Senior Seminar Winter 2009
ISP 4860
Section 002 (Bowen)
Class 4, February 4
Course web site: www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen/SenSemW09
Agenda
• Tonight in 012 Manogian
 Rest of semester, too
• Pictures
• Late / returned / future assignments
• Research
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Searching WSU research databases
Review, search terms
Research portfolio
Citing web pages and websites
• Content: development and consumption
• Writing: organization
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Late Assignments
• Your paper subtopic is due today via
Moodle, many have not come in.
 Not a good start.
 See/call/email/IM me for help getting started
 I have started a discussion topic on Moodle
about this, if anyone wants online help (or
wants to complain).
• Reminder – a component of the course
grade comes for getting assignments done
on time
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Returned Assignments
• “Is it a happy new year?”
 Why did I do this?
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Making Up Work
• Makeup Work page on course website
• Cannot get back credit for being on time
• Change in making up in-class work:
 Much in-class work involves group discussion
 To make this up, get a group of students
together to do the discussion
 Group discussion counts one letter grade for
these assignments
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Assignments Coming Up
• Today – bring Research Portfolio
(notebook)
• February 11: Chapter Planner for Chapter
1
• February 18 – list of references via Moodle
 Suggestion – do some each week
• February 25 – draft of Chapter 1
(overview)
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Topic, Subtopic, etc.
• The Topic of the course (“main topic”) is
The Human Footprint
• You will choose a subtopic to focus your
paper on. You might choose, for example,
Food.
 If you narrow Food to Grains (a type of food)
then “Grains” becomes your subtopic.
 That is, there are no sub-subtopics
• If you narrowed two levels (e.g. to specific
country), I need a fuller description of intent
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Research - Databases
• Highly-recommended databases on purple
handout
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ABI/INFORM Global Online
Communication and Mass Media Complete
Ebrary (eBooks)
Expanded Academic ASAP
FirstSearch
GaneNet
LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe
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Databases
• Highly-recommended databases on purple
handout
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Library Press Display
Netlibrary (eBooks)’
Opposing Viewpoint Center
SIRS Researcher on the Web (starter only)
• Textbooks are also research sources, and
list other references as well
• Websites of scholarly organizations
 www.aaas.org, www.sciencemag.org
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Google Scholar
• Free or not?
 References free on public Interent
 Some full-text as well
 Much restricted to paying customers, so
doesn’t cost you to use full Google Scholar
through WSU
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Research - Searching
• Case-insensitive
• Yellow handout
• Boolean words: and, or, not
 world and hunger: articles MUST have both
words in it (not necessarily together or in that
order)
 world hunger: same as or – can have first
only, second only, or both. Not necessarily in
that order
 “world hunger”: treated like one word
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Searching
• Boolean words:
 or is done before and
• water or drought and world means water and world,
or drought and water
• Not mentioned but on handout: * (wildcard)
 fish* would get fish, fishing, fisherman, fishery,
etc.
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Searching - keywords
• For many of the topics here, adding
“world” helps
 world and food is more specific that food by
itself, which would include recipes, for
example
 Would miss specific areas, but you can add
these – world or africa and food
• Try the opposite (antonym)
 world and drought has more articles than
world and water
 Also try world and “water shortage”
 Or world and water or drought
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Keywords
• Thesaurus lists synonyms and antonyms
 http://www.bartleby.com/thesauri/ (Roget’s is
the standard thesaurus)
• Suggestions for search terms
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Research - Portfolio
• Three-ring binder
• Dividers to separate sections – example sections
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Syllabus
Study Tools: dates, names, definitions, etc.
Word hoard: Definitions of new words you learn.
Weekly Meetings: notes, handouts
Scrapbook: materials related to course including newspaper
clips, media comments, INTERNET downloads, ads, cartoons,
summaries of conversations, documents, essays, etc.
 Final Research Paper: all materials related to papers such as
drafts, database sheets and bibliography, notes, photocopies of
readings, and all drafts.
 Pouch for tools such as pens, markers, 3-hole punch, stapler,
etc.
 Place for 3½-inch floppy diskette labeled with your name, or a
USB flash drive, any capacity
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Research portfolio
• Comparison and discussion in groups
• Complete and turn in Portfolio selfassessment
• Will be repeated two more times during
semester
 March 4 (self-assessment)
 April 8 (self-assessment and Instructor
assessment)
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Research – Citing the Web
• MLA standard – Everyday Writer Pp 383
 Author (if listed)
 Title / subtitle of page
 Print publication information
• Any given information about print publication
 Electronic publication information (. after each)
• Title of website, underlined, major words capitalized
• Version number
• Month and year
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Research – Citing the Web
• MLA standard – Pp 383
 Access information
• Most recent date viewed
• URL in < >, for homepage if more than one line,
plus Path (list of links with >)
• Practice – group exercise using handout
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Content – Consumption &
Waste
• David’s dollar-bill economy
 Spin the wheel faster & we all get richer
 If everybody plays, wheel is bigger
• Cash – slow
• Bank accounts – faster
• Credit – fastest, more of it, too
• US & rich world, we do this very well
 Get what you want (will pay for) – better hope
it’s good for you!
