I first came across the idea of Pangea Day as a film-making exercise addressed to all. The brief was to make a short film illustrating one of the hundreds of human universals discovered by, amongst others, anthropologost Donald Brown. I watched Pangea Day yesterday and was amazed at how smoothly it all went from a technical point of view. I watched it all on the internet and only dropped out once during the whole four hours and I think that was my computer more than anything else. There were only one or two very minor technical hitches in the last hour or so. Inevitably I am comparing this event to those such as Live Aid and maybe the advantage here was that they were dealing mainly with showing film which was all ready to go, rather than live music outdoors with attendant potential for glitches. It was a nice mix of mainly film with a few interviews, a handful of monologues and some live music from Brazilians, Iranianans, Malians and others. I particularly liked Glberto Gil's music. As is so often the case with special events such as these, the day was the result of the vision of one individual, in this case Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian American.
Pangea Day was meant to be a celebration of human universals and this was partly used to make a plea for an end to conflict in Israel and Palestine 'because in the end we all want the same things'. The event was also a celebration of the short film. Every film shown had merit and I learned a few things such as that condoms in Mozambique are often bought to make footballs rather than for their original purpose! Other films which made a mark included The Slap from Iran, and 'J'attendrai le suivant' (I'll wait for the next one) from France. Difficult to watch was Inja (Dog) based in South Africa. I also learned that in promoting this day on our podcast I had been pronouncing it wrongly with a hard g instead of a soft g.
Even the problem of the digital divide was addressed, in part, by the giving away of mobile phones in various parts of the world so that a wider range of people could submit films.
Of the speakers, I was particularly impressed by what Robert Kurzban had to say. In a nutshell his research tells us that prejudice can be overcome. This is quite a contrast to the usual belief that it is almost impossible to dislodge ingrained attitudes. Another intriguing speaker was Jonathan Harris who has made an amazing website of art forms derived from the harvesting of human feelings from all over the internet.
I was pleased to see that Yann Arthus-Bertrand's 6 Billion Others was widely used to illustrate themes such as happiness, sorrow and anger.
I also appreciated the live blogging of the event even though it was more of a retrospective timetable than a commentary. Unfortunately I didn't manage to hook up with any of my Webhead friends even though I was regularly visiting two of their usual online chat haunts.
This was a consciousness-raising event rather than a fundraising one though and so I think that the presenters were at a loss to be precise about what action individuals should take as a result of being a part of the day. 'Give us your money now!' was not an option and some of them were left floundering and eventually told us to go to the website, look at the blog and...'
Overall the thesis is that once we get to know each other we are less likely to be in conflict. And getting to know each other is getting easier all the time through the medium of film and other digital technologies. I think it succeeded admirably in creating a feeling that you were sharing a world event on an individual to individual basis mainly because of the live blog commenting function. I tried to check whether the Day was being broadcast by any major TV channels. It certainly wasn't carried here in Denmark and I was in the middle of trying to see if it had been shown on British TV when the computer locked up but I have a feeling that it was not attractive to TV stations. So more a grassroots event than a broadcast event. However I don't think that our podcast, Absolutely Intercultural, is about to be made redundant in the near future.
The last extracts from the Intercultural Management Institute's annual conference were released in Show 56 of Absolutely Intercultural yesterday. I also took the opportunity to canvas for more nominations for the Danish podcaster prize. All you need to do is send an email naming me and the podcast to nominering@podcasterprisen.dk
I must say that it is a real honour to be able to eavesdrop in this way at a conference which I wouldn't normally be able to attend. Last year was our first attempt when all we could manage were participant reports but this year we have recordings of highlights from the actual sessions. Thanks must go to Laura Hash, an intern at the Intercultural Management Institute, who did all the hard work recording and editing. Back at the conference we have extracts from Philip Deaval of the US Air Force talking about the intercultural work which needs to be done in the theatre of war. I never realised before that there would be somebody running after the American tanks in Korea working out compensation for damaged rice crops for example.
We also hear from Richard Harris, a Briton living and working in Japan, talking about the concrete visualisation of what personal space means for example when Arabs expect to 'feel the breath of the other person on their cheeks.' He also explains a novel way-finding method used by Pacific cultures in which the end of a song determines the right time to turn left or right.
Then we hear from Dr Gary Weaver of the IMI, describing the Khan simulation which is used to train Americans to deal with non-European cultures. This was new to me, although I could hear from Dr Weaver's introduction that it shouldn't have been as he describes it as 'probably the most famous inter-cultural simulation in the world'. The essence of the simulation is that an actor plays Mr Khan who comes from a high context culture in the categorisation proposed by Dr E Hall. We hear an extract of the simulation during the podcast in which the American's efficiency orientation contrasts with Mr Khan's wish to build up a good personal relationship with his new foreign partner.
Finally there was the intriguing notion of virtual consuls and Diplopedia, a wikipedia of intelligence information for use by the US state department. Not surprisingly the idea was met with sceptism when it first came into use a couple of years ago.
