Teaching Comparative

Visual Evidence

YouTube became more famous last week when it became worth more than $1 billion to Google. I was reminded that last summer, at the Saint Mary's College Summer Institute, we spent a few minutes exploring YouTube for teaching materials. The results then suggested that it might be worth the time.

Obviously, you have be judicious. At a site where nearly anyone can post nearly anything, you'll find that most videos on YouTube are irrelevant and a lot of them are inappropriate. But you might be able to find some video worth capturing that will help illustrate your teaching (or that students could use as parts of presentations).

• You can show your students UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron's introduction to webcameron, his vlog (video blog). This introductory episode was filmed in his kitchen while he was washing up or preparing to feed to an infant and being pestered by a toddler. Amateur-looking video that is probably very professional planned to look that way. It's about a minute long.
  
  
  
• Would you like your students to see what some things in Nigeria look like? Today I found a 6-minute video, See Nigeria Live. I'd guess it was made by a univesity student. The video and photograph presentation presents images of urban Nigeria and photos of many important political leaders (perhaps too briefly) with some pointed commentary on some of them. It also offers images of Nigerian currency (probably too many), Nigeria's champion soccer team, and some "photoshopped" images of cars. I can imagine using this as an introduction (asking students to identify surprising images) or a summary (asking students to identify the important people - or to speculate on why Abiola is identified as a national hero).
  
  
• I found a 42-second video of the testy exchange about democracy between Presidents Bush and Putin at last summers G8 summit. That would be a good discussion starter for talking about the state of democracy in Russia, Iraq, and the USA.
  
  
• I also found a well-edited, amateur tourist's video of Shanghai. It's an impressionistic look at the city that makes it seem much less exotic than my mental images of Chinese cities, and that point of view might help make Chinese politics seem less exotic.
  
  
• Another example of making the exotic more mundane comes in a video from Tehran. It's a 3-minute visit to the Tandis Shopping Center in Tehran. From the parking ramp and its attendants, to the Versace, Polo, and Fendi shops, to the escalators and the food court, the images will make this bit of Tehran look familiar to American students. That familiarity might help them better understand the human impulses in Iranian politics.
  
  
• Just to make sure that a westernized bit of Tehran doesn't become a new cliche, it might be good to contrast the Tandis Shopping Center video with a 30-second clip of a stroll through the bazaar in Esfahan, Iran. These scenes are probably much more familiar to most Iranians than the Tandis Shopping Center.
  
  
• One of the reasons that the broadcast sessions of Prime Minister's Question time have value is to hear the voice of the politicians. It's easier to understand why Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair could be so successful after hearing them field questions in Commons. So, what does Vicente Fox sound like? Are there hints in his speaking voice about the reasons for his success, even if I don't understand Spanish? Here's a way to begin finding out. YouTube offered this 1-minute clip from a news broadcast that consists mostly of a speech by President Fox on the Mexican economy.
  
  
• And since Filipe Calderon is soon to succeed President Fox, here is a link to one of Calderon's 20-second television commercials during the campaign. You can hear Calderon's voice and even without understanding Spanish, you can understand why he's asking for people's votes. (There are links to other Calderon TV spots as well.)

Good luck adding a bit of media and visuals to your textbook accounts of government and politics.

posted by Ken Wedding @ 12:17 PM