Volunteering For Teach For India

Hi

We all crib about the Education System of India. But what have we done about that? Can we really help? The answer is: 'Yes'. Why not start today ? Volunteer for some NGO. Help the people who are already doing the great work. Learn and get experience from them to support the cause. Teach For India (NGO) provides quality education in 56 (approx.) schools in Pune. TFI is operating in 7 cities throughout India - Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad. Their model consists of Fellows ( passionate people ) who teach in the schools for two years.

TFI's website gives detail about the crisis and the possible solution for the issue with Education System. I wanted to get involved and hoped my weekends will be more meaningful. I filled the form to volunteer in their website. For quite long, I did not get any reply from them. I was wondering what has happened .

But the time came, and they replied through the mail on July 4. They arranged a volunteer orientation session on the last Saturday. I shared the details among my network within the office. From only 1 person we became 5. We went to the Teach For India office located near Boat Club Road. We were welcomed in their office. There were around 15 people for attending the session. Pooja, a Fellow of TFI, drove the session. We watched a video of one of their Fellow teachings in a class. We were given a presentation which had following points:

• Crisis
• What the TFI model is?
• The umbrella organisation called Teach For All
• What is expected from a Volunteer
• What are the TFI terms and policies
• Question and Answer

The whole session was interactive. There were frequent questions asked by the people. We also got a printed copy of all the TFI terms and policies. They said they will ping us through mail depending upon what we can do and what their Fellows need. All the volunteers were asked to list the ways they can help TFI. Here are some of the ways that a volunteer can help TFI:

• help in the Assessment of students
• helps in teaching
• help in maintaining records and charts
• teach Arts, Dance, and other extra-circular activities

Well, it is not limited. It is up to you and the Fellow that how far you can go!  TFI also gives a Volunteer Letter for a minimum 72 hours work. This is just a small step from us. We are eagerly waiting to hear from them.

I hope that this will inspire you. Please comment your views below.

Habits That Are Non-Negotiable For Coding

Dear Readers,

Most of the college going student have an assumption that they will have to work alone. We even get a project work and are assigned to it as a team. Yet, in college, we fail to understand the importance of teamwork. Either we do most of the work or none of it. Due to this, we never understand what is coding. Is it the end result? Certainly not. It is the piece of art. An art which can express its motive. For me, a software never dies if you keep rectifying it. I worked on a game for 3-4 months. Yet, I always think how can I make it better. It's certain that one day I will get bored of it. But if my code is in a shape that anyone can understand and that also just by reading it, I will assume my assignment is complete.  

Most of the programming books have listed "Re-usability" as a key-value for a good code. For me, I don't think a code that can't be reused is qualified as the code itself. If you go with books on "Software Engineering" you will understand what I mean to say. Code that just works is useless if it can't be maintained or reused. I want to list two basic habit that makes your code more readable :


1 . Variable names/Function Names/Any Name

Look at the two codes given below
=====================================================
function f(n){                                                
      var f = 1;                                                            
      for(var i=1;i<=n;i++)                              
            f = f*i;
      return f;
}
=====================================================
function calculateFactorialOf(number){
       var factorial = 1;
       for(var counter = 1;counter <= number;counter++)
               factorial = factorial * counter;
       return factorial;
}
=====================================================

The first program looks like the test question we used to solve in the exam. The question was "what is the output of the program". But the code for software is not meant to test someone's IQ. It is meant to explain what the code does. You won't name your children as '100101001' just to complicate yours as well as other people's life. So why you want to complicate your code. Programming languages give you freedom to refer a memory location with a name so use it efficiently.

2. Indentation

Let us again look at two codes to compare :
=====================================================
function calculateFactorialOf(number){
var factorial = 1;
for(var counter = 1;counter <= number;counter++)
factorial = factorial * counter;
return factorial;
}
=====================================================
function calculateFactorialOf(number){

       var factorial = 1;
       for(var counter = 1;counter <= number;counter++)
               factorial = factorial * counter;
       return factorial;
}
=====================================================

It is simple to see what is the effect of indentation in the code. We get a better view of what piece code is contained in for loop and where a function starts and ends. The second code just with the indentation is much more easier to read and understand. 

I understand these are very basic steps. But nobody talked about it when I was in college. Nobody spent a second about it. But now when I developed these habits, it takes out the pain of explaining my code to a new person. Let me talk about my real life incident. I was on leave from my office. I went to my friends. One of the guy from CS branch asked me to show what I learnt. It was amazing for me that he was able to understand each line of my code as soon as I coded. I didn't need to explain him verbally any of the lines. It was a great experience for me. I hope this will motivate you to develop these habits.

Thank you.

Are you old enough to get Aadhaar??

Dear Readers,

Do you know what is the minimum age for getting enrolled for AADHAAR? This is the mail I sent to Aadhaar Sampark Kendra and got the reply. The snapshot discloses all you want to know.

So, as said above, it is better to get enrolled after 15. What you think about that? Post your comments below.

Thank you.

Get Grammarly Correct

Dear readers,

We all come into a situation where we have to write emails, blogs, reports, assignments. One of the biggest fear that bites us is - "Is the grammar correct?".
Now with 'Grammarly' you don't need to be scared. All you need is to go to the website and register yourself. It is free. It is easy. And it is useful. You must have also encountered its ad on youtube. You just have to register yourself and it gets integrated with your browser. You can also upload your document to see grammar errors. I too have it on my chrome. It checks errors while I am writing my blogs, e-mails, comments and much more. If you find my grammar so correct in this blog, thanks to 'Grammarly'.

website: www.grammarly.com

Thank you.