Letter to Student Series : Volume 3 Issue 10

My Dear Student Friends,

Greetings!

This is Dr. Ravi Saripalle, Founder, Inspire to Innovate (i2i) Storytelling Movement. Welcome to “Letter to Student Series- Volume 3 and Issue 10”. Hope you enjoyed reading my previous letter They are available at http://i2itm.blogspot.in/ and Video Message series is available at https://www.youtube.com/user/Indianrichtalent. The goal of these letters and video messages are to inspire, educate, engage, entertain and empower the students and make them Future Ready.

Padma Awardee Story Series-Episode 4- V.Nanammal, 99 Years Old India's oldest Yoga teacher Tamilnadu, India. : The 99-year old Yoga teacher, trained over one million students in 45 years. Yoga keeps our body, mind and soul connected, healthy and peaceful. Are you ready for Yoga? Are you doing any physical exercise? We all need to be inspired by Nanammal. Request you to listen to her amazing life story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGe7YMv7A9E and get inspired!

Do You Agree for "Time Bank" Concept, or more specifically "Service Bank" Concept in India? Would You like to Promote this idea?: Time bank is a reciprocity-based work trading system in which hours become the currency. You have certain skill and you render some service to particular community and bank those hours. In response, you will get another service (skill) for the same equal hours which you banked without paid or being paid! What a wonderful concept designed by Prof Edgar Cahn, an American professor of Law in 1980. Today it is the need of hour, especially to the aged people. During their young age, they can do some service, account those hours in a bank and in return, they will receive equivalent service (hours) when they really need it (during sick, old age etc). We need to design this program effectively with the help of Government. This concept promotes social justice, equality, harmony and peace in the society. Hope you all agree with me. Looking forward to see some of you start this Service Bank in your respective communities/ /locations. To more about Time bank, please do visit https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/time-bank.

IIT Roorkee is developing drones to make Train Journey Safe: IIT Roorkee developed unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor rail tracks. They are getting replaced with erstwhile trolleys pulled by workers. This process helps in during extreme weather and while working in remote places. IIT Roorkee is developing artificial intelligence based software which analyses these drone images and takes appropriate decisions. It saves crores of rupees. Thank you IIT Rookee for developing such a great innovation and helping Indian Railways ! To read more, visit:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/64703450.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest &utm_medium=text&utm_campaign =cppst

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, 12 Years Old,   second youngest person ever from Chennai to become a Chess Grandmaster: There is another record to this Child Chess Prodigy! Infact at the age of 10 years, 10 months and 19 days, Rameshbabu had become an International Master—the youngest in history. He had already achieved his first GM norm in the World Juniors 2017. Thank you Better India for publishing this inspiring news. To read more, please visit https://www.thebetterindia.com/147245/chennai-praggnanandhaa-chess-news/

Maharashtra makes it Compulsory to Use Plastic Waste to Lay Roads           : This is the need of hour as plastic waste is becoming big menace to the environment. Government is making all steps to use plastic waste for the construction and repair of bituminous/ asphalt roads. Infact it has been proved that plastic-asphalt tar gives more longevity, better water-resistance and less maintenance when compared to conventional materials. India produces about  25,940 tonnes of plastic waste every day. Fifty per cent of plastic waste is single-use. Generally 1 tonne plastic is used per kilometre. If we can improvise this technology, all roads can be built using plastic-asphalt combination. Though it is currently little costlier than conventional roads, but still it gives lot of advantages.     To read more, please visit https://www.thebetterindia.com/147071/maharashtra-compulsory-plastic-waste-road-construction-pwd/https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/delhi-is-the-largest-contributor-to-india-s-25-940-tonnes-of-plastic-waste-every-day-and-govt-is-just-sitting-idle-340186.html

Sanivation, a social enterprise is transforming human waste into a clean, affordable fuel in Kenya: Andrew Foote, Founder of Sanivation, transforming fuel industry in Kenya. This company collects human waste from all householders and processes it using a solar thermal technology. They have pending patent for this. After that they convert it to charcoal-like briquettes which can be used in cooking and domestic heating. The interesting environmental innovation in this case is, these briquettes contain lower-carbon and becomes long-lasting alternative to charcoal. They produce 1/3 of the carbon emissions of conventional briquettes. Interesting alternative right? This company produced more than 70,000 tonnes of briquettes which approximately saving more than 6,000 trees. It is also potentially averting diarrhoea. Kenya's charcoal market is worth of $1.4bn. Foote is tapping this market. Thank you Foote for establishing transformative energy enterprise. Thank you Positive News for publishing this inspiring enterprise's story. To Read more, https://www.positive.news/2018/economics/social-enterprise/31394/bricking-it-turning-human-waste-into-clean-fuel/ https://www.positive.news/2018/economics/social-enterprise/31394/bricking-it-turning-human-waste-into-clean-fuel/

