Satti Khanna wants to inspire his students to try to do more than they know how to do.
An associate professor in Asian and African languages, Khanna was one of the first Duke faculty to incorporate iPods into his classes. In an earlier class on Indian cinema, his students worked with DDI equipment to create video projects that addressed issues such as cultural labels, expectations within cultural groups, and marginalization of workers from other cultures in the American workforce.
Working with video “energizes our own powers of perceiving and feeling,” Khanna said. “It’s no longer dealing with topics but with the shared consciousness of another person. It creates a more living energy.”
This fall, students in his advanced Hindi class are sharing what they’ve learned about Indian language and culture using iPod Touches.
Whether it’s recording Hindi spoken around the Triangle, sharing Hindi news sites with their classmates or creating videos to address residents of the troubled Indian province of Bihar, the technology encourages students to think creatively, Khanna said.
“We want to teach emotional intelligence in all the humanities,” Khanna said. “This gear is good for activating the emotional connection to reflective, intellectual, theoretical work.”
