Katyn

I had a recent series of events that strangely interwove with one another.  While I was in the Republic of Georgia, my Polish friend Ala made a list of films and books that I should know.  One of those films was Katyn, which is a 2007 Polish production directed by Andrzej Wajda.  The film focuses on a Soviet and Stalin atrocity: the massacre of over 20,000 Polish military officers and members of the Polish intelligentsia in the Katyn Forest in 1940.  Immediately after the massacre, the Soviets blamed the Nazis for the deaths.  It was only recently that Russia recognized their complicity, first in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev admitted to the Soviet Union's role and then more recently when Vladimir Putin spoke about the Soviet Union's role. (I am embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing about Katyn.)   I took the film from my local library on 3 April, just a day after I arrived in the US.

On 10 April, President Lech Kacyniski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 others, among them Poland's political elite, died when their plane crashed outside of Smolensk near the Katyn memorial.  Kacyniski and his party were flying to Smolensk to observe the anniversary of the Katyn massacre along with Russia's political elite.

I read everything I could about Kacyniski and the memorial service, about Poland in the days after the crash, and then yesterday, I finally watched the film.  It is not an easy film to watch.  It is very beautiful, but it is also gruesome.  The film focuses on the lives of the women whose men died in the massacre, as well as a few of the men who met their end at Katyn.  I watched an interview, too, with Wajda, whose father was killed at Katyn.  I watched a documentary about the making of the film, including interviews with one of the primary female actors Maja Ostaszewska, whose great-grandfather was executed at Katyn.  It felt a bit like viewing someone else's tragic family photograph album.

Poland will survive the loss of Kaxyniski and the others.  Already, there are plans for Poland to have an election yet this year, and there will be a peaceful transfer of power.  However, the irony of the plane's destination coupled with the 96 deaths seems an awfully cruel blow to the Polish people.  

One thing that I did learn on my trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan is how well-respected and -loved the Polish people are in that part of the world.  Poland has been quick to assist these new democracies with financial, humanitarian, and cultural resources.  That experience, along with my more recent readings and viewings, have given me a newfound respect for Poland and its people.  Poland's democracy and its destiny are inexorably linked to its history.  May their future be bright.

'Point of No Return'

Ramadhan Pohan is a member of Indonesia's Parliment.  In Norimitsu Onishi's 20 April NYTimes article "In Indonesia, the Internet Emerges as a (Too?) Powerful Tool," Pohan is quoted as suggesting that "[old-style politicians and bureaucrats] don't realize that in terms of democracy and freedom of expression, we've reached a kind of point of no return," referring to recent political activity in Indonesia taking place on . . . Facebook and Twitter.  Onishi outlines four different instances where social networking altered the political course in Indonesia, which has the third greatest number of Facebook users (behind the US and the UK).

Readers of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody will not be surprised.  Nor will the young people of Moldova, who used Twitter to rally an anti-government rally of several thousand last year (follow the link to read Nathan Hodges even-handed analysis in Wired).

None of this seems random.  As someone who has organized events in the past, I am always interested in how people are finally drawn into an action.  Moving from "interested" to "acting" is a major leap.  Something about social media, it seems, motivates connected people to make that leap.

Long ago, I discarded the Field of Dreams adage that "if you build it, [they] will come."  Experience has shown me time and time again that simply building something (an event, a gathering, a blog!) does not ensure that people will actually appear.

Through social media, there is a group of people who have built the types of relationships that we who aspire to community organizing desire.  Social media is the conduit for this group of people to learn each other's self-interest and then to act on that knowledge to create "happenings" (with a nod to Geoff Sirc)  that draw people into the action.

(Speaking of Sirc, after meeting with him a few years ago about student writing, my colleague Gill Creel and I came away with an apt aphorism: follow the fun.  Social media is one of the places where the fun is happening.)

Check out the new research offered at the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life.  Young people use their cell phones as a texting machine more frequently than they use it to make telephone calls (unless they are calling their parents).   They are motivated communicators.

I still use my cell phone for the banal telephone conversation (I don't even use texting).  I still use email as my primary mode of communication with others.  That said, I am trying.  I have a blog (but so few people respond that I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills).  I created a Facebook site (and my 17-year old does NOT want me as a Facebook "friend").  I tweet - rarely - on Twitter, but if this blog feels quixotic, Twitter feels positively surreal: I am on top of a hill yelling "Hellloooooo . . ." to millions of fellow twitterians, waiting for a response. I could wait a long time.

For all of this (what is this? indifference? rejection? ineffectual use of the medium - that's my guess), I still want to find out what's happening here.  Somethin's cookin', no doubt.

The Death of Education, but the Dawn of Learning

It had been a while since I checked out the work that colleagues at Minnesota Campus Compact are doing.  One of the more exciting developments is the Center for Digital Civic Engagement blog that John Hamerlinck has been nurturing.  I find it exciting because it is melding two interests that fascinate me: social media/technology and civic engagement.  For a taste of what the blog is about, I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee/tea/milk/water (whatever) and go to the posting titled "Why this technology conversation is important to educators."  It's a short 5+-minute video that says what others elsewhere have been suggesting for awhile: technology is transforming education, and we in education have been generally slow to react.  The title for this posting is a direct quote from the video.

