Università della Svizzera italiana (University of Lugano) - Master in Intercultural Communication

new college courses available at Open Yale Courses

2010-01-14T13:33:00.001+01:00

new college courses added to "Open Yale Courses," the University's free educational initiative, available to anyone with access tothe Internet.Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection ofintroductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at YaleUniversity. The aim of the project is to expand access to educationalmaterials for all who wish to learn.Open Yale Courses is one of the most frequently visited Yale websites: morethan one million unique visitors from 191 countries have accessed the sitesince its debut in December 2007.We hope the lectures and other course materials on this site will be aresource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectualexploration. All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom andare available in video, audio, and text transcript format. Registration isnot required and no course credit is available. Open Yale Courses contentcan be accessed through our partner platforms by visitinghttp://www.youtube.com/yalecourses and http://itunes.yale.edu/.

ICT Ethics

2010-01-12T21:12:00.005+01:00

A recently mediated event regarding a death saved student who had been subject to cyberbullying made me think about posting a short contribution on the phenomenon of cyberbullying which, unfortunately, continues to be on an increasing tendency throughout the world both among children and teenagers or even among adults.

Many reports and concerted research show that regular schoolyard or corridor bullying among students is now doubled by an even more dangerous form of bullying together with the increase of the amount of time spent by children and teenagers in the virtual space via internet while playing games, chatting or instant messaging.

While spending their time in the virtual space, children and teenagers may be exposed to various forms of cyberbullying through ICT either in a direct manner or via a proxy.

Taking into account the fact that bullying in general and cyberbullying in special (because the bully acts generally in an anonymous manner making the identification and intervention more difficult or impossible) may have long-lasting harmful/traumatic effects on a child's self-esteem, mental and emotional health or school performance, it is necessary that both schools and parents as well as all the other responsible bodies take preventive measures in order to raise students' awareness regarding the risks related to ICT use when correlated with unethical behaviour manifested by some users.

It is recommended that teachers and parents should talk to the children about these aspects in an open manner in order to make them feel thoroughly supported especially when the children have been victimized through cyberbullying methods.

Among direct methods most studies mention:

- Instant messaging (IM) sending hurtful or threatening messages to other children
- Blogs:online journals that may be used maliciously to spread rumours about other children (students);
- Internet Polling: sending out messages to other children in the same school asking who is the prettiest, the ugliest, who is dumb etc.;
- Sexting: sending nude, semi-nude or degrading pictures of children. This type of direct attack is punishable by law and may carry the stigma of branding the offender as a child molester;

Cyberbullying by proxy: the bully gets someone else to do their work. Even parents may be caught up in this web without realizing that they are being used.

- Internet account: the bully gets hold of a victim's account and sends out emails on behalf of the victim;
- Parents may think their child is doing something wrong and may punish the child while he/she is actually innocent;
- The cyber bully can post information about a victim in hate groups chat rooms or in child molesters chat rooms. All the bully has to do is provide the screen name and/or cell phone number in the chat rooms.

As a result of the common counselling by schools and parents alike, students should realize that ICT is great and offers considerable opportunities if wisely used on safe and creative educational webs but, at the same time, it can also have harmful/traumatic effects if misused in unethical ways. They must understand that using ICT ethically is a key responsibility of a "digital citizen". Anyway, they must understand that cyberbullying in unacceptable and they should prevent it or ask for support whenever they feel they are subject to any form of cyberbullying.

Finally, I would like to recommend a website that contains very useful ideas regarding cyberbullying, a resource that I found very interesting and that could be of help for teachers, parents or whoever interested in the topic.

Cyberbullying - digizen.org

2010-01-11T14:40:00.008+01:00

L'art islamique

L’art islamique était caractérisé à travers l’histoire par son style artistique abstrait, en forme géométriques, florales, arabesques, et la calligraphie arabe.
C’est un art qui se base sur une philosophie religieuse émanant de la foi musulmane. Dans la croyance musulmane, tout est création de Dieu et tout revient à Dieu. Cette croyance est ancrée dans l’art islamique à travers l’utilisation des gravures symétriques et multiples tournant autour d’un noyau.
Par ailleurs, il présente une certaine unité stylistique due aux déplacements des artistes, des commerçants, des commanditaires et des œuvres. L'emploi d'une écriture commune dans tout la civilisation islamique et la mise en valeur particulière de la calligraphie renforcent cette idée d'unité. D'autre éléments ont été mis en valeur, comme l'attention portée au décoratif et l'importance de la géométrie et des décors tapissants. Toutefois, la grande diversité des formes et des décors, selon les pays et les époques, amène souvent à parler plus d'« arts de l'Islam » que d'un « art islamique ».
L’art islamique s’est développé à travers la poterie, l’architecture (des mosquées et des châteaux), les aciers, la tapisserie et le textile. Il s’est caractérisé, également, par sa créativité et originalité à travers l’utilisation de matériaux comme le papier, le cuir et le bois. Ainsi, l’art islamique a pu créer un nouveau style décoratif en façonnant le bois en forme d’arabesques et d’ornements.
La calligraphie est la forme la plus avancée de l’art islamique. Elle a pu évoluer à travers l’histoire en introduisant d’autres styles calligraphiques comme en Perse, en Inde et en Turquie.

La calligraphie arabe
L'utilisation de l'écriture comme un art est l'une des composantes les plus caractéristiques de l’art islamique.
Le style calligraphique arabe est divisé en deux grandes catégories : le kufique, aux caractères angulaires se développe, tant en Égypte qu'en Iran et le cursif, aux caractères déliés. Ces deux grands types varient énormément, selon le pays et l'époque où ils sont employés. On peut citer par exemple, pour les calligraphies angulaires, le kufique tressé, où les hampes se mêlent, ou encore le kufique animé, dont les lettres se terminent par des visages humains et animaux. Dans les cursifs, on distingue en général six styles canoniques :
le naskhî, l’un des premiers à se développer, rapide et lisible, très utilisé dans le monde arabe. Une de ses variantes, le maghribî, est usitée en Al-Andalus et au Maghreb ;
le muhaqqaq, en faveur sous les Mamelouks, penché vers la gauche ;
le thuluth, également très utilisé à la période mamelouke en Égypte, qui se caractérise par la hauteur des hampes ;
le rayhânî ;
le riqâ’, proche du thuluth, qui sert uniquement dans des documents administratifs ;
le tawqî’, à propos duquel on peut faire la même remarque.

L’arabesque
L’arabesque est un ornement de peinture, sculpture, gravure ou mosaïque répétant des symétries stylisées qui évoquent des formes de plantes, plus rarement d'animaux (la représentation de ces derniers étant déconseillée en Islam). C'est l'une des particularités de l'art décoratif islamique. Le choix des formes géométriques et de leur agencement découle d'une vision du monde propre à l'univers Islamique. Pour un musulman, ces formes constituent des motifs dont la répétition s'étend au-delà du monde matériel visible : elles symbolisent la nature infinie - et dépourvue de centre - de la création. Comme l'iconographie chrétienne, l'arabesque est l'expression d'une spiritualité.

Safwa Aïssa

Intercultural Education

2010-01-11T01:18:00.011+01:00

In our nowadays globalised world the necessity of the development of the Intercultural Competences represents a must that every school should consider.

Consequently, the enhancement of the intercultural dimension in schools should represent a very important element both of the core-curriculum as well as the extra-curricular activities.

Significant measures have been taken and ever-increasing initiatives emerge both nationally and internationally as a result of the implementation of more coherent policies regarding intercultural education.

