classroom practicals-poovar island

POOVAR ISLAND

       Enveloped in serene Kerala backwaters, flanked by the Arabian Sea on the East and the majestic towering Ghats to the West, opening out to the ocean and a dream golden beach, Poovar Island is a tropical paradise. Swaying coconut palms, endless golden sands, the ultramarine of the ocean, emerald backwaters, crimson sunsets and lush green vegetation create a magical ambience.

     It is one among the natural wonders where the Lake, River, Sea and Beach meet the land. A rare find in Kerala, the southern state of India Poovar is unspoilt and unexplored, enveloped by the most serene backwaters, and opening out to the sea and a dream golden sand beach. The historical importance of Poovar has its strong ties with the legendary King of the erstwhile Princely State of Travancore, the great Marthanda Varma Maharaja     Raja .Marthanda Varma (1706 - 1761) was born at a time when the royal power of his family was declining. In fact, the Raja was once outsted from his throne and in exile. But, a strong ruler, Marthanda Varama Maharaja not only regained his lost land but also enlarged his kingdom besides reasserting the royal power during his 29-year rule from 1729 to 1758. Though Marthanda Varma Maharaja was proclaimed the successor of the King, the two sons of the late King (Ettuveetil Pillamar) with the help of Madampis tried to usurp power. The Maharaja had to flee from his land as he had life threat from the Thampis and in the process landed up in Poovar. It was Moosa marikar, a rich and aristocratic businessman in Poovar, who gave asylum to the Maharaja. The business magnet of Poovar, Moosa Marikkar, also patronaged the Maharaja for his regaining power of his lost kingdom.   Among the fascinations the Raja experienced at Povar during his shelter there was the site of red flowers, chipped out from the Kovala trees standing along the Neyyar riverbanks, floating in the river as a red carpet on water. The legned is that the stream was named as "POOVAR" as the Raja described the river as "POO-AAR" (meaning a stream of flowers). The beauty and greenery of the picturesque and unparallel silence of Poovar captured the mind of the Maharaja and, the success story of the Maharaja had close links with the small and beautiful land of Povar, situated on the south of the Neyyar River.

                       SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

                     Poovar is truly a window into paradise. Time stopped a few decades ago bowing to the sheer beauty of Poovar. The tranquility of Poovar is punctuated by the sound of waves and the birds. The area is abundant in well-preserved local flora, with hundreds of species of spices, exotic flowers, complete with banana and coconut groves Poovar offers several possibilities. Cruise to a neighboring fishing village in 2 minutes. Alter course, and visit a centuries old martial arts village. Kerala is the birthplace of a unique martial art form. The traditional lifestyles here provide the experience of a natural museum. Thus the study about POOVAR ISLAND is of highly important.

                                                                               By

                                      Preethi.P. Kurian

PRACTICUM - ECONOMISTS

PRACTICUM ABOUT ECONOMISTS

DANIEL KAHNEMAN (2002), VERNON LOMAX SMITH (2002) LARSPETER HANSEN (2013) ,ROBERT J SHILLER (2013)AND  EUGENE F FAMA(2013)

DANIEL KAHNEMAN (2002), VERNON LOMAX SMITH (2002)

 DANIEL KAHNEMAN

     Professor Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv but spent his childhood years in Paris, France, before returning to Palestine in 1946. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology (with a minor in mathematics) from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in 1954 he was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces, serving principally in its psychology branch. In 1958 he came to the United States and earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961.He is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his pioneering work integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. Much of this work was carried out collaboratively with Amos Tversky. In addition to the Nobel prize, Kahneman has been the recipient of many other awards, among them the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (1982) and the Grawemeyer Prize (2002), both jointly with Amos Tversky, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (1995), the Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology (1995), and the Lifetime Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (2007).During the past several years, the primary focus of Professor Kahneman's research has been the study of various aspects of experienced utility (that is, the utility of outcomes as people actually live them).

