International Trade Story

Phil Miller at Market Power reports on a story about tutors for U.S. secondary school students available on-line for only $2.50 an hour. How do you suppose they manage that?

Man Bites Dog

I had dinner with a friend and his mother (who I also know) tonight. In the conversation, she mentioned that her other son, who lives in Texas, had just found a job–he is a computer engineer who, for the last few years, has been working in a series of temporary jobs as a contract employee with salary but no benefits. His previous job ended a week ago, and he was very pleased to get a new job, a “real job” his mother explained with salary, benefits and no expiration date. Why am I telling this? Oh, the firm who hired him is from India. They are located there, and he is in Texas–a new twist on in-sourcing.

Scottish Truth

Scottish Truth

Originally uploaded by Clark~.
I searched one of the Creative Commons categories for “globalization” and got this really interesting photo. There’s also a really interesting commentary attached to the image at it’s source. (You can click on the photo to see this.)

Do you recognize this man?

UMW Faculty Academy

Originally uploaded by Cyprien.

Once a familiar face, he’s now become an icon in our memories.

Response to Anya

Anya raised a really good question in her last post, where she asked about what format to use for the first graded essay. The short answer is that not having used this assignment before, I’m not really sure. Let’s think about it.

I would start with by listing the questions you want answers to about globalization. For each question, I would write a paragraph to explain why you feel the question is important. Then I would add an introduction to the paragraphs saying something like Globalization is a huge topic. Here are the questions I think are most important. Then I would list them.

Does this make sense? You should think of this not so much as a formal essay, but as a tentative summary of your thinking. Remember, you will be able to revise this over the semester.

About Last Class

The purpose of Thursday’s class was to develop a consensus definition of globalization.  After working on that for a while, I began to feel that my presence was an impediment to your getting the job done.  It’s important for the success of this course that you develop a definition that makes sense to you, that you can buy into.  I could have given you my definition but that would have subverted the intent of the session.  So, I decided it would be more productive for me to leave.  After all, this course is ultimately about you and what you make of it, not me.

International Voices

This evening, I’ve been reading the blog I’ve chosen to follow: PostGlobal, which you can see in my blogroll at right (hopefully!).  The particular format this blog uses is to post a provocative question for a panel of experts to respond to.  The public is also invited to join in.  The topic if this discussion is whether tribal identities are becoming stronger as nation states weaken.  (The context for this is that some have argued that globalization tends to weaken nation states–for example, as Europeans buy into the European Union, they lose loyalty for their countries.  That’s the argument anyway.)

The discussion by the panelists was pretty good, but what I found absolutely fascinating were the comments by people from around the world, whose background and viewpoints differ widely from both the experts and mine.  That may be the real strength of blogs from a learning perspective.  I expect to learn alot from the blog this semester.