One of the great opportunities Chatham Hall girls have is to take a course with Boston University professor Dr. Olga Davidson. Dr. Davidson is a distinguished professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at BU, Harvard and Episcopal Divinity School in Boston. Lucky for us, she also happens to be a graduate of Chatham Hall! A wonderful gift she gives to the school is to spend one evening a week for 5 weeks each year Skyping into Shaw Technology Classroom to discuss a series of films she has the students watch that depict Muslim women in various Middle Eastern countries. 22 girls spent the past weeks seeing Islamic life in Iran and Palestine.
In years past, we have had to rent the films, get them through Netflix, buy them on Amazon.com or borrow them through inter-Library loan. Then the girls would organize themselves in complex configurations in order to watch the one copy we had. It was less than ideal.
This year things have been different! It turns out that for years the films have been hosted on a website that Dr. Davison and her foundation have. With the proper username and password, we can access any of the films online. And the best part – the iPad is a great device on which to watch the films!
So this year had girls watching Islamic films – all subtitled, of course – on their iPads. No more scrambling for the only copy. No more coordinating groups to watch at inconvenient times. No more waiting for the movie to be delivered. Instead, the girls fired up their iPads and were able to watch the films in their rooms, in the Niche, in Yardley or even outside. Many of them also wrote their reflections and asked Professor Davidson questions with their iPads. I even prepared the presentations of Islam to go with the films on my iPad.
This is just one more way that technology makes the world smaller and allows us to learn more about our neighbors, whether in Boston or Iran.
Ned Edwards
Chaplain
Chatham Hall Blogging Together 