                    His contribution

     The starting point of his analysis was the observation that complex judgments and preferences are called ‘intuitive’ in everyday language if they come to mind quickly and effortlessly, like percepts. Another basic observation was that judgments and intentions are normally intuitive in this sense, but can be modified or overridden in a more deliberate mode of operation. The labels ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ were associated with these two modes of cognitive functioning. The preceding sections elaborated a single generic proposition: “Highly accessible

Impressions produced by System 1 control judgments and preferences, unless modified or overridden by the deliberate operations of System 2.” This template sets an agenda for research: to understand judgment and Choice one must study the determinants of high accessibility, the conditions under which System 2 will override or correct System 1, and the rules of these Corrective operations. The core idea of prospect theory, that the normal carriers of utility are gains and losses, invoked a general principle that changes are relatively more accessible than absolute values. Judgment heuristics were explained as the substitution of a highly accessible heuristic attribute for a less accessible target attribute. Finally, the proposition that averages are more accessible than sums unified the analysis of prototype heuristics. A recurrent theme was that different aspects of problems are made accessible in between-subjects and in within-subject experiments, and more specifically in separate and joint evaluations of stimuli. In all these cases, the discussion appealed to rules of accessibility that are independently plausible and sometimes quite obvious.

 Vernon Lomax Smith

  

                 Vernon Lomax Smith was born on January 1, 1927 in Wichita and  is professor of economics at Chapman University's Argyrols School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercator Center, all in Arlington, Virginia. Smith shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daniel Kahneman. He is the founder and president of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics, a Member of the Board of Advisors for The Independent Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. In 2004 Smith was honored with an honorary doctoral degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, the institution that named the Vernon Smith Center for Experimental Economics Research after him.

                    His contribution

Cartesian constructivism applies reason to the design of rules for individual action, to the design of institutions that yield socially optimal outcomes, and constitutes the standard socioeconomic science model. But most of the operating knowledge and ability to decide and perform is non-deliberative. Human brains conserve attentional, conceptual and symbolic thought resources because they are scarce, and proceed to delegate most decision-making to autonomic processes (including the emotions) that do not require conscious attention. Emergent arrangements, even if initially constructivist must have survival properties that incorporate opportunity costs and environmental challenges invisible to constructivist modeling. This leads to an alternative, ecological concept, of rationality: an emergent order based on trial-and-error cultural and biological evolutionary processes. It yields home- and socially grown rules of action, traditions and moral principles that underlie property rights in impersonal exchange, and social cohesion in personal exchange. To study ecological rationality rational reconstruction–for example, reciprocity or other regarding preferences–to examine individual behavior, emergent order in human culture and institutions, and their persistence, diversity and development over time. Experiments enable to test propositions derived from these rational reconstructions. The study of both kinds of rationality has been prominent in the work of experimental economists. This is made plain in the many direct tests of the observable implications of propositions derived from economic and game theory. It is also evident in the great variety of experiments that have reached far beyond the theory to ask why the tests have succeeded, failed, or performed better (under weaker conditions) than was expected. His findings are

1. Markets constitute an engine of productivity by supporting resource         specialization through trade and creating a diverse wealth of goods and services.

2. Markets are rule-governed institutions providing algorithms that select,

Process and order the exploratory messages of agents who are better informed

 As to their personal circumstances than that of others.

3. All this information is captured in the static or time variable supply and

Demand environment and must be aggregated to yield efficient clearing Prices.

4. The resulting order is invisible to the participants, unlike the visible gains they reap. Agents discover what they need to know to achieve outcomes Optimal against the constraining limits imposed by others.

5. Rules emerge as a spontaneous order

6. This process accommodates trade offs between the cost of transacting, attending

And monitoring, and the efficiency of the allocations so that the institution

Generates an order of economy that fits the problem it evolved to

Solve.

7. One understand little about how rule systems for social interaction and

Markets emerge, but it is possible in the laboratory to do variations on the

Rules, and thus to study that which is not.

8. Markets require enforcement–voluntary or involuntary–of the rules of

Exchange.

9. Reciprocity, trust and trustworthiness are important in personal exchange

10. People are not required to be selfish;

11. Markets in no way need destroy the foundation upon which they probably

Emerged

12. New brain imaging technologies have motivated neuroeconomic studies

LARSPETER HANSEN (2013) ,ROBERT J SHILLER (2013)AND  EUGENE F FAMA(2013)

 Eugene F Fama

                 Eugene Francis was born on February 14, 1939 in Massachusetts. He is an American economist and a Nobel laureate in Economics, known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical. He is currently Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business. In 2013 it was announced that he would be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. In 2013, he won the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, colloquially called the Nobel Prize in Economics.

                   

    Lars Peter Hansen                           

                Lars Peter Hansen was born on October 26; 1952 in Illinois. He is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Best known for his work on the Generalized Method of Moments, he is also a distinguished macroeconomist, focusing on the linkages between the financial and real sectors of the economy. He received the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Economy, Finance and Management and in 2013, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, jointly with Robert J. Shiller and Eugene Fama.