One of the most efficient ways of the implementation of the intercultural education in schools is represented by the various types of web-based European and international projects aimed at developing students' and teachers' intercultural competences alike, carried out under the umbrella of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission and other governmental or non-governmental bodies interested in the development of the intercultural competences (such as SIETAR, EFIL, British Council, French Institute etc.).

Unlike regular transnational projects based on student and teacher mobilities that imply considerable costs and are thereby very limitative, web-based projects are more convenient and more efficient allowing the possibility of a much greater number of students and teachers to take part in the collaborative work on various themes related to cultural diversity, European values and whatever theme the partner schools or the partner classes decide upon.

I will insert below a few links to the websites of some European and international projects meant to support the enhancement of the intercultural dimension in schools. They are very popular in Europe and a lot of European schools take part in the proposed web-based activities either by integrating the collaborative work in the regular curriculum and regular lessons or as extra-curricular activities. This highly contributes to the enhancement of the students' motivation for learning and adds a lot to the development of the linguistic, ICT and intercultural competences.

This short contribution is intended to be a plea for the web-based intercultural projects as I strongly believe in their formative values and based on my own experience I can assert that students enjoy them very much as a way of learning in a creative and pleasant manner.

myEUROPE Home Page

HOME - European Schoolnet

eTwinning - Homepage

Europe and me: A resource kit on European Citizenship Education

ENO - Environment Online

Time For Citizenship

Svetlana Tomekovic Database of Byzantine Art

2010-01-10T15:38:00.000+01:00

The Index of Christian Art is pleased to announce that the Svetlana
Tomekovic Database of Byzantine Art is now available on its website.

http://ica.princeto n.edu/tomekovic/ index.php

Before her untimely death, Svetlana Tomekovic photographed many
monuments of Byzantine art from Russia to Italy. Unfortunately, these
were not fully catalogued or described apart from her cursory notes in
French on the actual images themselves.

The Index of Christian Art was pleased to digitize the collection and to
make them available for public use in advance of them being more fully
catalogued and described in its database.

We suspect there are errors in these descriptions and would appreciate
hearing from you as to any that you may find. The database is a simple
structure designed for easy access but it does contain many images of
interest that we hope will be of use.

Simple instructions as to how the database works are given in the
introduction and to enlarge the images simply click on them.
Colum

Colum Hourihane
Director, Index of Christian Art

Tetiana Kotko

earthTV

2010-01-10T15:28:00.001+01:00

I'd like to share a websource that serves as 'means to preserve cultures'. And also it's about massmedia that is on tv and online.

When I have a chance, I try to be at home by 8 pm because one local tv channel starts its news program. But I'm interested in 2-3 min video before the program - live pictures from various locations in the world to get a feeling what's going on in the world at the moment. Within seconds you can visit various locations worlwide. The music that is on at the moment is dynamic and you feel like you are in the course of the things in the whole world. I like it a lot!

earthTV - the world's biggest remote controlled TV camera network broadcasting 24h live video footage of more than 70 locations in Europe, Asia, America. Globally, earthTV airs daily on over 40 platforms worlwide: Al Arabiya (Middle East), CenterTV (Russia), France2 (France), Sky Travel (UK). Now its content is also available at www.earthTV.com.

2010-01-10T15:27:00.000+01:00

theeuropeanlibrary.org
I'd like to share a websource that serves as 'means to preserve cultures' - The European Library.

It is a free service that offers access to the resources of the 48 national libraries of Europe in 35 languages. Resources can be both digital (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.) and bibliographical . Quality and reliability are guaranteed by the 48 collaborating national libraries of Europe.
What is a national library?

A national library is the library specifically established by a country to store its information database. National libraries usually host the legal deposit and the bibliographic control centre of a nation.

Another interesting feature of this great websource is that you can enjoy the exhibitions held in the great national libraries of Europe through a single access point. Now on display: Napoleonic wars, unique buildings and magnificent treasures.

www.theeuropeanlibrary.org
Tetiana Kotko

The Arabic language: historical and contemporary issues

2010-01-01T22:41:00.005+01:00

Arabic language is one of the oldest, still speaking languages in the world. Based on archaeological scripts, its origins go back to third century A.D., but it is widely thought to be much older than that. The survival and development of Arabic language were largely influenced by the Koranic revelation (610 - 623 A.D.). Historians affirm that the Koran was revealed at the moment when the spoken Arabic was at the peak of its development, but the written language wasn’t yet developed in an adequate way. Indeed, the Arabic alphabet is composed by 28 consonants, while the symbols (letters) adopted at the time were not well differentiated, so the same symbol was adopted for several sounds. Moreover, the vocals were not written at all.

The necessity to develop the Arabic written language was more of religious than linguistic nature. Indeed, the Koran was the largest written text at the time. This situation has conditioned the development of the writing, reducing it to the minimum necessary. To differentiate the symbols representing different sounds different number of dots were used and to indentify the vocals diacritic signs were added to the consonants. In reality these diacritic signs are written only in the religious texts where the errors are not permissible and ignored otherwise. The questions is then posed: How can Arabic be read if only consonants are used in the written texts? The answer is that many factors play a role, among which two major ones, on one hand the visual memory that permits to recognise single words and read them, on the other the knowledge of the basis of grammar without which it would be impossible to read correctly.

Looking from right to left side one can note that the second, third and fourth letters are differentiated only by dots in different number and position. Indeed, only seven letters have their autonomous sign, while the others are differentiated in this way.

Speaking about the contemporary issues in Arabic language, it suffers an important problem, the diglossia, or so to say, the spoken language (different dialects) is different from the written one. The linguistic experts affirm that each language was originally a dialect that has made career. Arabic instead has regressed to various dialects. Today, in fact, many forms of Arabic exist: different dialects in different countries, the standard Arabic language (contemporary written language), the classical Arabic language (the Koranic text and ancient poetry). This phenomena poses the question of which form of language should be thought to the foreigners. The most appropriate form is the Arabic standard, as the dialects do not have the written form and there are no didactic materials to teach them. But how can a language that is not spoken be thought and what can its use be? The modern ICT in forms of satellite TV channels (e.g. the famous Al-Jazeera channel) and internet have reduced the problem of diglossia in the way that today the media channels, using the Arabic standard language have spread it to all Arabic speaking countries. In this way people of different dialects can understand the standard form. Same effect was obtained by the Italian television at its beginning of transmission. ICT also offer a good way for learning the Arabic standard through internet schools of language or private lessons with experts speaking and teaching Arabic standard, without the necessity to physically attend schools in some of the Arabic speaking countries. In this way foreigners can exercise their language abilities without the constraint of a particular dialect.

(blog posted by: Lassaad Dridi and Safwa Aissa)

http://web.tiscali.it/angolodidario/unmondodiscritture/Scritturaarabica.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language
http://www.arabic2000.com/school/

online communication

2010-01-01T16:16:00.001+01:00

I'd like to share my experience in communicating with an American pen friend. Once I replied her with an email in capital letters as I wanted to differentiate my words from hers. Then she wrote to me to ask why I shouted to her in my reply... She explained to me that in the US writing in capital letters might have a negative meaning in a reader's view. It turned out that I didn't know about some nettiquette nuances...
Tetiana Kotko

Why I liked this module :)

2010-01-01T16:15:00.001+01:00

This module I found very useful for my personal and professional life.
Particularly I appreciate an interesting and thorough approach towards websites. I also liked that websites were looked at in historic perspective and in parallel with many everyday things that I was suprised to learn to be related to website design and the net. This approach allowed me to see websites from a totally new angle and understand some things not connected with internet and websites! Thanks a lot!
Tetiana Kotko

Bueno? Dobre? How to learn a foreign language online

2010-01-01T16:08:00.003+01:00

Happy New Year from Kyiv!