Those interested in civic engagement served straight-up without the technology focus should view Minnesota Campus Compact's other blog, Campus in Community.  

Both blogs are testaments to the interesting and important work that Minnesota Campus Compact is doing.

Props to Aaron Spiegel, MCTC Student

Aaron Spiegel was recently honored by USA Today as member of their 2010 All-USA Community College Academic Team.  Aaron was a member of MCTC's Student Committee on Public Engagement (SCOPE) in 2008, where he learned the basics of community organizing.  Truth be told, he came to SCOPE with considerable organizing instincts and skills.   He is one of the top student organizers I have had the pleasure of working with in my almost-30 years of education.  Congratulations, Aaron!

A Public Achievement Coach's Reflection

I read with interest the By the People's recent posting, which is the reflection of a college student coaching a Public Achievement team in Milledgeville, Georgia (USA).  John Fogelman's story is a good one, not rose-colored but truthful in its assessment of public work as hard work, work that changes coaches as well as team members.

I think all Public Achievement coaches will be interested in this story, but I want to invite my Georgian and Azeri friends in particular (as well as the Public Achievement crew at MCTC) to read John Fogelman's "Ups and Downs of Public Work" posting. Please comment there to let John and others know what you think.

'The Disaggregation of Higher Education'

Will Richardson, whose Weblogg-ed is a must-read for anyone thinking about that Texas-sized intersection of technology and education, recently wrote about a New York Times Magazine article titled "An Open Mind" by Kate Hafner. I won't repeat Richardson's analysis, other than to recommend it to all of you reading this blog. 

Instead, I want to draw some attention to some of Hafner's points that ring more loudly and true for me as a community college instructor.  Hafner writes,

But just 9 percent of those who use M.I.T. OpenCourseWare are educators. Forty-two percent are students enrolled at other institutions, while another 43 percent are independent learners like Mr. Gates. Yale, which began putting free courses online just four years ago, is seeing similar proportions: 25 percent are students, a majority of them enrolled at Yale or prospective students; just 6 percent are educators; and 69 percent are independent learners.

Think about those numbers:  43% of MIT OpenCourseWare users are independent learners - people not necessarily associated with an institution of higher education, people who . . . just . . .  want . . . to . . . learn!  IN certain circles, I have been accused of being a pie-eyed optimist, but I'll admit that I find this number incredibly heartening.   The other big number - 42% of MIT OpenCourseWare users are students at other higher ed. institutions - strikes me as remarkable as well.  These users want to learn as well, but they are using the resource to enrich the learning that they are experiencing elsewhere (one with a grade attached to it).  These could be the students that I teach (if I do my job well).  Hafner describes some of the work being done with the Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative,where the learning is shaped for"'someone with limited prior knowledge in a college subject and with little or no experience in successfully directing his or her own learning,'" These resources are exactly the kind that can benefit many of the students whom I teach.

The title of this posting comes from a David Wiley quote within Hafner's article.  I invoke it here because it captures what I have been thinking about for some time now, which is the morphing of higher education.  There is a part of me that embraces this change, the part that applauds collaborative learning and a different kind of economics for learning.  There's another part of me that wonders how I'll keep up with the changes, how the morphing of higher education will morph me. 

I encourage you to check out Richardson's blog (bookmark it, RSS it, make it your home page) and read Hafner's article. 

Mingachevir's PA Team "Charitable Youth" Wins National Azerbaijan Award

Through the email listserv created by Shukufe Nacafova, I was informed that the Public Achievement team Charitable Youth, mentored by teacher Gulnaz Hajiyeva and college student Elvin Aliyev in Mingachevir, Azerbaijan, recently received a national award in Baku for their ecological project to keep the River Kura clean and pure.  I am hoping that Gulnaz, Elvin or their team will comment and let us know more about the project.  (In a comment on the Shutterfly web site, Gulnaz writes that the team won a silver medal at the event.)

However, what I appreciate about this team is that they have taken their public work to a new degree and level of public-ness, first by pursuing the national award (which, in and of itself, is a meaningful way to add meaning to a Public Achievement team's public work) and then by winning the award.  Gulnaz writes that the local television station has given air time to describe the team's accomplishments and that many people who did not know about Public Achievement are now asking many questions.  This is a great way to spread interest in Public Achievement., which in turn I hope spreads enthusiasm for young people and civic agency.  I applaud the team members of Charitable Youth and their mentor Gulnaz Hajiyeva!

With Gulnaz's permission, I have uploaded a series of photographs to my Shutterfly site, which you can view at http://michaelkuhne.shutterfly.com/

As usual, I invite you to comment, either here or on the Shutterfly site.

Like many, I have been touched, both by the outpouring of emotion over the death of Poland's political elite this past weekend and by the stability of the Polish people and their new government in light of this tragedy.  I will be writing a posting about this in the days to come.

Until then, be well.