Welcome

This blog serves as the hub for UH 370 and CES 301 at Washington State University.  Both courses address globalization and inequality.  Here, students can access readings and assignments, read ongoing commentary and reflections from the instructor, C. Richard King, professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies, and pose questions about the class.

This course is designed to familiarize students with the institutions, practices and policies that constitute “globalization,” stressing the centrality of racial, economic, and social inequality to it. Class readings and discussions seek to foster debate and reflection about the historic structures of global inequality and the ways in which people live them in distinct cultural contexts. As such we ask big questions about the changing nature of the world and look to small, local worlds to consider the affects of these changes.  A consideration of disposability—waste, lives deemed unimportant and unworthy, people used and refused—and justice stands at the thematic core of our discussion. Topics examined include contemporary forms of slavery, sweatshops, tourism, health, and xenophobia.

Thoughts on the Final

The final is due on 4 May.  It should be a capstone to your blog that integrates your thinking on your blog topic and its significance.  It should introduce new ideas and ideally build on previous posts and class discussions.  Think of this as something like a virtual term paper.  It can be exclusively expository or interpretive prose, written in the first or third person.  Alternately, you may opt to capitalize on the web and make a multimedia presentation, whether this be a slide show, film, or more.  Where appropriate, I would encourage linking to other discussions and webpages and using illustrations.  Remember to properly attribute the words and ideas of others.  Also have in mind the rubric and my thoughts on good critical work.  I do not have a specific length in mind (5 exemplary pages is always better than 10 awful pages), in part because it is difficult to draw equivalences between page counts and multimedia projects.  That said, think of this as a substantial project that merits the time commitment and presentation quality of roughly a 5-7 page term paper.  If you have questions send me an email.

Project Red (20 April)

Project Red

A Critique

For Tuesday (13 April)

Read about the Nike Boycott at the following webpages:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~shortk/nike.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/Boycotts_page.html

http://www.albionmonitor.com/sweatshop/ss-nikecampaign.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/ballinger02082006.html

International Justice Mission Film Series

Monday April 19th- CUE 419 showing: At End of Slavery and Dying to Leave

Tuesday April 20th – Tod 230 showing: Slavery: Global Investigation and At End of Slavery

Both film showings will be from 6:30 to 8:30 pm

Blog Assignments

Below find the revised topics for blog postings (note one has an open due date) and the notice of the final.  I have made adjustments for the glitches many of you encountered with the assessment tool.  Remember beginning with the second  post, every student will be asked to assess self and peers using the rubric. Let me know if you have questions.

15 Feb
Introduction or Overview of topic, including at least one link: what are you writing about?  why? how does it connect to the themes of the class?  what do you want to get out of it?

5 March
History of topic

26 March
Open Post, using visual images

1 April
Open Post, applying concepts from class

9 April
Resource Guide (15+ online resources on topic and why selected)

16 April

Open Post, relate to resist, change or alternatives

4 May

Final Project
Suggestion: make a film or use multimedia presentation to engage your topic and prompt others to act.

Vlogging

While bloggers often confine themselves to the textual and hypertextual, you need not.  Beyond writing and linking, video blogging, or vlogging, offer an important complement to more traditional forms of expression.  It may be the case that this has little appeal for you and that vlogging is not the best way to communicate for a given assignment; however, I encourage you to experiment with the medium in your posts and/or replies.  On at least one occasion this term, your post should be as a vlog.  Some resources from the folks in the Office of Assessment and Innovation.

How to Vlog
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22How+to+Vlog%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Sessmic

http://seesmic.com/
http://wsuctlt.ning.com/profiles/blogs/using-seesmic

Voice Thread (voice / video multi media collaboration tool)
http://voicethread.com/#home

A Famous vlog:
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/

Thoughts on Blogging

Blogging is a distinct genre, which shares the core conventions with and demands many of the strengths of other forms of writing, while asking authors to push themselves in novel ways.

The University of Sydney maintains a helpful website discussing writing online.  Its blogs help page has a number of useful resources.  Especially useful is its discussion of blog writing, which suggests in part:

• Write headlines that grab attention.
• Link to other sites. A lot.
• If you get an idea for a post from another blog, acknowledge that blog.
• Don’t plagiarise. Use blockquotes when relevant.

