author: Liz Hodes
date: 2009-02-20 02:38:21+00:00
slug: digital-democracy-presents-at-digital-democracy
title: Digital Democracy Presents at Digital Democracy
wordpress_id: 264
categories:
Mark and Emily spent this week in Boston where they met with several people at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media. In addition, they were the guest lecturers at Digital Democracy, an undergraduate course taught by Patrick Meier at Tufts University. Before the class, the students were encouraged to post responses to assigned readings (including our own Overcoming Obstacles, Creating Opportunities, and Year of the Rats, as well as Drowningby George Packer) on the class’s blog. The class combined lecture and discussion, and during the second half, the student’s were asked to tweet* their responses to problems and questions that arose as the class progressed. The discussion centered on technology and effective communication in and around Burma, as well as possible barriers to this communication.
Interestingly, it seems the students are still trying to catch on to the new technologies being used in the class (as mentioned, assignments involved blog posts and Twitter). It will be interesting to hear from Patrick how the students’ use of these tools improves as the semester progresses, as this could present an entirely new way of conducting classes at the University (high school, or even middle school) level.
The lecturer’s point of view:
The student’s point of view (Mark lecturing during the first half of class):
- Speaking of Twitter, follow us @digidem for Digital Democracy news/updates.