Please see below an article I received from a colleague - I hope it would be useful for those of you who is interested in expanding your langauge portfolio! Good luck!
PS. I've tried some of them already and found them pretty good

Bueno? Dobre? How to learn a foreign language online
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/23/learn.language.online/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Tetiana Kotko

Help your kids learning English

2009-12-31T19:35:00.007+01:00

Living in the UAE and my two children 3,5 and 5,5 years old are visiting a international school focused on a British curriculum. Sole language spoken and written is generally English. I was very pleased to learn in the MIC 4 class that there exists an educational website forum organized by the British Council. The web-based forum contains links to excellent the “Learn English” websites for teachers, parents, and learners. It is useful for adults and children alike. For mothers like me, the “Learn English Kids for Parents” is offered for free by the British Council. It is a site for children who are learning English as a second or foreign language, with games, activities, songs, and stories designed to help children learn easily English.

The site is regularly updated with new resources which are related to specifics topics. The topics are appealing to children and are often integrated in my children school’s curriculum. You'll find a list of tips for using these topic-based materials listed on the site and much more. There are different sections such as “help your child to learn English” (e.g. translation booklets in various languages), parents talks (questions and answers), downloads (e.g. rhyme records), using learnEnglish (how to do it), courses and links.

The best is to try out the website with your kids, or even let your children take control and you will see how fun learning can be. Even with little English knowledge from the parents’ side, you still can help your children get ready in English thanks to this practical tool available for free on the internet.

e-education as a means to train domestic workers

2009-12-31T19:24:00.017+01:00

ICT in IC - Helping bridging the digital divide in Dubai II

Albeit rather uncommon in Europe, domestic workers – maids – are very popular in the Middle East. With the average size of a household of 5.5 and before even much higher in the Middle East, and men traditionally not involved in taking care of the household, maids have been often a necessity. But increasingly, maids are seen as an inexpensive welcomed relief of time consuming house hold work. In UAE, a maid costs less than USD 400 a month which is little compared to the average household income in the UAE of 9000 USD. And once the maid understands the instructions how the household has to be managed, she usually keeps on doing the same assignments day after day.

Given that maids are often very young when they first time arrive in the UAE – often 18 and younger – maids usually face the fate of stagnation in education. However, taken into consideration that these maids make more money than their whole family in their home countries, such fate does not seem to be disturbing – but should be because of a missed opportunity for further personal development.

Maids typically spend much of their time at home, with idle time that could be invested in education to ready for the challenges after the Dubai assignment. Back at home, the maids either have saved enough money to sustain a family life until their children can take care of them or the maids have to work for much less money and accept lower living standards.

As a win-win, maids could be trained in ICT and contribute more to the organization of a household and child care. The maids are taking care of the children most of the time and given their low level of education which could impact the children’s intellectual development. Therefore, a better educated maid would be most welcomed, as long as costs do not increase significantly.

Basically each household than can afford a maid in the UAE usually also has (or soon will have) access to ICT. The e-education initiatives could benefit the employer, and the maid will improve her education level and her employability.

Key challenges to establish such initiatives are to raise the employer’s awareness that educating the maid actually contributes to the welfare of the employer on multiple layers and does not even require time of the employer nor add to the cost. However, providing e-learning software comes at a cost and without scale ensured through governmental buy-in, that enforces to some extent the availability of ICT e-education opportunities for maids such software will not be developed.

Given Dubai’s financial tensions, funding to develop e-learning software is likely to come from additional sources. But with approximately 200k – 250k maids in Dubai alone, a couple of dollars per maid per year should be enough to kick start such initiative. And certainly enough the Government would want to take the opportunity to educate maids better about its local culture and values and give the maids guidance and direction how to influence the lives of the employers and the employers’ children.

With the annual fee and mandatory medical examination, the government can take the opportunity to introduce ICT accessibility and e-learning initiatives to the maids and their employers. Additionally, as a prerequisite, newly arrived maids could undergo a crash course in ICT and for those maids that are not able to read or write on-line literacy trainings could provide basic knowledge without a maid never will be able to improve life standard and, importantly, also will only be useful to a very limited extent to the employer.

In the end some personal reflections:

When living in Dubai and getting more often in touch with the many helpful low wage workers, it becomes obvious that of course not everyone leads a life in luxury, but also that for most of the socially disadvantaged low wage workers – men and women – access to ICT is usually limited to the use of mobile phones for voice and sms services and calling cards to reach family and friends “back home”. A daily to weekly call with closely related family members – husbands, wives, children – is the most commonly used ICT service by the many low wage expatriates in the UAE (and other MENA countries).

Only few interviewed by the author have regular access to the internet and are ICT literate enough to make

Who is socially disadvantaged? http://www.ezcertify.com/certificationfacts/8afact6.asp

A successful example of subsidized telecenters for the socially disadvantaged http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/schweiz/weshalb_basels_groesstes_internetcafe_gratis_ist_1.4393416.html
http://planet13.ch/

E-learning for the elderly sponsored by the Swiss government http://www.bfm.admin.ch/etc/medialib/data/migration/integration/berichte.Par.0031.File.tmp/ber-integrationsfoerderung-2008-f.pdf, page 44

Overview of Dubai Internet Cafes http://yp.theemiratesnetwork.com/browse/internet_cafe/united_arab_emirates-du-dubai/

Applicable rates differ between 2 to 10 Dhs per Hour (0.5 USD – 2.5 USD) and the cafes are open usually from around 09:00 until 22:00, accessible for all social and ethnical groups – at least in theory.

Subsidized telecenters in Dubai for the socially disadvantaged - a means to bridge the digital divide?

2009-12-31T16:20:00.016+01:00

ICT in IC - Helping bridging the digital divide in Dubai I

Despite the economic downturn, Dubai continues to be mainly perceived as an intercultural melting pot of the rich living a life of luxury in the Middle East. Easily it gets forgotten that most of the expatriate workforce consists of low wage domestic or construction workers from countries such as Pakistan, India, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Egypt, Yemen, etc.

The Dubai Government reinforces its efforts to establish Dubai as a tourist destination and center for finance and trade by ensuring world class ICT infrastructure. Etisalat, the incumbent telecom operator has promised to deploy fiber to all households in the UAE by end of 2011.

However, internet broadband and voice services, especially for international destinations, remains for a majority of the people in Dubai – the low wage workers – unaffordable. While nowadays many own a mobile phone – almost every activity in Dubai requires identification and contact through a local mobile phone number, be it taxi, medical, governmental administrative services, etc. – the cost for calling family members back home remains unaffordable because of a lack of international voice market liberalization. Also, internet access is often limited to internet cafes for those with an income of often less than USD 400 per month, even taken into account the inexpensive netbooks and many free WLAN hotspots today.

To bridge the digital divide in Dubai, the key challenge is the lack of ICT literacy. Overall education level for low wage domestic and construction workers is very basic. Reading and writing skills in English or Arabic are very limited, making it almost impossible to use modern ICT. With long and irregular working/waiting hours, educating low wage laborer is very challenging, and traditional education with teachers is difficult to organize and relatively expensive. e-learning through ICT could be a solution, ensuring that low wage laborers have an opportunity to get proper training and eventually make more money either in Dubai or in their home countries. Since the UAE Government does not yet show a clear interest in preparing its low wage workforce, private organizations may need to step in to educate and ready the expatriate low wage workforce for the 21th century digital society.

Projects such as Planet13 in Switzerland could be role models, enabling basic ICT access to socially disadvantages at affordable rates and also ensuring their ICT readiness through introductions to ICT and continuous trainings. Once the door to the ICT world is pushed open and kept open through affordable and flexible access, the low wage workforce can ready itself for the next steps – either taking more sophisticated job opportunities because of e-education in the UAE or at home, or simply by using ICT to simplify life, finding better jobs, housing opportunities, etc.