Style

• Identify your audience(s) and write in a style that is suitable for that audience
• Keep text brief and meaningful, readers tend to scan text
• Delete unnecessary words, limit your use of adverbs and adjectives
• Use short sentences and paragraphs
• Avoid repeating text
• Ensure consistency in style if you have multiple authors
• Put the most important message first
• Use the shorter word where ever possible, e.g. “now” not “currently”
• Avoid circumlocutions, e.g., “at a later time” for “later”
• Wherever possible, use the active voice, e.g., “Vet Science had a BBQ” instead of “The BBQ was held by Vet Science”.
• Check your syntax, punctuation and spelling

Layout

• ‘Chunk’ your content so that the page is not one large block of text.
• Use bullet point or lists
• Use sub-headings to put content in context

Links

• Use descriptive link labels, e.g., “Postgraduate timetable” not “Click here for Postgraduate Timetable”
• Link to further information wherever possible but be careful not to over-link, ensure links are relevant

With a less academic audience in mind, Philipp Lenssen offers a top ten list to guide bloggersng:

1. Use descriptive headlines that reveal the point of the article without further reading; the key here is to create microcontent that can fare well on its own. (An example of a good title is “Edit Captions in Picasa Web Albums” used at the unofficial Google System. An example of a bad title is the official Google blog’s “Greetings, Earthlings!”) Keep in mind the headline may be read in an RSS reader, a news portal which aggregates content, a search result, your blog archive, a bookmark and so on, and it may be surrounded by dozens of other headlines.
2. Write in inverted pyramid style: first get to the point and mention the core ideas, then fill in the details in later paragraphs. The first and second sentence should allow people to decide if they want to continue reading this.
3. The first link is the one most people click on, so it should also be the main link for your article. Also, too many links too close to each other diffuse your point and make you less of a filter, and a (news) blog should always be a filter for others.
4. In each longer post, re-introduce core ideas you mention because your readers come from all walks of life and may not be up-to-date (e.g. they may read your archived post half a decade from now coming from a search engine). It’s better to say “The Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday announced … the EFF also said that …” than to say “The EFF announced… the EFF also said that …”.
5. Use lists, images, tables, sub-headlines, examples, indented notes, indented quotes, icons, colors, bold and italics to lighten up your article and make it easier to scan it. Don’t expect everyone to cling to every of your words; instead, you can expect a large part of your readers to sit at the office, a coffee in one hand and the mouse in the other, trying to get up to speed at 9 in the morning.
6. With a global audience it’s never a good idea to only use sophisticated words not everyone may know. Some of your readers may speak English only as second language. They may want to learn new words, but it shouldn’t come at the price of missing your post’s point. (If you only speak English as second language to begin with, following this rule might be much easier.)
7. Credit your sources with a mention and link. As opposed to mainstream news posts, bloggers usually tell where they got the story from.
8. Mark updates and changes (and do update and change when readers find something wrong in your writing).
9. Spellcheck your posts, and read them for clarity once or twice before posting. An error now and then isn’t bad but the less fewer errors, the more quickly people will be able to read and understand your article. (This rule, of course, is universal in writing and doesn’t just apply to blogging.)
10. To practically all of these rules there are exceptions. For example, when your post is very humorous in tone and has a punch line, you may specifically not want to give it away in the title. Or when you’re writing a longer essay, you’ll just have to live with the fact that you won’t be able to “cut to the chase” in the first paragraph. Another exception is that it’s not really necessary to mark every change, e.g. when you fix a typo somewhere in the text, or when you just posted 10 seconds ago. Not every post needs an image, etc. etc. And sometimes, breaking the rule is a conscious style element (e.g. this style of linking – not sure if it has a name – intentionally breaks rule #3).

In addition, another top ten list provides some useful tips. Other helpful notes on blogging include the always useful Idiot’s Guide and the Dummies Handbook.

I prize Racism Review and Newspaper Rock, reading them daily. They feature high quality posts, that to me exemplify the genre, reflecting critical thinking, engaged writing, and deep com/passion.  I will post comments on the rubric and assessment as well.