Fresh Eyes for New Cultures

A friend of mine went to Dominican Republic for a visit. When asked upon his return what he thought of the country, he said, "It was a beautiful country, but there were a lot of foreigners there." It made me wanna say,  "Uh. Yeah. YOU were one of the foreigners, dude."

An immature and uninformed person may dismiss the meaning-making practices of other cultures as "strange," without bothering to examine them as clues to understanding that culture. What a loss of learning opportunities. View the TED Talk by Derek Sivers: "Weird, or just different?" and contemplate your own cross-cultural experience. Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different? | Video on TED.com


What practices or customs have you encountered that seemed "weird" to you? What did these practices reveal to you about the culture? Feel free to post your insights throughout the term.

Brave New (Digital) World

There were some excellent reflections in the blogs regarding the week's readings from Nicolas Carr and Kevin Kelly. You really oughta read them if you haven't already. Many good comments about how technology shapes our literacy practices - and our thinking! The famous 20th-century American scholar Walter Ong, writing about the shift from orality to literacy, said, "Writing restructures consciousness." Many of our bloggers picked up on the ways new media are changing the way we think.


A Facebook friend of mine posted an update that is so revelatory of this shift. With her permission, I use it here:

 

Here is an example of digital social networking restructuring our expressions of emotion... Profound!

Boy Was My Face Rojo...

"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother." - Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

If you have not yet reached the status Mr. Twain describes above, then you will - or you aren't really trying. I'd be interested to hear your humorous anecdote of a harmless faux pas, misstep, or slip-up that reveals the need for continual growth in our cultural understanding.

Why not just post your story below as a comment to this blog post? Feel free to link to your blog for more info, photos, etc. Sure, we may laugh at you, but in a most sympathetic way, because we've been there, are there, or will be there soon.

CLAM Gets Noticed by The Chronicle of Higher Education!

Dr. Constancio Nakuma

The July 22 Issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education featured a story on Study Abroad experiences, and highlighted the work of the students and faculty involved in our own beloved CLAM! The article features interviews from the instructor, Randy Nichols,  from students Meg Sparkman and Jennifer McAmis, and from Dr. Tharon Howard and Dr. Constancio Nakuma, who were instrumental in facilitating the development of the course.

You can find the article here: http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Help-Students-to/123653/

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow...

Our CLAMmers are wrapping up their Spring Term, but our CLAMmers will not really leave. You can click the links to the right to see some of their projects already posted in their own blogs. As soon as evaluations are done, and Clemson OIA's YouTube channel is updated, we will let you know and provide links. Congratulations, CLAMmers - you lived to tell the tale! (in multimodal fashion, no less!)

Anticipation!

CLAMmers recently received some next-to-last-minute instructions and are putting together their projects. Some of the earlier blog posts hint at some very interesting projects in the works. These video projects will allow our students to share their newly gained cultural literacies with the greater Clemson University community at large.

Do we have grand expectations for these projects? Sure. But then again, we think we have some pretty grand students working on these projects. Watch here for announcements of their project postings on the Clemson OIA YouTube channel. These students are examples of how Clemson University is navigating the ever-changing  global and dynamic cultural climate in which business, education, and life will be lived in the future.

Oh, yeah. The future is already here. Welcome to it.
(CLAMmers might enjoy looking for indicators of culture in the video below.)

The End of the Beginning (or the Beginning of the End?)

This week, CLAMmers will post more rhetorical analyses of media artifacts from within their cultures of focus. These should be interesting! But as they prepare to dig into preparations for their final projects, I offer a last resource for more last-minute video helps.

This link takes you to Media College's short, "basic video editing" tutorial. You may already know these things, but a refresher never hurt anyone. Maybe thi swill be useful as you dig into making the masterpiecesthat will be your final projects.

Again, those helps are here: http://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/tutorial/

Expecting some great critical analysis from each CLAM students this week!

Interview Challenge #9: Flop Sweat

How to deal with "flop sweat" - or stage fright, speaker anxiety, etc. Don't panic; take deep breaths. Put yourself and your guest at ease. Express genuine interest. Try to make the interview a "real" conversation. And whatever you do, don't come off like this:




And, to sum it up: Have fun; Enjoy the Interview; Do Great Work!