Of course, since initially no governmental support can be expected establishing telecenters for the socially disadvantaged will be challenging. Further low wage laborers are difficult to reach and motivate to spend their scarce spare time with ICT which they don’t understand. Cultural differences between the different ethnical groups within the low wage workers – maids from the Philippines, Yemen, Sri Lanka and construction workers from Pakistan, India, China do not fit easily into the same room. Also, employers seemingly have no interest in educating their cheap employees.

As a starting point, mobile telecenters powered through mobile broadband connections and offering trainings how to access ICT could be driven to the different spots. And potentially, ICT operators such as Du and Etisalat will recognize the potential and support such efforts, despite being partially governmental entities. And subsequentially, the Dubai Government will recognize that ICT is a efficient instrument to communicate with the different ethnical groups in Dubai. ICT in IC will raise awareness of the local cultural imperatives and therefore the government will join forces and support an ICT readiness programs even for the low wage workers.

All it takes is a room with internet access, volunteers and a broad understanding of the different ethnical groups and how they can be addressed most efficiently, respecting the cultural differences, and especially the mainly through religion predefined stereotypes of men and women, that are not easily to be overcome and need thus to be respected by initially offering training sessions to the different ethnical and social groups and only sequentially – as a side effect of ICT facilitating IC – mixing the different groups

Please contact me if you are interested in working with this NGO project.

Who is socially disadvantaged? http://www.ezcertify.com/certificationfacts/8afact6.asp

A successful example of subsidized telecenters for the socially disadvantaged http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/schweiz/weshalb_basels_groesstes_internetcafe_gratis_ist_1.4393416.html http://planet13.ch/

E-learning for the elderly sponsored by the Swiss government http://www.bfm.admin.ch/etc/medialib/data/migration/integration/berichte.Par.0031.File.tmp/ber-integrationsfoerderung-2008-f.pdf, page 44

Overview of Dubai Internet Cafes http://yp.theemiratesnetwork.com/browse/internet_cafe/united_arab_emirates-du-dubai/

The Use of Cultural Theories in Global Web Design

2009-12-30T15:59:00.004+01:00

Reading through Marcus Aarons article on the application of Hofstedes cultural dimensions in global web design, the questions arises if these dimensions are the best choice.

The author himself does not offer insight into a thorough evaluation process, but restricts his reasoning to the remarks that Hofstede‘s work is „well-respected“ and „demonstrates the value of his body of research in our field“¹⁾. A. Smith et al. mention in their article about developing usable cross-cultural websites that there is „a lack in explicite demonstration that such theories of culture are actually applicable to and significant within website usability“²⁾ refering to the need of further empirical studies to investigate other cultural theories (p.81), clearily stating that „the link between Hofstedes theories and web usability is at best unproven“ (p.83).

This critical attitude seems to be supported by the detected issue in the same paper that Hofstedes dimensions have different significance in different cultures. PD (Power Distance) showed a high importance and correlation between theory and empirical results in two cited studies with chinese users, whereas IC (Individualism - Collectivism) should slightly even reversed results to theoretical expectation and UA (Uncertainty Avoidance) had no relevance to chinese users as it appeared (p.79f). These findings seem to disqualify Hofstedes model as a whole and / or most of the according empirical results from further application in this field.

In the contrary to these opinions, Marieke de Mooij‘s research in global advertising speaks strongly for the usefulness and applicability of Hofstedes dimensions. Elaborating on studies about global convergence in wealth leading to divergence in consumer behavior involving 44 countries, she concludes „the model developed by Hofstede explains most of the variation of ... consumer behaviour across countries and enables marketing executives to quantify the effects of culture“³⁾. Although this remark sounds marketing specific, the common ground is, that not only consumer behavior but all behavior is to some degree culture bound. Elisabeth Würtz elaborating on this by means of the analysis of McDonalds Website regarding Hall‘s singular dimension of context shows illustrative examples i.e. the differing japanese and the indian website versions⁴⁾ .

There are cultural theories of many, only few seem clear enough to be applied in practical and efficient ways to meet other ends (such as the culturally correct creation of a website). Even less are backed by a rich body of empirical data such as Hofstede‘s, which allows direct and fast comparison as well as insight⁵⁾. As it becomes evident in De Mooij‘s article about the predictable future⁵⁾, the right answers will never purely derive from the rather mechanistic application of a categorisation system. True understanding will always in essence depend on the correct decryption of complex culture codes, the appreciation of their essential function, the underlying meanings that are connected with them and the motives that the interlocutors either tie to them or percieve from them. These future challenges will be apparent in all fields of intercultural communication, but more acute in the field of the internet and in website design due to global extent, speed of change, augmented complexity and communicative density of the medium.

Clifford Geertz postulated the intellectual, reflective and reflexive effort in any work involving other cultures. Good news is that the need for this, for intercultural competence, knowledge and skills will prevail, even increase, but to comply, will have its price in years and years of extensive research and work. If Hofstedes cultural dimension model will - after all - still be first choice to approach questions of cultural fluctuating continuance and intercultural communication - to resolve the dilemma of standardisation versus localisation - this only time will tell.

(blog posted by: Priska Troxler and Ulrike Smid)

1) Marcus, Aaron; Cultural Dimensions and Global Web Design: What? So What? Now What?; California and New York, 2001.

2) Smith Andy et al.; A Process Model for Developing usable Cross-Cultural Websites in Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 63-91; London, 2004, p.67.

3) De Mooij, Marieke; Convergence and Divergence in Consumer Behaviour: Implications for Global Advertising in: International Journal of Advertising, 2003, 22(2), The Netherlands and Spain, 2003, p. 198.

4) Wuertz, Elisabeth, A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites From High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures, Copenhagen, 2005.

5) Dahl, Stephan; Intercultural Research: The Current State of Knowledge; London 2004, p.19f.

6) De Mooij, Mareike; The Future is Predictable for International Marketers: Converging Incomes Lead to Diverging Consumer Behaviour in: International Marketing Review 17,2,

Colors in IC-ICT

2009-12-30T15:22:00.010+01:00

Colors as non-verbal elements in communication and in ICT - seen as highly visualized communication - play a significant role not less due to the reduction of interpersonal communication signals and cues through the means applied. Colors combined with messages have the power to speed up understanding - or to make understanding complicated or even impossible.

Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations: Images and quantities, Evidence and Narrative, Chesire, CT, US, 1997, p.76f

Even greater is the potential for misunderstandings, when communication is directed across different cultures.

Following the five areas of the Website Communication Model¹⁾(WCM), each dimension (contents&services, access tools, producers, users, environment) of the model is struck by questions of intercultural communication, but not all are dependent on the correct attribution of colors. Contents and services as well as access tools should be created, adjusted, tailored according to customer needs and appeal in order to be sought for. Surprisingly enough those aspects have surfaced only occasionally in the core business of ICT, the software development industry. It appears that in the production – the publishers - of software tools, originating in western, US-American culture and created by individuals of natural-science background, criteria of usability, functionality and pragmatic thought were and still are to a high degree prevalent.

Example AS/400. Yes, there were s, when the writing was green ….

Today as we see greater care in creating esthetic and visually appealing products, the standardization effect seems to remain to a high degree due to familiarization of the users and the great market power of a few powerful producers. Again here, intercultural use of colors seems not to be needed. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM Rational have a growing visual approach and still succeed with the same products worldwide independent of cultural differences.

