Voices of Youth ... Classrooms in Cyberspace (asswat shabab ... al-9ism ad-dirasiya fi-wa9t al-internet)

From May 5 to May 8 I traveled to northeastern Morocco under the sponsorship of the Public Affairs section of the U.S. Embassy in Rabat.  I spoke to young Moroccans at the “American Corner” in Oujda, at the “Dar Shabab” (Youth Center) in Chefchaouen, and at the Teacher Training College in Tetouan.  My announced title for the first two talks was “Blogging and Podcasting,” and in the third I spoke more explicitly about the role of teachers, building on my 1990s remarks concerning “Classrooms in Cyberspace.” I recorded large portions of each of these talks and have uploaded them to the podcast site www.stetsonville.com. In these talks I followed the same routine as during my Fulbright year in the mid 90s: I introduced myself in colloquial Moroccan (darija), explaining how I studied this distinctive dialect of Arabic at the University of Michigan in the 1960s and became fluent in it during doctoral thesis research in Sidi Kacem Zawiya. Since there is considerable overlap among these three talks, I have added links to each below, in the order in which they were delivered. I realize that my intended audience includes mostly people will find this English introduction daunting, so I intend to add a brief description of what is here in transliterated Moroccan Arabic, as well as a link to Google Français.

The links below illustrate the topics of which I spoke and the resources to which I referred my young listeners. I invite comments on these remarks both from those who heard them and from those who have thoughts about the topics covered: the politics of language and code-switching, the disaffection of youth both in Morocco and in the U.S. from traditional over-30 politics, and the uncertain progress in classrooms around the world in using new information technologies effectively.

darija audio: Oujda, Chefchaouen, Tetouan Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Podcast Feed

• Doug Davis: hyper-resume, epigram, al-musharaka blog, Sidi ROM (1994: darija), المشاركة
  
• Davis & Davis. (1989). Adolescence in a Moroccan Town: Making Social Sense.
• Susan Schaefer Davis: Marrakesh Express
• Wikipedia:  darija (العربية)
• Magharebia: "Find Your Voice"
• Google translation, blog search
  
• Youthful interest in elections: "obama" "clinton""mccain"
• Obama YouTube video: "Yes, we can"
• e.g. Ghanaian-American video on Obama
• Moroccan hip-hop politics: Fnaire, Bigg
• Nass el-Ghiwane: Lebtana: lyrics (Arabic) (English translation)
• A Sidi Kacem play in darija: l7muq ila nt9 ("If the Crazy Talked")
• Tanmia.ma podcasting page ("آصوات الشباب)