In our last teen age shibir meeting Lataaaji pointed out that we need to take far more efforts to remain in touch with each other. While everybody agrees on this; the perceived problems have been physical difficulties in arranging meetings etc.One obvious solution is to exchange thoughts on blog, but this also has not picked up much.

I want to suggest something which might be part of solution. For past couple of years, I have been using website www.coursera.org . This is free website (registration required) on which various universities from all over the world upload their academic courses.Anybody (irrespective of your current academic qualification) can enroll for these courses.

These are typically short term courses of few weeks or months and video lectures are available for you to view (with English subtitles in most cases so that problem of understanding accent does not arise). There are short tests to be attempted at the end of week (optional) and discussion forums in which people from all over the world who are taking the course currently interact with each other.

Right now we (me & Sangeeta) are taking course called "Positive Psychology" conducted by University Of North Carolina. It's a 6 week course. It focuses on effect of positive emotions on your well being and how these could be cultivated etc. If anybody wants to join the course now, it would be great way to connect and interact with each other. We will have something concrete to talk about and share and all of this could be done on the blog so that others can share it.

Do let me know if you enroll or if you face any problem in enrolling.