But markets change and users, especially in areas of direct communication such as commercial communication, the internet and in website design, start influencing strongly future decisions. Today localization issues include not only traditional aspects like translation, date, measures, currencies etc²⁾, but rely also on exploration about metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction and appearance³⁾. These specifically cultural issues shaped in return by the relative market environment, are enhancing and accelerating contextual understanding. Colors might be foremost seen in the area of appearance (i.e. advertising) but have strong impact if also considered in the others localization issues. But so far, lacking clear guidelines and deeper knowledge in the intercultural use of color, the first working principle as of today is: “Do no harm”⁴⁾.

If we learn to use color metaphorically, according to existing, culturally coined, well-understood, familiar mental models, we use color in its most powerful function as a natural quantifier, amplifier and distinct communicational carrier. Then the use of color raises beyond the conscious functions of labeling, measuring, representing or decorating⁵⁾, becomes an own integral part of the message itself and can unfold its communicational powers aimed at the subconscious, intuitive, direct and fast understanding of the viewer, attract her or his attention, pin down interest, evoke reaction and create common ground as well as confidence and trust - aims that stand behind the concept of the cultural attractors introduced by A. Smith et al⁶⁾.

Standardization and localization tendencies will always run parallel to each other in respective degrees determined by the fluctuating influence of the five WCM areas. Knowing the difference, having tools to analyze and make educated decisions as well as applying them wisely will be part of future communication strategies of success⁷⁾.

(blog posted by: Priska Troxler and Ulrike Smid)

1) Cantoni, Lorenzo; WCM.

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1630000/1622032/p187-cantoni.pdf?key1=1622032&key2=1938941621&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=67819190&CFTOKEN=25735230

2). Marcus, Aaron, Emilie W. Gould; Cultural Dimensions and Global Web Design: What? So What? Now What?; California and New York, 2001, p.4.

http://www.amanda.com/resources/hfweb2000/hfweb00.marcus.html

3) Marcus Aaron, Cross-Cultural User Interface Design in: Smith, Michael J., and Salvendy, Gavriel, Eds., Proceedings, Vol. 2, Human-Computer Interface Internat. (HCII) Conf., 5-10 Aug., 2001, New Orleans, LA, USA, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ USA, pp. 502-505; p.3.

http://www.amanda.com/resources/HCII01/HCII01_PanXC_Marcus_160401.pdf

4) Tufte, Edward; Envisioning Information, Cheshire, CT, US, 1990, p.81

5) Tufte, Edward; Envisioning Information, Cheshire, CT, US, 1990, p.81

6) Smith Andy et al.; A Process Model for Developing usable Cross-Cultural Websites in Interacting with Computers 16 (2004) 63-91; London, 2004, p.64.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09535438

7) Cyr, Dianne et al.; Colour Appeal in Website Design Within and Across Cultures: A Multi-method Evaluation in: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 68 (2010)1-21, Surrey, Canada 2010; p.16f.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10715819

http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/

2009-12-30T14:53:00.001+01:00

Google Input Method: Type anywhere in your language

Google Transliteration IME is an input method editor which allows users to enter text in one of the supported languages using a romankeyboard. Users can type a word the way it sounds using Latincharacters and Google Transliteration IME will convert the word to itsnative script. Note that this is not the same as translation -- it isthe sound of the words that is converted from one alphabet to theother, not their meaning. Converted content will always be in Unicode.Google Transliteration IME is currently available for 14 differentlanguages - Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi,Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/
Tetyana Kotko MIC4

2009-12-30T14:42:00.002+01:00

My second example of the web-site that represents certain aspects of intercultural communication in the Internet would fall in between the first section – ICT/CMC as a means to access and get meaning across cultures, and the second section of the map – ICT as a means to preserve cultures. ReadPrint (www.readprint.com) is an English-speaking web-space that proposes world literature of different genres, renowned quality and popularity (practically all virtual books on the site are included in the so-called classical European and American literature). It preserves existing literature heritage making it accessible for everyone who has an Internet connection. The organization of the site is quite simple and easy to navigate: one has the possibility to look for books either through the authors catalogue, or through the books catalogue organized based on the genre of the book one is trying to find. The books are distributed for free and the owners of the site encourage private advertisement of their services (under the section “Volunteer" one could find different ways to help in popularizing the site). The list of the most popular books and the most popular authors is presented on the main page. The biographical information about each author and his/her most known quotes are also available.

ReadPrint is a site that has the character of a well-organized collection or of a self-service library with a clear catalogue (well, any site is in a sense a collection of materials, but in this case the term “library” is practically literal since the site is all about written texts). Arriving at the site the user is encountering not only what he might be looking for, but also the range of many other options that are immediately visible during the visit. I think it is one of the many examples of the advancement of the digital technologies as compared with the printed texts. There are several advantages of digitally saved and presented in the Internet texts in comparison to the “old-fashion” printed ones: first of all, they are distributed practically for free (the price one has to pay is the Internet connection price); secondly, they are easily stored and do not take up physical space (in fact, digital texts readers that recently appear on the market make it unnecessary to print out digital texts); thirdly, they are easily found in any spot on the globe that has an access to the Internet. All this also contributes to the possibility of easier intercultural exchange of the texts created by different national authors.

The last point that I want to make about the ReadPrint site concerns the fact that it does not propose texts written in the original languages, but only written or translated into English. Thus, it is oriented only and specifically towards general public that speaks the language. On the one hand, it could be considered as a shortcoming since it is limiting its target group. On the other hand, it could be an opportunity for non-native English speakers to practice their language skills and a good representation of the foreign cultures for the English-speaking world.

Lyudmyla Slobodyanyuk (MIC4)

Augmented reality and historical forms of information storage

2009-12-23T22:19:00.002+01:00

Amongst many interesting ideas during the class there was one about augmented reality. I could not say that it is a completely new one for me, but I had one more chance to muse on it. To think thoroughly, humans always perceived and continue to perceive the world around through the lenses of certain cultural codes, symbols, conceptions, ideas, etc. Augmented reality is based on the information processing that is particular to the societies and cultures in which one grows up and lives. Augmented reality in a sense is the very society and culture, meaning the forms of living together and the forms of interpreting information received through different means that are specific for humans. Starting from its basic features (for instance, writing as a means to cipher information about outer and inner world) and finishing with quite complex ones (for instance, scientific theories as conceptualizations of the knowledge), augmented reality is the foundation of humanity as such.

Throughout centuries, there were different forms of augmented reality and different means for it to operate. As it is known, historically, information – as a basis of knowledge development and growth – was stored differently. Oral forms of information preservation and transmission from one generation to the other could be considered the most archaic and the most basic ones. The big leap happened when the first forms of writing were invented in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It gave the opportunity for people to preserve the knowledge more thoroughly and to more quickly proceed in the research of their environment. One more crucial step in the history of humanity was the invention of printing press thousand years after the appearance of writing. It was crucial because it promoted the development of the ability to write and to read on the mass level (thus, increasing the speed of information processing) as well as it promoted the spread of all forms of scientific knowledge. Finally, today we are living in the age when the ability to understand very many indicators that we receive about the world through different technical means, the very ability to operate these technical means becomes more and more crucial both in professional and in personal life. Nowadays, new media (Information and Communication Technologies) are creating a world that more and more depends on their omnipresence and on abilities to read through their messages. It certainly revolutionizes our lives adapting, replacing and changing traditional models of dealing with information. It is the most recent leap in the history of knowledge that generates new forms of social co-existence and promotes augmented reality on the new level.

