Can you play your way to better intercultural understanding? Game-based learning is becoming more and more accepted. There is even a new high school in New York where the curriculum is based on games. I have previously explored some games for promoting intercultural competence such as the University of Portsmouth’s C-shock but this time I [...]
Sep 162010
Mike Marzio has been on my list of potential interviewees for a long time because of his innovative Real English video materials. But the reason that I finally got round to interviewing him for the Absolutely Intercultural podcast is that he has a personal project for which he needs to raise €30,000 to cover the [...]
You may not have noticed but May 21 was UNESCO’s World Day for Cultural Diversity, for Dialogue and Development. As a change to the cliched international fair of ethnic cuisine Debbie Swallow, crosscultural expert based in the UK, decided to start a blog called the World at Work. The idea would be to invite people [...]
May 172010
May 21st (Friday) is UNESCO’s “The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development” and Debbie Swallow has organised a new website for collecting workplace critical incidents. Do you have any examples of intercultural differences you have come across while working in other cultures? If so why not share them at the World at [...]
May 082010
I was amazed at the prevalence of tired old stereotypes about Africa when I spoke to Ekene Ajufo and Polly Anna Sanches Martinez about a discussion forum event they organised on behalf of the African Student Union at the University of Florida to discuss the theme of ‘Us v Them’. They called them National Geographic images. The problem [...]
Apr 112010
An aspect of intercultural learning which we haven’t looked at much so far in the Absolutely Intercultural podcast is experiences gained through voluntary work. In Barcelona at the Anna Lindh Foundation forum, I was fortunate enough to meet Rachad Izzat from Morocco who has gained a huge amount of intercultural experience through his involvement in [...]
Mar 052010
Pre-amble So I’m here at the Anna Lindh Foundation Forum and waiting for the workshop on creating spaces of peace and co-existence to begin. This is my first time live-blogging and I think this is going to be mentally exhausting. What often takes a great deal of time is adding links so that may come [...]
Jan 222010
In most cases what you grow up with is normality and very soon you know how to behave in most regularly occurring circumstances. When you move to a different culture, all that know-how is not necessarily valid and suddenly the daily, weekly, monthly and annual rythms aren’t automatic anymore. Instead there are a whole array [...]
Jan 172010
I didn’t realise it explicitly at the time but my wedding was an intercultural affair since my mother is French and we invited several French relatives over to participate in the event. Thinking back so many years ago I don’t recall ever paying any attention to what the French participants would be expecting, still less [...]
Dec 162009
I think I finally understood a couple of Lenny Henry’s characters after talking to Kole Ade-Odutola about the Yoruba language. Kole is from Nigeria, currently living in the US and teaching Yoruba in Florida. I hadn’t realised that it was a requirement of all university students in America that they should spend some time learning [...]