Demystifying Windows 11 to improve productivity!

WINDOWS 11 MADE EASY FOR SENIORS: Full Color User Friendly Guide With Simple Step by Step Instructions. Enjoy Your PC & Browse The Internet With Confidence by Philip Robbins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Demystifying Windows 11 to improve productivity!

Computers, tablets, and smartphones are ubiquitous and an integral part of everyday life. While these useful gadgets make life easy, there is also a wide array of problems they present. The operating systems, software interfaces, and other requirements are constantly evolving; software developers and hardware manufacturers label them essential improvements, but in reality, they present daunting challenges. One must constantly unlearn and relearn the old and new software respectively. Windows is perhaps the most widely used operating system in the world. It has undergone several changes and now the current version is significantly different from the previous. As a result, users are expected to learn and adapt to this new software.
Older adults find it difficult to adapt and relearn these rapid advancements in software and often feel left out. Not every younger person relative or not has the patience or time to teach them the new changes. In this scenario Philip Robbins’ Windows 11 Made Easy for Seniors, comes as a great reference for those wanting to learn how to master the use of a computer with windows 11. Written in a chatty, conversational style, with several full color illustrations and photographs, the 13 chapter, 114-page book is a great learning and reference resource. Particularly for seniors or older adults, this book will come as a step-by-step guide, easy to understand and follow along. I particularly liked the fact that the book covers everything from basics of how to turn on the computer to securing your identity online. The colorful images provide much needed relief from text and make it an interesting read for everyone.
Each chapter comes with a short practice session at the end which helps users to put into play the concepts and cheat codes they learned. This makes learning simple, easy, fun, and retention is promoted through practice sessions. Even though I have been using windows 11 for a while now and don’t feel challenged by the new operating system I was able to learn few concepts that helped me optimize my workspace.
Overall I think this is a great learning guide for those new to windows 11, be it seniors or young adults or professionals. Everyone will find something beneficial in this book.

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Guide to Happy and Fulfilling Relationship for adults with Autism and/or ADHD

You, Me, & AuDHD – Relationship Tools for Adults with Autism and ADHD by Lili Castille; Montego Books LLC; 348pp.

Modern world is tough for individuals with no psychological challenges. Add a mix of autism spectrum or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, life can be extremely difficult and often depressing. Most people tend to avoid and/ or even express phobia about being around neurodivergent individuals. Parents with children who experience these conditions are often overprotective or at times frustrated with the way the world interacts with them.

There are simply not enough teaching-learning activities happening in schools to make people aware of how to interact with neurodivergent individuals. This often leads to people with autism/ ADHD being misunderstood and often excluded from mainstream society. I am glad I came across the book You, Me, & AuDHD – Relationship Tools for Adults with Autism and ADHD by Dr. Lili Castille, a distinguished neurodiverse psychologist specializing in adult relationships with Autism and ADHD. In her long career in counselling and human development she has developed several innovative strategies to enhance communication and relationships across cultures.

This book comes as a breath of fresh air into a world of ignorance about these conditions. The book is aimed at improving emotional communication and fostering social skills by participating in engaging activities. The author’s professed take away for the reader is for the volume to be a guide to building a fulfilling and harmonious partnership with an autistic and/or ADHD partner. Starting with an introduction about Autism and ADHD Castille dives deep into neurodiversity in relationships. “Neurodiversity isn’t just a set of diagnoses – it’s a way of experiencing, feeling, and connecting with the world,” declares Castille in the very first chapter.

Misconceptions about people with autism and/ or ADHD and love are effortlessly clarified for the reader in an easy-to-read conversational style of writing. The entire volume is liberally peppered with real life examples of couples grappling with ADHD/ Autism grappling with relationship issues and overcoming them to live a comfortable, happy, and harmonious life. A very important resource in this book is several solo and couple exercises. These exercises guide the reader to understand and analyze the value they bring to a relationship so needs can be communicated with confidence, clarity, and empathy.

Several common problems/ challenges faced by neurodivergent couples are analyzed and addressed across the 32 chapters in this book. Each chapter addresses a specific topic of building, nurturing, and strengthening relationships of neurodivergent individuals/ couples. Communication styles, rage, meltdowns, intimacy, physical connection, change navigation, growth, and several other important topics are discussed in depth. The book concludes with a reference section to help those interested in enhancing knowledge reach the original sources of knowledge.

Book Review: Wanna Study in the U.S. 101 Tips to get you there!

