How should I study for this class?

This is Ward.  He is my wife's grandfather.  He is a totally amazing person.  When he was 14 years old he constructed a "car" powered by an airplane engine and propeller.  He took it for a spin on the highway, and got pulled over by the police.  The officer was very impressed with his design and simply escorted Ward home with advice not to drive his unshielded propeller driven craft on the highway.

The next year the State of Ohio started issuing drivers licenses for operating motor vehicles on public roads.

Ward worked as an airplane mechanic and started a communication company.   He loves technology and was really interested in seeing the mapping program on the new iPhone.

About an hour ago I got an email from Amber (student in our class) asking how to study for this class.   Good question!  And here is my advice.  

1. Take good notes during class.   Focus on getting down concepts and how they connect to examples.  You should always be able to connect concepts to real examples of your own.
2. Read the book and compare your notes to the ideas in the book.  Concepts that are in both are often the most important. 
3. Follow your interests.  Richard Feynman provides a great example of how enjoyable it can be to try to learn how things work.  Apply that same sort of attention to our social world.  Build your own propeller driven car.  
4. Share you understanding with others.  I love talking with Ward because I feel like we both always learn something new from each other.    

Other advice:   

• In the past students organized study groups that met in the library-- typically about 15-20 folks would show up.   
• Start a study group email list.
• ??

Hope that helps--   post other suggestions and questions in the comments. 

The Scientific Research Cycle

In today’s class, we discussed the Scientific Research Cycle. We learned that this process has eight stages:

1.) wonder/doubt

2.) conceptualize

3.) theorize

4.) operationalize

5.) hypothesize

6.) observe

7.) analyze

8.) assess

We learned that different types of research (i.e. explanatory and descriptive research) put more emphasis on particular stages in the scientific research process. As the following chart illustrates, descriptive research is concerned with the observe stage of the research cycle, whereas explanatory research is more concerned with the hypothesize and assess stages.

Sociological Imagination

Another important concept of today's lecture is the concept of the Sociological Imagination. This refers to the capacity to discover how social outcomes emerge from:

-social contexts

-the people involved

-what those people do

-how they do it

The sociological imagination allows people to begin to understand the relationships between macro-level forces and the actions of groups or individuals.

An example might be looking at the issue of poverty in a city like Athens. Using the sociological imagination, we can step back from the problem and analyze it.

Are city policies causing a lack of jobs? What about federal government policies? How might other institutions such as family and education affect the situation?

Groups (Jan 4)

Today in class, one of the concepts that was discussed was that of groups, which is defined as "any set of 2 or more persons who maintain a stable pattern of social relations over a period of time ". Examples of groups that were given in class are clubs, cohorts, class, and citizenship.

We also talked about primary and secondary groups, and how they differed in terms of intimacy and association.

People may be born into primary groups and have greater intimacy than secondary groups. An example of a primary group would be a family.

Within secondary groups, however, people associate by choice. For example, a person interested in bowling may join a bowling league, thus making the league that person's secondary group.

Gmail and Google Docs video tutorial

Are you having any issues with getting a Gmail account or using Google docs? I  brought together some video tutorials/information for your viewing pleasure.

If anyone has other tutorials they think are worthy of viewing post them in the comments!



First of all why switch to Gmail? I'll let the Google theater answer that question.




How to create a Gmail account



What is Google Docs?





How to share docs!

Monday, January 3 2011

In class today, we discussed social outcomes and how they are explained. We used the example of baby name popularity across time, and discovered that certain names have become more or less popular over time. For instance, we discovered that traditional names like John have become less popular while more nontraditional and individualized names such as Xavier and Quinn have become more popular. We also discovered that certain names, such as Jennifer, have large spikes in popularity.

This is an example of the relationship between individual choices (or actions) and social outcomes, which is summed up in the following graph:

Teh Syllabus

Here is the syllabus:      http://bit.ly/gckeVX
As a pdf:  http://db.tt/D86S63N

Here is the course schedule:  http://bit.ly/ed0qBF
As a pdf:    http://db.tt/TfokVG2


Here are the books:  http://introsociology2011.blogspot.com/2010/11/get-organized.html