SocialStratification

Alternative to study abroad. Expensive. Lots not able to participate.

Started 2003. Offered 4 times (every other summer).

Wake and Colegate students.

What was the course like?
 * Just like any other course. Reading assignments. lectures, guest speakers, class discussion, films. BUT the class takes place on a bus and in local communities.

Course Goals:
 * Expose students through traditional and non tradition means the study of social stratification and inequality as it plays out in the Deep South.

How is it different?
 * Flexibility!
 * Less control, but more opportunity
 * Social and mobile technologies to bring in external communities

Service learning:
 * different because living together in their communities as service is preformed with local agencies engaged in social transformation

Community Engagement:
 * Engage local residents.
 * Attend public functions. Church. Laundry. Eat. Sleep.
 * Rely on the generosity of others
 * Find local experts

Seek out unique opportunities:
 * connect experiences
 * get local perspective
 * Parchman Prison Tour. Justice. Old style farm prison. Cheep prison labor - catfish farms. Cheep labor destroyed catfish industry in Mississippi. Prisoners allowed to talk about what ever they wish. 4 students went on to law school. Death Chambers. Ambulance after inmate stabbed. Testing labor force for drugs. Each building had a shoot line.
 * Southern Poverty Law Center

Technology:
 * 2007 blog and wiki site
 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Flickr - capture and aggregate pictures (Social_Stratification)
 * Cell phones
 * Laptops
 * Blogs
 * wikis
 * Videography

Online conversations:
 * Facebook fan page
 * videos - with camera phones

Issues:
 * connectivity
 * battery
 * privacy
 * permission for videos