 Shopping as entertainment
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Panic Time
• “Wall Street bailout”
 These firms give us the credit and move the
money
 If credit part of wheel stops:
• Wheel really slows down
• Eventually drags accounts down, too
• Money wheel eventually stops, almost
 Saw this happening last week
 Not “too big to fail” but “to important to fail”
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Consumption and Waste
• ROW (Rest Of World) wants this
 Weak national economies, must export to rich
world - globalization
 Doing “our” jobs – OK if it is not too much
 Enlarge the circle – we send them money
 How do we get the money back to spend
again?
• They invest it in us – T-bills (debt of US gov’t)
• Trade deficit – about $60B per month
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Consumption and Waste
• Last week, ROW slow to reinvest
• Most economists feel this is unsustainable
 We have to produce a larger fraction of what
we consume
 US a $15T annual economy
• Trade deficit $700B = $0.7T
 Federal debt (total money government owes)
= $10.6T  $11.3T with “bailout”
• Federal deficit is what we add to debt each year,
now about $407B = 0.4T
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US Economy ↓
• At least is not growing as fast (what is a
depression?)
• Structural imbalance one reason
• Gas prices another
 Indirect effects on many other goods and
services
• Housing crisis – people used to spending
the value of their houses
• International effects worse
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Trade Barriers
• All countries put up trade barriers in
certain areas
 US claims it is for free trade but subsidizes
agriculture
• Food aid generous, but
o Much must be spent on food from US
o We subsidize exports of food
• Result: farmers in poor countries cannot compete
with low (subsidized) food from US
• Collapse last year of “Doha round” of trade
talks to reduce barriers
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Consumption and Waste
• Money wheel spins one way
• “Stuff” spins the other way
 Packaging becomes waste immediately
 Some stuff is not used, becomes waste quickly
(food)
 Everything that was in the package also
becomes waste – just more slowly
• Running out of places to put the garbage
• Can we find another way to spin the wheel?
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Does Stuff Make Us Happier?
• Up to a point,
more stuff
makes us
happier
• But levels off
• So is there a
better way?
• Virtue of
individuals not
enough
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Consumption and Waste
• Do we care about ROW?
 Yes – foreign aid (but smaller than most in US
think)
 One reason for wanting to help poor nations
develop is their health
 Poverty  poor health (often)
 Hunger makes it worse
 Leads to high population growth, eventually
endangers us, too
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Sovereign Wealth Funds
• Another effect of US economic unbalance
• Sovereign Wealth Funds – the accounts
built up by our international creditors who
are not market-based
 China
 Saudi Arabia
 Russia
• Will they use that wealth against us?
 Probably more subtle effects
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Writing: Organization
Chapter Level
• Title: Chapter number (1, 2, 3, etc) and
descriptive title (describes content of this
Chapter)
• Introduction (roadmap)
• Body
• Conclusion (review, conclude or wrap up,
so what?)
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Organization: Within Body
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Organization:
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Treat topics one by one in some order – have a
plan, don’t just hop around
Examples of orders that work:
a. Start with a specific example or story, then go to what that
is an example of (generalize)
b. General to specific
c. Historical order, order of development
d. Logical order – what does the reader need to know first?
e. Combinations – a then b, for example
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A new topic requires a new paragraph.
Smooth transitions to prepare the reader and show
that your thinking is under control, not just random.
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Outlining
• An outline can be a quick way to organize
your topic.
 Not required except for Chapter 1
 I used to outline, but with word processors I
just shuffle stuff around
• Organization in-class assignment (groups)
 Get card pack
 Groups can go somewhere else – 30 minutes
 Turn in report on next slide
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Writing: Organization
• Chapter Planner on course website has
helped some
• Required for Chapter 1 of your Paper next
week
 As of last week, you had all of the information
you need to write Chapter 1
• OK if you want to add references, later
 Turn in via Moodle
• After this, optional
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Group Reports - Organization
• Each group should turn in a report with the
following information (by number)
1. List the group members (first and last names)
2. Take the cards out of the envelope and put them in
the best order. What is the best order of the cards
(by number)?
3. Of the styles of organization listed in class (or
including others that you may be aware of, what
organization scheme did you used in 2, and why?
4. Pick one other style of organization and describe
how you might reorganize the material on the cards
to make that other style work.
• You can leave once you turn in this report
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