That was it regarding the conference and all that remained for me to do was to remind listeners of Pangea Day which is May 10th at 18.00 GMT when the winning short films will be shown all over the world and in various media. There will be time to show 24 winning films and I'll be interested to see what universal human values they touch on.
As we attempt to put some flesh on the train the trainers VITAE course in which we want to make teachers act as mentors to their colleagues in integrating digital resources into their teaching, it becomes obvious that they must have mentors themselves. So each unit of the course will have a suggested mentor session. Otherwise the idea of mentoring is in danger of disappearing altogether in the stress/excitement of trying out new digital tools. In order for this to work the mentor and course tutor need to be two different people (as recommended for example here) This makes this either a very expensive course or means that we will have to work hard to get volunteer mentors.
The latest episode of Absolutely Intercultural focuses on the Arab world as perceived through European eyes and features experiences in Egypt, the Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as experienced by an American, a Latvian and three Spanish sisters. Recurring themes are about the importance, or lack of it, of time and the segragation of the sexes. The show also emphasises the benefits of learning even a little Arabic.
What is not immediately apparent is the amount of work which has gone into producing this particular show after our original blog was somehow infected by a virus which meant that we were no longer able to edit the content. With a new host with helpful staff we feel that we have are now on a surer footing. Those who were subscribing with iTunes may have missed show 54 but this show, number 55, seems to be registring with existing subscribers as normal so our fingers are crossed that there won't be any problems in that direction.
And of course all our troubles started almost to the day that our podcast was nominated for a Danish podcasting prize. Only now that things seem back to normal do I feel confident enough to ask for more nominations if you have been enjoying what you have been hearing on the podcast to date. What it says on the podcast blog:
Absolutely Intercultural has been nominated for a Danish podcasting award because every other AI show is produced in Denmark. If we are to have a chance of winning then we need more nominations before we get to the voting stage! So if you like what you hear then send a mail to nominering@podcasterprisen.dk with the following details: Name of the podcaster(s): Anne Fox
Nominator’s name and email address (to take part in a prize draw of nominators)
Reason for nomination: optional but you can explain why the podcaster deserves the nomination Deadline for this first round is May 12th. If your Danish is good you can read more at http://www.podcasterprisen.dk/
This is a refreshingly angry song hankering after the 'good old Denmark' of the hippy town of Christiana and beyond. WARNING: Contains some strong Anglo Saxon language among the Danish. The singer, Natasja, was killed in a car crash last June but the song has been in the charts for weeks since the beginning of this year. She also recorded a traditional Danish song, 'i Danmark er jeg født' (in Denmark was I born) about how lovely Denmark is, set against a reggae beat, refreshingly multi-cultural in a country where conformity is the tradition. She may be better known outside Denmark for her hit Calabria.
Another surprise was to turn on the car radio last week only to hear the dulcet tones of Alice Cooper. No, this was not an interview. He was hosting a music program and apparantly does this 5 nights a week. Yes, it's syndicated but still it was a bit of a shock amongst the usual Danish and occasional German that I usually pick up. And it makes me wonder what I'm doing going round teaching English here if people can listen to an English language show 5 times a week.
Having just spent the best part of an hour removing spam comments from my comment wall and various old blog posts here, I have had to lock the door once again and only allow comments by logged in users.
I do this most reluctantly because for me the whole point is to enable dialogue here. I wonder if anything has changed from a technical point of view which made me vulnerable to spam comments. Perhaps the snazzy anti-spam widget on eduspaces was re-set after all the TIG brou-ha-ha and I have to go somewhere and switch it on again.
In addition to a low tech working environment I have also been concerned about the low tech school environment experienced by my daughter recently. At last she was given a project task to do. She and 2 others chose to find out the history of the Beatles. Their immediate reaction, encouraged by the teacher, was to get some books on the topic. Unfortunately the school library is not very big and doubles as the community library. So they needed to order relevant books through the inter-library service which would take 2 or 3 weeks.
Never mind. The Internet must be a rich source of information. So last Friday my daughter and one of her team mates spent an hour and a half trying to access a school computer. They trailed from one machine to another before finally deciding that perhaps it would be better to start a joint document about their project. But they didn't manage to find a single machine which could open the word processing program. I am flabbergasted that in this day and age in a country which regularly tops the IT use league, that this should happen.
The only reason that the group got anything done in the end was because I had gone into my own school library and borrowed three books for them to work from in the meantime. I also talked with a colleague who is the author of two books about the history of rock music in Denmark whether he would be willing to talk with the project group and of course he was. However my daughter is not used to thinking about research methods and thought this sounded a bit whacky as a source of information. Finally I posted on two Danish blogs asking if there was anybody out there who was a screaming Beatles fan and why they did it! No response so far.
I may have interfered far too much already. However I think that this is an unacceptable situation and I have contacted 4 key people in the school to ask them what is going to be done. The answer I got is that they replace machines as the budget allows and that they will soon have wireless internet access in the building. This doesn't address the book issue, nor the issue of students being able to produce electronic documents with relative ease. There is also an issue about research methods which is not being addressed but I didn't even mention that. One step at a time.
