Featured L4C participant: Dr. Ramakrishnan Srinivasan

WikiEducator is an empowering force for education

"Getting together is beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success." Rg-Veda.

I am Dr. Ramakrishnan Srinivasan, a 52 year old male Indian hailing from the state of Karnataka. I live in the coastal suburb of Suratkal about 18 kms from Mangalore. I have been teaching English as a second language since 1991 in a governement aided college managed by the Academy of General Education, Manipal, Karnataka. I hold Ph.D degree in English Literature (1998) and a Ph.D degree in Sanskrit (2007). I am multilingual and apart from English, I am proficient in Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada, and Malayalam. As the Director of the Centre for Spiritual Resource Development (CSRD), I am involved in research studies in Traditional Disciplines such as Ayurveda, Yoga and Tantra. I am one of the founding members of the Project Mind Foundation for realizing Accelerated Thought (as constituted by David S. Devor, Israel).

Vande Mataram, the national song of India

Image courtesy of Orbitaldebris

I discovered the country page for India on WikiEducator and enlisted myself as a WikiAmbassador on 13 April 2008. The following day, I registered for an online Learning4Content workshop. My mission is to share with the world our rich heritage of India, that is Bharat, and this will help fulfill my vision of realizing global human identity as revealed in the living Vedic tradition. I believe that the wiki environment is conducive to achieving the ideals of being human globally.

Reflecting back on my first interactions with WikiEducator, I navigated effortlessly from the main page to WikiEducator's country page for India. This hoisted my flag of inspiration, to elevated heights and marked the realization of the rich heritage and potential of Bharat (India). WikiEducator's philosophy of sharing is an enabler to achieve and fulfill: the vision of living in the Vedic Tradition; global human identity and unity through knowledge for all and by all. Through my interactions in the Learning4Content workshop, I discovered that the wiki approach combined with the wider WikiEducator community to be an empowering force for education. I was attracted by the universal acknowledgment of the value of the human knowledge capital in WikiEducator. Above all the notion of a global fraternity aiming progress and peace through a reusable knowledge base will become life-fulfilling to both teachers and students.

I have initiated a grassroots campaign for WikiEducator focusing on advocacy, access to technology and local capability development. I have started promoting email accounts for colleagues and teachers at large in Karnataka. Soon, in collaboration with state level plans for increased access to the Internet, I am planning to promote skills development for future WikiEducators in my region to increase the number of OER contributors from South East Asia to this international endeavour of Jnana Yajna, meaning kindling the fire of wisdom.

Moved temporarily

Vande Mataram.

"Mother and Mother Land are greater Heavens than the Paradise." -The Ramayana

(: I suspect that the image of the stamp may be copyrighted -- we must check on this.)

Notes

• Copied and refined from original submission by Ramakrishnan Srinivasan.