I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to me before to explore the intercultural aspects of the EVonline sessions for language teachers offered by TESOL. For 8 years now I have been enjoying and benefitting from the international mix of teachers who sign up for these free development sessions and so in the last Absolutely Intercultural podcast I tried to give a flavour of what you can expect in the way of intercultural experience from a 6 week online event.
One of the intriguing experiences was a tour of virtual Mecca in Second Life led by Nergiz Kern based in Turkey. Nergiz is a very experienced Second Life resident and had organised the tour as part of the Teaching Languages in Virtual Worlds EVonline session. Although everyone has voice in Second Life, the tour was organised such that only Nergiz the tour leader spoke while anyone having problems or questions could get their message across through text chat. This was more than just a chat or presentation. We got to hear the Koran being chanted, we were given an idea of the magnitude of the Grand Mosque and experienced a little for oursleves the mores and expectations when visiting such sites. Obviously I could only give a few edited highlights in the podcast so you can experience the whole 30 minute tour in the video below.
Tour of Virtual "Makkah" in Second Life from NergizK on Vimeo.
Another interesting event was the chance to interact with Mark Pegrum, author of the recently published book From Blogs to Bombs about the need for teachers to instil critical thinking and promote multiliteracies in their students. Pegrum’s book takes an international perspective and he was questioned about the intercultural differences in Internet usage by one of the participants in his live session.
And even in the more traditionally text based sessions there are still interesting discussions cropping up such as the one about whether tolerance is a virtue or a weakness in the Process Drama session. All in all a very rich intercultural experience.
Finally the podcast also features a short extract from the Kick-off event which has become traditional in the EVonline sessions when moderators each present their sessions. One of the permanent features of the EVonline sessions is the Becoming a Webhead (BAW) group and so the podcast includes a clip in which Teresa Almeida D’Eca describes the international mix of moderators in the BAW session.