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Everyday Race and Education

By Justin Bathon

I am posting the following for a couple of reasons. First, Mica Pollock is a great up and coming professor at Harvard University who is doing some cool work from a cultural anthropologist's standpoint. So, the lecture at USC's School of Education is certainly worth your time, especially if you deal with race or affirmative action issues and you are concerned about how we "talk" about that in schools. She also spends a little time talking about her new book, Because of Race, which should be available in the summer and talks about her experiences when working for the Office of Civil Rights. Enjoy.

                     

Second, I am posting this link because tomorrow I have to address the faculty within the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. Mostly I am going to be speaking about our departmental website and ways to improve that. But, as part of my talk, I am going to be speaking a little about Web 2.0 and how to begin integrating that into our curriculum and our organizational structure. In the video above, you see an associate professor of education speaking passionately about an issue she has done a lot of research on. The video doesn't show the classroom, but let's assume there are 25 students in there. But, the video of the lecture was posted to You Tube. It was just posted so there have not been a lot of views yet, but over the course of a year, this lecture is likely to be viewed hundreds if not thousands of times (and linked to on blogs like this). 500 > 25. Sort of simple, right? If we are serious about getting our research out to the world (the whole world not just those that read academic journals) this is a no brainer. But, there are also latent benefits to this type of communication activity. If you happen to be the chair of the departments at either USC (where this lecture was given to an ordinary class, pretty cool) or at Harvard (where the lecturer teaches) does the advertising get much better than this? "What's it like to be in our program? Well, let me refer you to ..." There is a new world of communication not just on the horizon, but existing today. Some programs are ahead of the curve and are using this new media not only to the advantage of the department, but also for the betterment of the public. A nice win-win.

By the way, in the near future, be on the lookout for some videos that students of mine made in their undergraduate law class. I will post a few of them here.

Full post as published by Edjurist on November 29, 2007 (boomark / email).