“Pussy Riot Trial in Moscow Erupts in Chaos”
Pussy Riot “Punk Prayer”
MOOC’s as Research and Development
I’ve been skeptical about massive open online courses (MOOC”s) for several reasons. It’s a great idea to try to make education, especially from elite institutions, more accessible. As long as you have a computer and an internet connection (no small thing in many parts of the world), MOOC’s are free and the list of universities offering them in the U.S. and Europe especially is impressive and growing.
It’s possible to root online education inn authentic human interaction but you have to work at it. You can’t simply expect it to happen spontaneously; it has to be embedded in the pedagogy and in the design of the course. I think our understanding of how to do this is incomplete at best. Any course, such as a MOOC, which is self guided, has a real problem creating authentic relationships, especially when there are 100,000 students taking it.
My instinct, then, suggests that these courses are going to be most useful for motivated autodidacts but difficult for the rest of us. I’ve just watched a TED video by Daphne Koller, one of the founders of Coursera, that has gone a long way to change my mind. What’s fascinating is that the students themselves are creating solutions to some of the problems of MOOC’s. They’ve formed study groups, for example, that meet in person all over the world.
Coursera is also using a peer grading system, which suggests one strategy for dealing with writing-based assessment. Coursera is using the massive amount of data they generate to investigate what does and doesn’t work and create strategies to improve learning. There’s never been such a large pool of data or a group of researchers dedicated to learning from it; it promises to be a prominent force in the future of online education.
Teaching the New Poll Tax
In 1995, when OJ Simpson was on trial, the debate over his innocence or guilt took over the teaching of first year college English in many places because it epitomized the complex dynamics of racial politics in the U.S. I am hoping that something similar will happen around voting laws this fall, for the very same reasons. There’s a lot of good information to be had to launch the discussions. A recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice paints a frightening picture of the extensive sweep of the new poll tax, restricting voting access for million of U.S citizens. The statistics are daunting:
At least 180 restrictive bills introduced since the beginning of 2011 in 41 states.
47 restrictive bills currently pending in 12 states.
24 laws and 2 executive actions passed since the beginning of 2011 in 19 states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin).
16 states have passed restrictive voting laws that have the potential to impact the 2012 election (Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia). These states account for 214 electoral votes, or nearly 79 percent of the total needed to win the presidency.
Of these, 13 laws and executive actions are currently in effect in 9 states (Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia).
“2012 Summary of Voting Law Changes” Wendy R. Weiser and Lawrence Norden
Just a quick glance at a map of the states where these new laws have been enacted illustrates their political intent. The election of the first Black president has fueled some of the most reactionary legislation in decades, much of it aimed at keeping the poor and non-white and elderly– all groups unlikely to vote Republican– out of the electoral process. The Voting Rights Act, along with Roe v. Wade, Social Security, and Medicare, is clearly on the target list of the extreme far right (aka the Tea Party). These new restrictive voting laws have been spearheaded by Republican governors and legislatures and are focused on states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, that played a key role in the last several presidential elections. Students can listen to Bill Moyers’ interview with the authors of the report as well has his investigation into the difficulty of getting official identification.
Richie Havens “High Flyin’ Bird”