Lyudmyla Slobodyanyuk (MIC4)

Technology & Language Exchange

2009-12-13T18:56:00.007+01:00

Language barrier - a simple and practical reason behind difficulties in intercultural communication.
Here is a link to a website where language learners in one country can exchange with native speakers from another country.

www.mylanguageexchange.com

For example, an english speaker wanting to practice their japanese, can exchange with a japanese wanting to practice their english.

This model of language learning in "tandem" has been used in many language schools and universities. You can define your own parameters - whether you wish to confine it to text, speech, or a combination of both. In order to talk to each other you need a voice chat program (such as Skype)

Funnily enough, the clinical environment of web technology can provide the real world authenticity students are looking for beyond their textbooks. It provides students the opportunity to practice interpersonal communication skills as well their language skills.

Here is an example of this type of language exchange in practice
Students from the Gymnase Cantonal du Bugnon Lausanne , exchanging with students fro Kaohsiung Girls School in China.

Limitations / Problems
1) Your language partner is not a teacher, but just an ordinary person
2) Participants self proclaimed language expertise not always 100%.... I found a few dubious sounding participants who claim to speak everything from chinese to swahili (but probably what they lack in expertise they make up for in enthusiasm and good intentions)

Submitted by: Anne Toh

Putumayo World Music - preserving cultures on the web

2009-12-08T12:24:00.088+01:00

Music's deep connection to social identities has been distinctively intensified by globalization. This intensification is due to the ways cultural separation and social exchange are mutually accelerated by transnational flows of technology, media, and popular culture. The result is that musical identities and styles are more visibly transient, more audibly in states of constant fission and fusion than ever before. (Feld, Steven. Winter 2000: “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music, Public Culture – Vol. 12, Nbr.1, pp. 145-171). The result is a new musical genre called “World Music”.

The World Music label Putumayo, named after a beautiful river valley in Colombia, was founded in 1993 by Dan Stoper and Michael Kraus. Dan Stoper started his business with a hole-in-the-wall retail store in New York City in 1975, selling handicrafts and clothing collected in Latin America. The store received considerable media attention and by 1985, he found himself designing ethnic inspired contemporary clothing and supplying 600 other stores.

When he started his music label in 1993, World Music was limited in distribution and visibility in the United States and other countries. Since then Putumayo has built a proprietary network of more than 3,000 specialty retailers in the US alone and thousands internationally that play and sell its CDs. In addition to that, the label aimed at maintaining a strong presence in record stores and cultivated displaying. Their entire product range, as well as different video links, educational tools for teachers and their own kids section can be found on their website (see link on the bottom!).

Putumayo’s CD covers feature the distinctive art of Nicola Heindl, whose colorful, folkloric style reflects one of Putumayo's goals: connecting traditional to contemporary music. By combining meaningful music and appealing visuals with creative retail marketing, Putumayo has developed a unique brand identity, a refreshing rarity in today's artist and star-focused music industry.

The company’s authentic commitment gains additional credibility by their engagement in helping communities in those countries where the music originates from. This has led to contributions of more than $1 million dollars to respective non-profit organizations around the world (e.g. Coffee Kids, Oxfam, Mercy Corps and Amnesty International).

Putumayo World Music has succeeded as one of the few companies in this area in joining modern, successful, growing retail business with the deeper commitment of truly preserving distinct knowledge and passing on the cultural treasures of this world’s musical artistry to further generations. Thanks to organisations like this, history, heritage in music and art materialised cultural wisdom is granted a future in today’s fast-paced and mobile societies.

http://www.putumayo.com/en/about_us.php

posted by ulrike smid and priska troxler

Crosscultural webdesign: no multicultural templates available

2009-12-05T13:27:00.010+01:00

Internet brings people together from all over the world – even people from different cultures are coming closer together (and live in the same furniture for example!!). Communication inbetween is increasing. Distances loose their importance – you can meet in the world wide web. And you can reach people, stakeholders or even customers all over the world. But…. They use web interfaces in different ways according to their culture and different models for visual representations, navigation, interaction, and layouts, and have different communication patterns and expectations. Marcus and Gould state in their paper on “Cultural Dimensions and global Web design”, that it is not enough to translate a web site into another language to accomodate more and all users all over the world. How do you bridge the cultural differences? Not only languages are differenet but also tastes. Also in Webdesign. What about Appearance, Navigation, Interaction and Metaphors? Colours have siginificant associations you have to bear in mind designing a global website. Not everybody reads from right to the left! etc. Web developers and designers have to adapt to fit the habits of people from different cultures and find a way on how to apply culture factors into the web development. It is not a single model that can support all cross-cultural web communication. But how do you bridge the gap and improve limitations in usability across cultures? Looking at one example: IKEA. More and more people all over the world are living in IKEA furniture. Navigation stays the same.

Some small adaptations: for example the italian site has music playing and theatrical setup of a living room! www.ikea.com/it . While other country sites are very static and only the main part is different. Even the shophelper to ask is called “Anna” in all places!

posted by priska spörri

Intercultural Dialog: online

2009-12-05T12:02:00.009+01:00

If you want to have an intercultural dialog in the world wide web you can become a member at dialogin.com and communicate with me, Nicola, Prof. Claes or 7,873 members worldwide. About one third of dialogin members say they are consultants or trainers, one third are students and the rest are active in the profit and not-for-profit sectors. They come from all over the world. About 28% are based in Germany – unsurprising given dialogin’s roots – 13% in the U.S.A and 11% in the United Kingdom. These countries are followed by the Netherlands (5% of members), France (4%), China (3%), Austria (3%) and Switzerland (2%). Canada and Australia have 2% respectively. The remaining 24% are spread among more than 70 other countries in the world.

The members indicate a wide range of interests. Among the most frequently mentioned are negotiation, conflict in communication and human resources. China, the U.S.A., Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and India are the countries most frequently mentioned as being especially interesting to our members. 36% speak English as their first language and for 27% German is their mother tongue. For 46% English is their preferred second language and for 12% it is French with German being chosen by 8%.
A very small but fine global community where you can find events close to you: for example this „Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Qualifying Seminars in Zurich, Switzerland, January 19-21 & September 20-22, 2010“. The IDI is a valid, reliable, cross-cultural tool for assessing intercultural competence at the individual, group and organizational level. The IDI can be used in intercultural competence-building efforts with individuals and organizations. http://www.idiinventory.com/registration.php

Blog posted by priska spoerri

YouTube as an intercultural platform on the web

2009-12-01T22:45:00.001+01:00

As a first example, I would like to take the case of the well-known and widely used web-site YouTube (www.youtube.com). I think it is an extremely representative one in the context of intercultural communication on the Internet and its potential. As practically every Internet user knows, YouTube is all about posting video content. It is creating a field of intercultural interactions through possibilities to represent several cultural dimensions that I would classify in the following way:

– entertainment audio and visual cultures of various origins and genres (this would include songs, video clips, movies’ episodes, entertaining shows, commercials, and the like);

– documentaries (professional documentary movies, archived and recent news, programs/discussions on the burning issues of the day, etc.)

– home non-professional videos as a means to make a personal contribution, whether it concerns artistic expression or taking a stand on social/political issues (these videos could be regarded as the ones created specifically for being uploaded on the YouTube for wider public).

This classification would cover most of the YouTube videos (I am leaving slightly aside videos with ambiguous reputations, for instance those related to sexual contexts of non-artistic expressions, even though they could make a separate category) and would show the multifaceted approach to cultural representations practiced by the users. The first two categories are especially important in this respect.