 Robert J. Shiller

                Robert James "Bob" Shiller was born on March 29, 1946 in Detroit, Michigan. He is an American Nobel Laureate, economist, academic, and best-selling author. He currently serves as a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a fellow at the Yale School of Management's International Center for Finance. Shiller has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was vice president of the American Economic Association in 2005, and president of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006–2007. He is also the co‑founder and chief economist of the investment management firm Macro Markets LLC.He is ranked among the 100 most influential economists of the world. Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Shiller jointly received the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, “for their empirical analysis of asset prices”.

             Their contribution

Fama, Hansen, and Shiller have developed new methods for studying asset prices and used them in their investigations of detailed data on the prices of stocks, bonds and other assets. The behavior of asset prices is essential for many important decisions, not only for professional inves­tors but also for most people in their daily life. Asset prices are also of fundamental impor­tance for the macro economy, as they provide crucial information for key economic decisions regarding consumption and investments in physical capital, such as buildings and machinery the predictability of asset prices is closely related to how markets function, and that’s why they were so interested in this question. If markets work well, prices should have very little predictability. There is an unpredictable price pattern, with random movements that reflect the arrival of news. In technical jargon, prices then follow a “random walk.”There are, however, reasons why prices may follow somewhat predictable patterns even in a well-func­tioning market. A key factor is risk. Risky assets are less attractive to investors, so on average, a risky asset will need to deliver a higher return. A higher return for the risky asset means that its price can be predicted to rise faster than for safe assets. To detect market malfunctioning, then, one would need to have an idea of what a reasonable compensation for risk ought to be. The issue of predictability and the issue of normal returns that compensate for risk are intertwined. The three Laureates have shown how to disentangle these issues and analyze them empirically. There are several ways to approach predictability. One way is to investigate whether asset prices over the past few days or weeks can be used to predict tomorrow’s price. The answer is no. Following a large amount of careful statistical work by Fama in the 1960s, researchers now agree that past prices are of very little use in predicting returns over the immediate future. Another way is to examine how prices react to information. Thus, an asset’s value should be based on the payment stream that it is expected to generate in the future. A reasonable assumption is that these payments are discounted. For Shiller’s original study, he assumed a constant discount factor, and he concluded that reconciling the excess price fluctuations with theory is very difficult. However, discounting could possibly vary over time. If so, even rather stable dividend streams might cause stock prices to vary a lot. Another way to interpret longer-term predictability is to abandon the notion of fully rational inves­tors. Moving beyond this assumption has opened up a new field referred to as “behavioral finance.” A main challenge for the behavioral approach has been how to explain why more rational investors do not eliminate the excessive price swings by betting against less rational investors. The new behavioral approach focuses on institutional constraints and conflicts of inter­est, while the new rational approach focuses on risk and attitudes to risk. Stocks with high returns when the overall market return is low should yield relatively low returns on average. Such stocks can be used as hedges, and are therefore desirable for the risk-averse investor even if they do not yield a high average return. Fama developed methods for testing whether a stock’s correlation with the market is indeed a key predic­tor for its future return. He and other researchers found that it was not because other factors were much more important in predicting returns. In particular, a stock’s “size” (total market value of a company), and “book-to-market ratio” (book value as a fraction of the market value) have a large explanatory power: large firms, or firms with low book-to-market values, have low subsequent returns on average. This finding is akin to Shiller’s finding on longer-term predictability. The work of the Laureates has affected not only academic research but also market practice. The fact that stock markets are very hard to predict in the short run, and that stock-picking is very difficult both in the short and the long run, has led to close examination of the performance by mutual funds. Shiller suggested early on that impor­tant risks facing investors are sometimes hard to measure and thus are non-insurable by existing market instruments. The behavioral approach also has had direct impacts on practice.

               Thus the contributions made by all these economists were highly commendable one.

                     

                

                                                    By

                                                    Preethi P. Kurian (social science)

                   

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION-GLOBAL WARMING

http://www.slideshare.net/achujose735/preethi-55024944

ASSIGNMENT-SOCIAL SCIENCE

                 ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: FEATURES, SIGNIFICANCE AND WAYS TO ORGANIZE SOCIAL SCIENCE ROOM AND MUSEUM

 Submitted by:

                                PREETHI P.KURIAN

1.     SOCIAL SCIENCE ROOM:

Social science room stands for a big room of suitable size situated at an appropriate place within the campus of a school. Besides being an effective place for carrying out the formal theoretical and practical classroom activities of social science, it also accommodates all essential material, aids and equipments related to the teaching-learning of the subject.

