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This assignment for a political science course at NorthWest Arkansas Community College explores the thoughts of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior in his famous essay “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the responses of other Black leaders and intellectuals.
by Matt Evans
In this assignment, students read, socially annotate, and create videos to explore comparisons between King’s ideas and others. The ultimate product is a presentation video that can be openly licensed, if the student so chooses. Along the way, students learn about Creative Commons licenses, power dynamics in knowledge production, and usage of software and electronic resources. As the teacher iterates usage of the assignment over the semester and the years, the text compared to King change. Examples can be given to future students from past students to scaffold some of these basic skills. The public receives a series of videos that can trace King’s thought throughout American Black thought, and thus the depth and boundaries of the context of King’s thought grows with every class that uses this assignment. This same framework with slightly different reading purposes might be applied to other seminal texts in other political, philosophical, theological, and academic contexts.
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