YouTube is giving opportunities for the visitor to reach out and visualize world cultures autonomously and easily. Posting a video that would be watched by many Internet users is in a way an invitation, an expression, a statement. The site exercises several functions: it proposes means to archive existing “mosaics of cultures”, it gives a chance to get acquainted with something new and unknown, it brings related pieces of the “mosaics of cultures” together to one’s attention. Taking into consideration the map proposed during the class, YouTube – as it seems to me – is falling mostly into the first section: ICT/CMC as a means to access and get meaning across cultures (while one could say that it has some elements of the two other sections as well). It has certain limitations, but it facilitates intercultural and interpersonal exchanges in its own way. In my opinion, this would be one of the keys to its popularity.

Lyudmyla Slobodyanyuk (MIC4)

Le Net, la grippe et l’école

2009-12-01T13:30:00.001+01:00

Comment continuer à étudier alors que la grippe A oblige à fermer classes et établissements scolaires et que le lien physique prof-élèves n’est plus possible ?

Il faudrait poser cette question aux malins, accros des technologies informatiques. Par exemples aux membres de la plate forme de travail en réseau de La Cantine qui organise des « barcamps » : des non-conférences qui reposent sur la communication collaborative du web 2.0.
http://siliconsentier.org/lacantine

Car en cas de réelle nécessité, comment assurer la continuité de l’éducation ?
Mettre des cours en lignes pour assurer la continuité de la formation ne suffit pas. Il faudrait permettre aux enseignants et aux élèves d’être en contact direct, et pour cela savoir manier le Web 2.0, savoir créer un blog et le faire fonctionner. Mais qui sait faire cela ?

La grippe est l’opportunité de former les enseignants à ces nouvelles méthodes des TICE (technologies de l’information et de la communication pour l’éducation) ou même parfois de leur faire perdre leur suspicion à l’égard de ces nouvelles méthodes d’enseignement.
Pour le président de Silicon Sentier, « la grippe peut être un énorme déclencheur des TICE », « elle ne peut que favoriser le numérique à l’école et montrer l’importance de cet outil » ajoute François Jarreau, www.cafepedagogique.net.

En pratique rien n’est prêt. Mais tout se met en place.
Les responsables de l’éducation doivent réfléchir à cette nouvelle question : comment assurer la continuité pédagogique.
Alors l’on pourra dire adieu au repos forcé à la maison, et si vient la neige, adieu aux glissades interdites.

La cuisine

2009-12-01T09:57:00.005+01:00

La cuisine. Et oui la cuisine. N’est-ce pas l’outil le plus évident qui nous permet de transmettre, de partager notre culture. Il y a quelques années à peine, il était difficile de trouver à paris de la mozzarella. Il fallait aller chez « l’italien » pour acheter des pâtes fraîches. Sans parler du gingembre…combien de nos grand mères savent ce qu’est le gingembre ?

La cuisine est devenue globale. La culture est partagée, la cuisine est goûtée, gazpacho, curry, won ton, risotto, tarte tatin, couscous.

La cuisine est la porte la plus évidente, la plus attrayante, la plus facile qui mène à la découverte, au partage de la finesse, délicatesse, générosité et force des cultures. Ne pas être exclusif mais partager, mélanger, accepter l’autre en l’invitant à partager la même casserole.

Avez-vous goûté aux patagos, coquillage typique de la côte atlantique en France, et en particulier de la minuscule île d’yeu? A port joinville, on trouve des patagos au curry !

La bonne baguette est devenue un must à Beijing ! Vous y trouverez aussi des croissants assaisonnés au porc !

Nous sommes loins de l’époque où les épices empruntaient la longue et tortueuse route de la soie pour aboutir dans les mitonnés des nobles de l’Ancien Régime. Aujourd'hui Marie Antoinette ne serait plus la seule à pouvoir offrir du chocolat dans son salon.

La cuisine sait donc elle aussi être fille de la mondialisation, elle intègre une volonté d’abolition spatiale. Je ne dois plus me déplacer pour entrer dans le monde culinaire de mes frères indiens, je peux tout avoir, et tout de suite.
En mangeant la même chose que l’homme de Pékin ou de New-York, je deviens mondial.

Pour plus de détails, je vous conseille ces sites. Le premier est celui du grand chef de la cuisine asia-fusion.
http://www.jean-georges.com/

www.latablemonde.fr/

www.chinadaily.com.cn/citylife/2007-05/23/content_878695.htm

Le je ne sais quoi d'identité nationale - le Grand Debat (controversial national identity debate)

2009-11-29T16:24:00.014+01:00

France - a country endlessly fascinated with itself, is currently engaged in a bizarre and difficult debate about its national identity. Here's the link, click on it and add your own points of view (the debate is open until January 31st)

www.debatidentitenationale.fr

The website was launched earlier this month (2nd Nov) where residents and citizens can write about what they think it means to be French. More than 32,000 contributions were posted in the first two weeks, according to the ministry.

Why has this debate been launched? Is this because there are important regional elections next month? Some observers say that Sarkozy is trying to pull support from the far right (National Front supporters), in the lead up to these elections. However, what is ironic is that this move is equally criticised by both the right and the left. From the left : Segolene Royal says that "it is a diversionary operation & an operation of conquest of of a certain voting bloc before the regional elections". From the right: Le Pen attacks this approach as "priviledging cultural and ethnic differentiation" (but I guess not many IC students care about what he thinks!)

Background The man in charge of the survey is Eric Besson who is minister for immigration, integration and national identity. The name of the ministry is interesting in itself (what a tongue twister!) This survey comes at a time when the French nation is no longer a nation of people born with berets on their heads and baguettes under their armpits. The "french" are people with Arab, African and Asian heritage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch

Technology & IC

France has not conducted such an identity discussion in a participative manner before, especially on such a "hot" and sensitive topic. Technology has permitted them to engage people in a way that was previously constrained by the simple practicalities of doing so. (paper polling, telephone polling requires a great deal more time and admin) The results will be available 4th february 2010. (mais quelle efficacité!)

Criticism What will be done with it? Well, according to Eric Besson, the results will not be judged or measured in anyway. He believes in the pleasure of debate itself. (how very french!!)

My view : There are dangers in launching ideas on "national identity". Too often it is equated with ethnicity and heritage (mais non!) instead of community and civic responsibility ( mais oui!). It is refreshing to see many ordinary citizens who consider nationality as being more about a collective of people who share the same laws and the same place of residence, and that nationality is not about imposition of religion or traditions.

The added "extra" that the web brings is the transparency of the whole process of collecting public opinion - something which was previously less visible.

What do others think? Opinions of foreigners are welcome as well. (You will see there contributions from Ambassadors from Benin, Egypt , and of course the English (their infamous friends across "La Manche" ). Under the rubrique "Vu Par Ailleurs".

If you are really motivated you can also write to the President.

Allez! let him know what you think.

http://www.elysee.fr/accueil/

Click on "Ecrire au President" (if you can get past all the photos of Sarkozy...)

Submitted by Anne Toh.

Web as a Communication

2009-11-17T09:06:00.003+01:00

Nowadays web sites are a huge opportunity to communicate. People interact and communicate through websites, blogs and social networks. Because web communication is becoming all the time more and more popular it needs to developed to new extends. Data digitization has made the information more available and this shows how huge affect the web communication really has. All in all we could say that web communication is more than television, books, radio, and newspapers together. It is the modern way of communication without time and location limits.
A fine example of intercultural web communication is social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. People from all over the world are able to communicate and exchange information via web anytime and anywhere.
Another example is the use of websites or blogs. Many associations lay out a Web site, which contains information on the activities, the covered geographical areas, the sets of themes approached in the programs. One also finds information on the association, its members, its budget, its financial backers, its localization etc.
However, a blog is easier to use to publish contents than a static Web site described above, for the simple reason that the static site is not made to frequently be updated. Also, the format blog is ideal for a communication intended to represent human activities, comments from individuals. Simply because the tone of a blog is more natural, spontaneous and personnel than the neutral tone of an institutional site.
Indeed, it does not require particular data-processing competences; the blog allows integrating easily various formats of contents: text, still image, audio and videos which are as many testimonies on the activities of the association.
By a regular provision of the contents, the association multiplies the occasions to interest its public and to come into contact with them. Lastly, the community of bloggers is also an important relay of information: the blogosphere acts as a case of resonance of the debates which animate the media and the public space.

