syllabus so that the student really learn the bad minimum or whatever they learn, they really understand. They are two percent. Yeah, Sambat, you know, both of them I sort of touched upon both of them. First one is, you know, getting into digital teaching without preparation because of the COVID that happening. We should have have a proper preparation on how you teach, how much digitization in part comes in the teaching and how much is the, what is the valuation method? For example, if you look at the NPTEL or the SWIME, what people are trying to do was to make student go through a SWIME course and teacher will sort of guide them to go through a SWIME course and teachers will evaluate what they have learned, whether they learn properly or not by getting into some discussion. So classroom is time is used for discussion with the student and the student would have already gone through one hour of, let's say, an online learning, right? That was the original thinking about digital transitioning to digital learning, but unfortunately, because of COVID, it happened, you know, overnight and there is no particular solution to this such a problem. But coming to the second part, I, you know, it's already NEPs, you know, talked about it and now more and more people are talking about is reduce the content in the syllabus, increase more discussion on the concepts and let students learn on their own, give them a right references on the loan, the details. I gave the example of the DNA double helix. I don't need to get into the nitty-nitty details of all the, you know, parameters of a double helix or structure. I only need to tell them the complementary after two strands and the importance of the complementarity. Everything else, they can learn the detail. The concept of a DNA that if you like, if you read one scientific paper of 1953, the last two sentences tell everything about the importance of double helix or structure complementary strands, right? So that's the kind of concept we need to teach them. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So this, my question is sort of triggered by the context of NEP and the talk about interdisciplinarity and so on. But I wanted to ground it if you don't mind, you know, in some specific experiences that you've had, which I think we can all learn from, or at least learn about, hear your insights. I mean, you've been very closely involved in ICER, in fact, building, and now you're with Ashoka University. Clearly, these are, you know, two institutions of great importance for the future of higher education in the country, the young institutions and taking shape. So would you have something to say about, you know, comparing these two institutions from probably the vision of NEP, etc. Are they different today? Will they intake slightly different parts? Or do you think there's some kind of convergence that you see the future of their character and nature? Yeah, yeah. So it's true. In fact, when, when ICERs were conceived in 2003, 2004, all finally they started, you know, opened up in 2006 onwards, it was largely talking about science, natural sciences, basic science and integration of, you know, physics, chemistry, math, and biology, right? It was still in its own silos in a way. It was not, you know, completely opened up. So see the people always think that liberal arts means, you know, humanities and social science or arts and, you know, like performing arts.  And what you learn is, is completely up to you. In liberal arts, you basically learn the art of learning. And so you open up your mind and when you open up your mind, you may actually see some poetry or you may see some music or you may see some, you know, planet or, or an act in your brain. And that's what you want to focus later. And so different people, that's all specialized in different ways, but they all started with the very fundamental understanding of the both natural world and the human world. So that to some extent is true, but, you know, in practical ways, very difficult to implement in modern world, particularly, you know, the liberal arts higher education depends on a strong school education, because much of the early learning is good in the school education, the transition from school to higher education becomes easier, because you start, you know, learning new knowledge the way knowledge is produced. Whereas if the school education itself is at a fundamentally not good, you first three years of higher education goes in fixing what you didn't do in the school, right? And we are facing that problem with respect to what socio-economic background students come both in and Ashoka, I see the problem that, you know, many times what we want to do in higher education, we can't do it simply because they're not ready yet. This is where we need to fix. You don't mean that in terms of their content knowledge, but more about the approach to learning or something is that what you have in mind? Approach to learning, yeah. So it's still in to road learning. Somehow, even after, you know, in Ashoka or in Aishwara after two years, they're still more worried about the remembering certain definitions and numbers and more worried about the kind of question in which the easy for them to answer to an MCQ rather than asking a conceptual question and then to answer those questions. Thanks. We will take one more from, short one from Sambat and then with that, I think we can go into Okay, sorry, one more short question. You know, the fact reminds that it's these days, honestly speaking, but it was poor on college level is very difficult to find motivated teachers given the salary structure particularly private colleges. I mean, maybe the time has come, you know, even the motivator students will lose suddenly interest. That is one of the reasons why we are not getting high quality students. I mean, the way I understand now, now that your education policy now permits go for a digital, digital learning, is it possible that we ask people from all over the globe, the best possible teachers, I mean, ask them come online, give a course online courses to, I mean, to even schools and colleges. So the students really get interested in the subject. I mean, you have to create one generation now who are really motivated teachers, which I think difficult to find. Really scope on that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you're interested in a particular discipline, you have certain, you know, sort of passion, let's say I want to learn, let's say, you know, astrophysics or something. Now, then they may actually students may seek the best teachers from anywhere in the world and learn astrophysics, but the job of the teacher is also to inculcate that passion, motivate that students to build as such a passion. Right. Those teachers are not in physical proximity, right? It will be very difficult for the students to seek such teachers from anywhere in the world rather than their own background. So we need a combination of both. We need a large number of motivated good teachers in our own country, in our own schools and colleges, but for the best, you know, discipline specific or interdisciplinary teachers also can be at, you know, come from anywhere in the world. Abhijit Banerjee can talk about, you know, experimental design for economic understanding the economic inequality or whatever, you know, or nudge theory, whatever, but, you know, but that can come from anywhere in the world. But, you know, the initial ability to learn and develop certain interest and passion for learning has to come from local teachers. But, you know, the point that you mentioned about lack of motivation among the teachers to some extent is true because they are largely exploited also by the management in particularly private schools and colleges. And in the government schools and colleges, many times they are not even considered as, you know, anything worth for the system. So they are somewhat neglected. So there's also no incentive for them to do better in a larger system. So they'll get lost in the, in the ocean of, you know, education system. But at the same time, the country is so large, there are good number of those teachers too, but their number is very, a large proportion may be small, but in a country like ours, however small proportion, the numbers are pretty high. My personal experiences, I don't want to sort of claim too much or boast too much compared to what HBC is doing. So, so far in a nice opinion through an education teacher training program that we started after this Pandit Madhavan earlier project started, we have trained more than 6000 school teachers and about 4-5 thousand college teachers. And, and in every time you always thought students or teachers are so passionate and interested in so much, you know, they always talk about their problems. Every workshop they talk about, we can't do this. You know, these are all only talking and it's okay. We are all interested, but we can't teach them.   Finally, most teachers end up signing back over. We implemented this pedagogical methods. There is some improvement. Some teach students are showing more interest than earlier. So we get a lot of responses and many of them come back again and again. But none of them had any certificate which is useful for their getting their API points in the UGC. All of these are three-day workshop. So, you know, okay. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Sachi. Sorry, we have a few more questions. But the process that has an important meeting. Yeah, I have a, sorry, you know, some weather genome sequencing meeting that have a national consortium of genome sequencing. I have to rush to that meeting. So in fact, this talk, I agreed a more than a month ago, but this meeting was fixed yesterday. No, unfortunately, less. I hope a discussion can happen through online and all the people can email you some of the questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's perfectly fine. And I'm also happy to come back again in another context or, you know, there is an opportunity. Yeah. Sure, sure. It's such a complex issue, I mean, which can't be resolved by our discussion or one discussion. We definitely have to revisit and hope this is a beginning at the same process, Sachi, that are for giving the talk and all of you for attending. So patient. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. You're very nice. So the talk will also be available on this channel in case if you want to share it with me. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Just three of us. That was. At the last time. And that. You about the country, which is on your way. Sorry.