IIT Roorkee students develop inflatable helmet like airbag:  It is an interesting innovation again by IIT Rookee students! This helmet can open up in less than 100 milliseconds of impact! Marvelous product right? This has been developed by 3 BTech students. It is made of Kevlar, a synthetic fibre generally used to make bullet-proof jackets. They are cheap compared to international helmets (Rs2000-3,000 compared to overseas that cost between $300-600). The traditional helmets safeguard only skull fractures but this can also protect from internal brain bleeding. It can absorb peak crash acceleration (kinetic energy absorbed and slowly releases it) upto 4 times. Great Job Team. Wish you all the best. Thank you HT for publishing such an inspiring innovation. To Read more, please visit https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/iit-roorkee-students-develop-inflatable-helmet/story-mZpNONfpZ3vWxjeY5Ee4TL.html

High School Students developed an App to detect Plant Diseases: Shada Mehdi and Nile Ravanell, high school students, developed an app which can detect plant diseases. This app is called as PlantMD. They used open-source machine learning library for data programming - TensalFlow. They received dataset from PlantVillage, Pennstate University. They studied thousands of cassava plant images and developed a model. Good job team. Thank you techcircle for publishing such an insightful article. To Read more, please visit https://techcircle.vccircle.com/2018/06/25/this-app-uses-google-s-machine-learning-platform-to-detect-plant-diseases

Dear Students, Hope you completed Future readiness assessment. This is to help you to plan your life better and make you relevant in the context of 4th Industrial revolution. Please take this assessment every month without fail. It acts like reminder to 5 important activities- Inspire yourself through positive stories, get mentored from your role model, develop your natural intelligence, manage academics and do physical activity. Request you to answer the following five questions and calculate your Future Readiness.

1. I read / hear stories of amazing people           

 (A) weekly once (10 marks)           (B) monthly once (5 marks)           

(C) Irregular reading (2 marks)       (D)Not Interested (0 marks)

2. I write letter / mail to my mentor (other than parents) for guidance (professional / personal)

(A) every 6 months (10 marks)      (B) yearly once (5 marks)               

(C) Irregular writing (2 marks)       (D)Not Interested (0 marks)

3. I practice my passion or natural intelligence (to know your intelligence https://goo.gl/vgyD54) 

(A) weekly 4 hours (10 marks)       (B) weekly 2 hours (5 marks)        

(C) Irregular practice (2 marks)      (D)Not Interested (0 marks)

4. I manage my academics with consistent percentage or grade 

(A) A Grade and above  (10 marks)            (B) B Grade and above  (5 marks) (C) C Grade or below (2 marks)                  (D)Consistent Failure (0 marks)

5.I do physical activity and maintain good health  

(A) weekly 4 hours (10 marks)       (B) weekly 2 hours (5 marks)        

(C) Irregular practice (2 marks)      (D)Not Interested (0 marks)

Check Your Score and Title

I wish you should be either Performer (your score should be between 40-50) or Challenger (your score should be between 25-40). You should not give any scope to be  Lounger (relaxed) with 10-25 score or Laggard (slower than desired) with score less than 10.

My Dear Friends, Appreciate your valuable time. See you in my next letter. Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity. You can also reach to me at sdindia2020@gmail.com. I am happy to respond to your letter.

With Best Wishes,

Dr. Ravi Saripalle

About Author:    Dr. Ravi Saripalle is Founder of Inspire to Innovate (i2i) Storytelling Movement and Director, Center for Innovation, GVP College of Engineering (A), Vizag, AP, India. As part of Inspire to Innovate (i2i) Storytelling Movement, Dr.Ravi is trying to instill inspiration through spreading positive stories of amazing people in the form of short stories, embedding them in the form of letters (epistolary form) and sending them to thousands of schools, colleges, universities districts administration across India. Also conducting Storytelling Workshops in select institutions. Providing customized mentoring to inspired students. Dr. Ravi is having 18 years of experience in Industry, Consultancy, Training, Mentoring and Research. Prior to this current mission, Ravi worked with Wipro Technologies for more than a decade.  Ravi can be reached at sdindia2020@gmail,com or http://i2itm.blogspot.in/ or https://www.facebook.com/RaviSaripalle

Previous letters are available at http://i2itm.blogspot.in/    

Videos https://www.youtube.com/user/Indianrichtalent

Disclaimer: The goal of this i2iSM letter series campaign is to inspire students / youth through storytelling and develop innovative leaders to build strong nation. In this process, I have taken several data points from various websites, NEWS articles, books, videos etc. I sincerely thank all the editors for providing such an insightful stories and information. To the best of my knowledge, I tried to acknowledge all the sources. I sincerely apologize for any omissions, grammatical mistakes and hurting any reader’s sentiments. I request all the readers to understand the spirit behind this effort. This effort doesn’t involve any commercials. Letter series is for free distribution.