Guide to US-bound students
Wanna Study in the U.S.? 101 Tips to get you there! by Natasha Pratap; Rupa & Co, Price: Rs.395; 302 pp

According to recently published US student enrollment statistics, India has surpassed
China as the No.1 country of origin for foreign students in American universities. Last year (2000-09) the aggregate Indian student population enrolled in institutions of higher education (95,000) topped the Chinese total. With a large and growing number of Indian students hell-bent on pursuing at least a part of their education in the US, this aggregate number is expected to grow by 20-25 percent annually. But making it into the US of A for higher study is easier said than done. With half the third world’s population fleeing communism, socialism, dictatorship and plain socio-economic mismanagement, aspiring to enter this fabled land of opportunity, the US immigration and naturalisation service is working overtime to keep out the scrambling hordes – especially after 9/11. Unsurprisingly the admission process is tedious and difficult questions are raised about adequacy of funding. Visa procedures too have become complicated.

For the swelling number of hopefuls fleeing India’s dumbed down institutions of higher education, Natasha Pratap’s maiden book Wanna Study in the US? 101 Tips To Get You There! is a boon. This easy-to-read volume written in simple English is a comprehensive compendium of accurate information and useful guidelines to students and professionals on ways and means of accessing American universities and institutions of higher education. “There is so much to be gained from a US education, that I continue to be grateful for it every day. Studying in the US is about pushing your boundaries: academically, intellectually, geographically and emotionally. The best thing is fearlessness and confidence I developed from my own experience. Choose to study in the US because it is better. Go because you will be the better for it,” writes Pratap an alumna of the blue chip Cambridge (UK), Stanford and Boston universities.

The merits of this chatty and unapologetically how-to book apart, a striking achievement is that she has persuaded Mukesh Ambani, chairman & managing director of the telecom, textile, petroleum and IT behemoth, Reliance Industries Ltd to write the foreword. “All these years, information on studying in the US was limited to a privileged class of Indian students, by virtue of their advantaged school, teacher and peer group environments. This book would democratise this advantage to a much wider cross section of Indian students,” says Ambani, himself a Stanford alumnus.

Though the information, data and procedural guidelines provided in this deliberately casually titled book is by no means novel, the fact that it has been collated, sorted and compiled into a one-point, well-laid out compendium is its unique selling proposition. “When friends asked me questions on their applications or essays I realised that what seemed obvious to me was not to others. Book stores in Mumbai had little information on the application procedure, and even prospectuses of colleges say little. The internet is too vast and some information is misleading. Since I had experienced the system first hand I decided to write this book,” says Pratap explaining her motivation to write this valuable guide.

Though the author claims to have completed this comprehensive volume in just seven weeks, this 302-page compendium is well organised into 11 main chapters each offering valuable nuggets of information and advice. The main chapters are: top 10 reasons to study in the US; 101 tips on the application process; scholarships from Indian sources; visa Q&A in consultation with the US Consulate, Mumbai; interviews with Stanford and Harvard university heads; application datelines; a special section for parents titled ‘heart to heart with indian parents’ among others.

Particularly useful is the chapter which includes the essays (SoPs) of Indian students which dazzled admission evaluators of blue-chip universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Columbia. The essays are discussed and dissected with the plus and minus points highlighted. “Many applicants tend to borrow SoPs from others and then modify it (sic). You may not be exposed to the kind of introspection and writing that applications to US universities demand. For many, the idea of writing itself is overwhelming and the nature of the questions makes them apprehensive. By including the essays of people who have gone through the process and written everything themselves, I want to illustrate that the task at hand may be different, but is not incredibly difficult,” explains the author, no mean correspondent herself who has written for publications such as The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times, The Times of India, The Indian Express, Mid-day, Verve, Man’s World and Elle.

The overwhelmingly major preoccupation of Indian students aspiring to education abroad – scholarships and bursaries – is also addressed. There seems little awareness that the natural instinct of institutions of higher education in the industrialised nations is to levy higher tuition fees on foreign students than payable by natives. Nevertheless there is widespread belief that scholarships are available in plenty. Wanna Study provides a list of trusts and foundation which offer (usually grudging) scholarships and bursaries to merit students.

Though a useful guide to the growing number of students driven to foreign universities by the abysmal and declining Indian institutions of higher education being relentlessly dumbed down by politicians and educrats, the publication and reportedly enthusiastic reception to Wanna Study is a wake-up call to Indian academia. That a rising number of Indian students are ready to pay relatively huge tuition and residential costs abroad and endure the rigours of incrementally humiliating visa and admission processes is a severe indictment of India’s higher education system. Quite evidently Indian educationists and academics need to get their act together and canalise the huge annual outflow of hard currencies into their own cash-starved institutions. But this requires the practice rather than mere preaching of excellence in Indian academia.