I think that it is deeply ironic that I am worrying about the fine detail of a Web 2.0 training course for teachers while my own daughter is not being offered even the basics in the standard state school.
I have recently started a new series of technical English classes, this time on Sjælland near Copenhagen. There is an advantage to repeating sessions but I cannot exploit it to the full because the equipment level of the classroom I find myself in is the lowest I have experienced so far. There is a blackboard which means I have to either handcopy or take bad photographs of what we note down. There is a very slow computer with no speakers which means that showing streamed videos is out of the question. There is a projector/beamer but with no apparent means to switch it on.
I have in the past collected interesting videos such as the HP customer service call on You Tube or the intercultural differences in email on video jug. I have also recorded previous groups doing telephone exercises which I used at the time but which I like to recycle in the form of different exercises for future groups (eg write the follow up email to this telephone call). I also collate all our materials into a single online location to give some sort of permanent location to the class (in the past I have had a group where we had to use a different physical classroom each week).
In the present situation I have studiously avoided using IT but next week we are looking at telephone technique and I would like to do some recordings and show some videos or play some existing recordings. The only solution is to become completely independent by downloading all necessary videos and audio files onto my laptop and making sure that I don't leave the house without a pair of speakers as well. It's very time-consuming to do it all myself like this. And I thought things were moving forwards. Thank goodness I don't have to bring the electricity generator as well!
We are still working on the development of learning objectives for the VITAE course. As a starting point I imagined what the ideal course would look like and extracted learning objectives from that vision but that gave a set of learning objectives which were too tied to the structure of the course that I had envisaged. It needed to be more flexible. So the next step was recognising that what we want our participants to learn consists of some technical mastery, some pedagogical insights and the need to apply lifelong learning through on-going professional development and mentoring.
The pedagogical objectives however were very woolly and imprecise. Meanwhile on the technical mastery side we wanted to get away from a prescribed list of tools which had to be mastered. The key in the end was linking tools to learning by starting with learning. In this way one can do away with the technical mastery section altogether and simply phrase the pedagogical objectives in terms of the benefits which may be derived from using digital/online tools. An example would be:
Pedagogical aim: Would the learning activity benefit from access to external persons? (eg students in another location, experts, eye witnesses):
VITAE learning objective:
I can help my students communicate synchronously and asynchronously through text, voice and video.
This is then open for course participants to learn how blogs, wikis, IP telephony, newsgroups or virtual meeting rooms can help to meet this need and which would be best for the given learning activity.
I still feel the need for some sort of model or procedure to guide teachers in choosing resources. In searching for this new holy grail what I have found, such as this from British Colombia, seems to take the tool as a starting point and seems to be far too detailed. So I conclude that these guidelines are written from the perspective of making a large investment in software licences when they go down into the detail of looking at the gender balance, the design and so on. Is there something, I wonder, which takes the learning first and helps a teacher assess which tool might be the most appropriate?
Roundabout now is when I usually post a summary of the latest episode of the Absolutely Intercultural podcast and indeed the sound file and show notes are ready to go but disaster has struck and we are unable to post the episode. They are working hard in Germany to rectify and rescue as much as possible but a solution won't be found before Monday at the earliest. The problem is very mysterious and difficult to diagnose but seems to be due to a malicious link posted somehow but which does not reveal itself when you look at the code.
In a way it is an opportunity to re-assess why we do the podcast and whether we want to continue since a solution may involve substantial expense.
On the other hand we just got nominated for a Danish podcast prize which is a great honour and kind of encouragement to continue through adversity. I don't think we qualify though because I am not Danish.
Just in case you were wondering the show notes for show number 54 are below and we expect that somehow or other the show will be accessible at the usual place sometime next week.
absolutely huggable Dr Gary Weaver explains how vice-president Nixon in 1957 was over-zealous in applying the intercultural advice his aides gave him to the effect that in Latin America you should hug people you meet. The sight of so many totalitarian rulers being hugged by Richard Nixon enraged many and made the case for the establishment of the Institute.
absolutely diplomatic Sherry Mueller, President of the National Council for International Visitors explained the concept of citizen diplomacy as something which happens 'one handshake at a time' and expresses her delight at seeing an old film of Elvis Presley as a GI arriving in Germany and being acutely aware of the effect of his actions on the image of the US.
absolutely stereotypical Roger Rosenthal of the Migrant Legal Action Program surprised the audience by dispelling the stereotype of the typical illegal immigrant. What picture does the phrase illegal immigrant bring to your mind? Listen to find out if you are just carrying stereotypes in your head. The show ends with some comments from delegates and speakers about how the conference felt to them.
Many thanks to Laura Hash for recording and editing and thanks to the IMI for inviting us along.
TEFL teacher and project developer in the areas of e-learning, EU projects, teacher training, mentoring, inter-cultural competence, language learning, m-learning, Nordic languages, online meeting moderation
