Big data, modern African history, and girls who build cameras

In John's October Newsletter

Open Knowledge Provides Clarity of Purpose for Education in Crisis

A close-up image of an eye with a rainbow iris.

Nearly 20 years after the launch of MIT OpenCourseWare, OCW Director Curt Newton lays out a vision for how open knowledge can transform education to better serve humanity in the next decade. This is an adaptation of remarks given at the ScienceDigital@UNGA75 Digital Diplomacy and Cooperation event, organized by People-Centered Internet, on September 24, 2020.

In the many challenges we currently face, there are also unprecedented opportunities for transformative progress. In our responses to the COVID-19 public health crisis, in our reckoning with the inequalities and injustices so deeply embedded within our systems, in our solutions to the daunting reality of our changing climate, so much is at stake.

> Read the complete article

OpenCourseWare began nearly two decades ago as a bold idea about what learning could look like in an open, online world.

A gift to OCW today supports new course videos, instructor insights from MIT faculty, and the chance to learn for anyone, anywhere.

A gift to OCW today directly supports the future of OCW and the NextGen OCW platform.

And above all, a gift to OCW today supports our commitment to knowledge as a public good for the next 20 years.

Give today to support OCW before the end of our fall fundraising campaign. Thank you for your support at this exciting moment in OCW’s history.

Recently on the "Community" tab of our YouTube page, every Friday we've been highlighting an OCW video. Here are a few favorites.

Girls Who Build Cameras! This one-day workshop for high school girls is a hands-on introduction to camera physics and technology (i.e. how Instagram works!)

ICYMI: Chalk Radio is a OCW's podcast about inspired teaching at MIT. A new season launches later this month! Subscribe here: https://chalk-radio.simplecast.com/

An inspiring look at how MIT's Mechanical Engineering teaching staff is providing hands-on learning while teaching remotely.

A graphic showing how multiple nations-- including the U.S., China, India, Japan, Spain, France, Germany, among others-- fit into the land mass of the continent of Africa.

A map of Africa showing its size in comparison to that of various countries. (Image by MIT OpenCourseWare based on a public domain image by Kai Krause.)

21H.165 Modern African History

This course surveys the history of 19th- and 20th-century Africa. It focuses on the European conquest of Africa and the dynamics of colonial rule, especially its socioeconomic and cultural consequences. It looks at how the rising tide of African nationalism, in the form of labor strikes and guerrilla wars, ushered out colonialism. It also examines the postcolonial states, focusing on the politics of development, recent civil wars in countries like Rwanda and Liberia, the AIDS epidemic, and the history of apartheid in South Africa up to 1994. Finally, it surveys the entrepreneurship in the post-colonial period and China's recent involvement in Africa.

A drawing of a large, scaly creature with webbed feet and hands, similar to an iguana.

Cuban Rock Iguana: a lizard afforded protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act at Guantánamo naval base, where detainees are held outside any legal jurisdiction and without charge or trial. Such zones of "exception" to legal governance are discussed in this class. (Image source: Birkin, David. “Cyclura Nubila: The Iguanas of Guantánamo.” Cabinet Magazine 59 (2015): 46–53. Image appears courtesy of Cabinet Magazine.)

21A.506 The Anthropology of Politics: Persuasion and Power

This course introduces the ethnographic study of politics, i.e., what anthropologists understand to be "political" in various social and economic systems, from small-scale societies to liberal democratic states. It examines politics across three contemporary contexts: electoral politics, public spheres, bureaucracies and humanitarian governance. Students consider and analyze how questions of authority, coercion, and violence have been theorized to relate to the political, and how some aspects of social life are regimented in explicitly non-political ways.

Binary code, displayed as zeroes and ones, is shown in this image in varying directions in both green and black.

"Big Data" refers to a technological phenomenon that has emerged since the mid-1980s. As computers have improved in capacity and speed, the greater storage and processing possibilities have also generated new challenges. New analytical tools, including the ones introduced in this course, have since been developed to solve these challenges in management of those phenomenally large data sets. (Image source: DARPA/public domain.)

RES.LL-005 Mathematics of Big Data and Machine Learning

This course introduces the Dynamic Distributed Dimensional Data Model (D4M), a breakthrough in computer programming that combines graph theory, linear algebra, and databases to address problems associated with Big Data. Search, social media, ad placement, mapping, tracking, spam filtering, fraud detection, wireless communication, drug discovery, and bioinformatics all attempt to find items of interest in vast quantities of data.

This course teaches a signal processing approach to these problems by combining linear algebraic graph algorithms, group theory, and database design. This approach has been implemented in software.

The class will begin with a number of practical problems, introduce the appropriate theory, and then apply the theory to these problems. Students will apply these ideas in the final project of their choosing. The course will contain a number of smaller assignments which will prepare the students with appropriate software infrastructure for completing their final projects.

Faculty Profile: Shigeru Miyagawa

A photo of MIT Professor of Linguistics Shigeru Miyagawa is shown with raised eyebrows.

This linguistics professor says sharing course materials online is "one of the best things that can happen" to a teacher.

Straddling two worlds has remained a recurring theme for Miyagawa. For example, early in his undergraduate career he made the decision to focus on the humanities. "Although I was very good in math, physics, and chemistry, I decided that I did not want to pursue the same path as my father," he confesses, "So one day I simply walked across campus and began taking humanities classes."

> Read the complete article

Views from OCW Supporters

A classroom of students speaking to each other.

Photo by CX Insight on Unsplash

"I wholeheartedly agree with OCW’s mission: to provide MIT educational materials to the world.

I have shared OCW materials, classes, lectures, and videos with college students, including those in my own family.

The materials have an unsurpassed level of scholarship, academic rigor, and variety of knowledge, making OCW a jewel for knowledge seekers all over the world."

-Jose Israel, Educator

>We'd love to hear from you. Tell us your OCW Story.

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