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE ROOM   

The establishment and maintenance of a social science room may be justified on the ground that a variety of benefits can be derived through such an establishment. These benefits in general may be summarized as follows:

a.     It may help in the safe and secure keep up of the needed material, aids and equipments in a suitable and organized way, helpful in the appropriate teaching and learning of social science.

b.     It helps in saving the time and energy of both the teachers and students of social science through an easy location and timely availability of the needed material, aids and equipments on account of their orderly, systematic and category-wise placing in the social science room.

c.      It helps in providing an appropriate environment for the teaching-learning of the subject social science by making the students attracted towards the charts, pictures, photographs, maps, diagrams, graphs, time lines, cartoons and posters put on the walls.

d.     The facilities available in the social science room may help in providing proper opportunities to the students for their self-expression and mutual exchange of curricular and co-curricular programmes in the shape of panel and group discussions, seminars, workshops, quizzes and word search programmes, etc.

e.      The use of social science room is specially limited to the teaching-learning of the subject social science; there is no need to bring any change in the set-up of the room.

TYPES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE ROOM

After taking into account the planning about the place, accommodation, building and furniture of the social science room, the next thing that needs immediate consideration is the planning about the things and material to be kept in this room for serving the required purpose, a social science teacher may plan for the procurement and keep up of the follows:

·        Various type of graphic material like pictures, photographs, charts, maps, diagrams, cartoons, posters, graphs, timelines and statistical data being displayed on the walls of the social science room for showing useful information and knowledge as well as making the room’s environment attractive and motivational towards learning.

·        Chalk boards and other wooden, plastic, cloth or magnetic board hanging on the walls.

·        Bulletin boards and magnetic boards for displaying information in and outside the social science classrooms.

·        Various types of graphic aid material for using in the effective teaching-learning of the subject.

·        Various type of three- dimensional teaching aids material like models, specimen, real objects and dioramas.

·        The book and study material related to the social science library like textbooks, reference books, journals, magazines, and bulletins and material collected from the newspapers and magazines.

·        Various types of files, cabinets, boxes, stands, racks, cupboards and packing materials for the collection and safe placing of the materials and equipment belonging to the social science

2.     SOCIAL SCIENCE MUSEUM:

Organization of social science museum can be taken up as a co-curricular activity. Museums have a great educative value. These are recreation centers also. These contain non-reading materials, which presents valuable information concerning the past periods. Events, persons, etc. are presented in the form of real objects, pictures, drawings, etc. The museums can procure and maintain various materials that could be effectively used in class room teaching. These can be collected, classified and exhibited by students and teachers. It provides insights into how people lived, how society has progressed and how science has developed since time immemorial. It stimulates enthusiasm for deep study and research among students as well as teachers.

IMPORTANCE 

The secondary education commission has rightly remarked that, “museums play a great part in the  education of school children as they bring home to them much more vividly than any prosaic lectures, the discoveries of the past and the various developments that have taken place in many fields of science and technology.”

1.     Museum contains real objects of historical, geographical, scientific and cultural importance which can make social science learning dynamic.

2.     These develop interest among learners to accumulate, preserve, classify and put on reference worthwhile informative material.

3.     These throw light on political, social, cultural and artistic developments of different periods in different countries.

4.     The teacher can take the students to the museum to observe relevant material if available, before or after teaching a particular lesson.

5.     It makes the teaching of social science lively and provides direct experience.

6.     It helps to inculcate values such as national integration and international understanding.

7.     It adds reality to teaching, and makes children active. It encourages curiosity band self-education.

8.     It increases power for thinking and imagination and creativity among students.

9.     If articles prepared by students are worthwhile and these could become items of the museum. This recognition will encourage learning by doing and also provides reinforcement.

10.                        The social science museum can motivate students to prepare exhibition and satisfy their urge for construction and creativity.

USES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE MUSEUM

1.     Museum would be airy and well ventilated.

2.     Articles should be securely placed.

3.     The title and date should be mentioned on the object along with information about its procurement.

4.     Insecticides may be used when necessary

5.     Children should not be allowed to touch the objects

6.     A list of the objects placed in the museum should be maintained

7.     The exhibits should be carefully cleaned and handled with care.