Annii Kristina Räihä, Roseline Murama, Mathais Ekah, Alessandra Mordasini - MIC4

ICT students Scholarship project

2009-11-17T09:01:00.002+01:00

With a small Swiss NGO based in Lugano, we are starting an original North-South twinning project in the ICT field, linking ICT departments of Swiss companies and a Kenyan University. The final objective is to create a scholarship fund in Kenya, enabling deserving but needy students to pursue ICT studies.
Some of the projects Swiss partners must achieve can be carried out by Computer Science students in Kenya. The projects must correspond to the student’s curriculum and the University will dispatch the projects to the students with the right skills. If the work is successfully completed, the Swiss Company will pay an agreed compensation for it.
The students who realize the projects will receive a small financial contribution, at the same time they get an opportunity to work on commercially relevant projects and, last but not least, they contribute to an initiative of solidarity between students, as the compensation for the work done will mainly be used to grow the scholarship fund.
The NGO will manage the financial and contractual aspects of the project, while the Swiss partners and the Kenyan University will communicate and collaborate via internet.
At the moment the project is in a pilot phase. Participating universities and Swiss partners have been identified, and the first assignment should start January 2010, reason why no information is yet available on the internet.
This project is an example of how the use of new technologies can empower young people and create new partnerships regardless of distances.

Alessandra Mordasini, Mathais Ekah, Anni Kristina Räihä, Roseline Murama - MIC4

Surfer et garder le lien...

2009-11-12T14:50:00.017+01:00

Pendant le cours sur les ICT est tombée l'expression "trop de communication tue la communication". Cette réflexion un peu "bateau" met pourtant le doigt sur une question centrale – et éternelle - qui touche notamment l'outil Internet.

Prenons d’abord la question quantitative : Combien d’informations, combien de sites, de blogs et de liens un être normalement constitué supporte-il par jour, par an, dans sa vie ? Combien des 480 000 résultats que le moteur de recherche google indique en tapant « communication interculturelle » valent effectivement la peine d’investir du temps et de l’énergie ?

Autrement dit, et là, nous touchons la question qualitative : Combien des informations flottant dans le web permettent véritablement d’entrer en lien avec d’autres cultures, avec d’autres individus ? La communication branchée 24H/24H, les amis du village virtuel et la bibliothèque mondiale ne créent-t-ils pas trop facilement l’illusion de connaître d’autres cultures et beaucoup de personnes au détriment d’une rencontre « face to face » avec tous ses risques et périls ?

Donc, attention à ce que « trop de communication ne tue pas la relation ».

:-) Pour aller plus loin : http://www.youhumour.com/video-humoriste/one-man-show/albert-meslay/albert-meslay-internet/160-iLyROoafYdRF.html#top_video

Image : Katharina Kati, Cf. http://www.kunstnet.de/werk/124525-zwischenmenschliche-kommunikation-heute/

Nicola Winzenried & Uschi Riedel Jacot MIC4

Sharing, Keeping and Preserving Household & Cooking Know How

2009-11-12T09:20:00.008+01:00

In a world where more and more people move around, leave their families and no longer live in small locations grouped by close and extended families, traditions, household, educational, nursing and cooking knowledge are no longer easily passed on. People need to find out by themselves and make the same mistakes that were made before instead of having been able to learn from seeing during their young age.

The Martha Stewart Site http://www.marthastewart.com/ is to a certain extent an illustration of this and would fall in the category 2. The heritage and advice from and to many are grouped in a web site. Cooking, household, health & well being, organizing, painting, gardening techniques and tips are passed on through the site which not only come from Martha Stewart but also by a number of users who can post their ideas, comments and recommendations. Through this interaction the site also falls under category 3. Communities or groups are formed and can be joined through the site and that go from managing a household to managing a business.

Nicola Winzenried & Uschi Riedel Jacot MIC4

Le Monde au Fond des Yeux

2009-11-12T09:16:00.001+01:00

Le site http://www.voyagevirtuel.info/ invite à voyager virtuellement à travers des photos, de la musique et des vidéos, mais permet aussi d’organiser son propre voyage. Les conseils et les informations sur la destination choisie - virtuelle ou réelle - viennent de trois sources : des créateurs du site même, des internautes et des sites tiers existant (eg. Google Earth).

Ce site présente différents pays et cultures et facilite leur découverte à travers le voyage (catégorie 1). En même temps, il crée une communauté virtuelle (catégorie 3) en offrant la possibilité à tout visiteur de partager ses expériences et ses conseils à travers un blog et d’ajouter ses photos. L’invitation à observer des valeurs communes comme le respect des hôtes des pays d’accueil et de la nature est également à souligner.

L’intérêt de ce site consiste dans le fait qu’il allie un grand nombre de techniques et de sources pour la création de son contenu allant de l’interactivité, du recours à des sites tiers à l’envoi de cartes postales virtuelles tout en utilisant la commercialisation à travers la publicité et l’accès à des réseaux sociaux comme facebook.

Uschi Riedel Jacot & Nicola Winzenried MIC4

Bakossi Cultural Heritage - BACDA

2009-11-09T22:33:00.008+01:00

BACDA stands for Bakossi Cultural and Development Association. This association is a cultural non profit making association aimed to promote cultural heritage and development of the bakossi tribe located in the Kupe & Muanenguba area in the littoral and south west provinces of Cameroon.

The Bakossi tribe have a rich cultural heritage ranging from music, dance, food, folklore and a guardian of a variety of plants used today for modern medicine. To help create visibility and promote the cultural heritage of the bakossi nation, the bakossi Diasporas in the United State initiated a website: http://www.bacda.org/

The BACDA-USA website is a showcase of how ICT could be used in promoting culture and bringing people together to celebrate their common cultural heritage. BACDA members use the web platform to support the preservation of their common cultural identity through educational ands social projects. Through the site, the young generation especially in the Diasporas are sensitized of the essence in preserving bakossi cultural identity and maintaining link to the ancestral home. The website had helped to create and facilitated a network of global memberships who meet during the summer annual convention in the United States. The annual convention provides a unique exposition of bakaossi culture in the Diaspora and it create a forum to discuss projects of preserving the common identity of bakossian.

Mathias Ekah, Alessandra Mordasini, Anni Kristina Räihä, Roseline Murama - MIC4

Inter vs. Global through Local

2009-11-09T11:35:00.002+01:00

A very current issue that has aroused our interest during the lecture is the frequently erroneous interpretation of the terms internationalization, globalization and localization. People tend to confuse the meaning of internationalization/globalization, which are not synonims as we may think.

The internationalization of the product occurs during the development of the same, even before the localization process. The latter effectively refers in theory to the adequacy of a linguistic and cultural point of view of the product presented/sold to the local target that will use it.
In reality, most web sites actually consider only the lingustic aspect of localization, i.e. the translation. It is also true that not knowing, for example, the Chinese language, we are not able to evaluate/preceive any evidence of "localized" cultural elements inserted in the translated text.

Internationalization is the process of building a web site so that it can support multiple locales, while localization is the process of modifying that site for a specific time.

Finally, globalization concerns the diffusion of the product, from the "commercial"/"economic" point of view and presupposes its localization throughout a company, after successful internationalization in the "design" of the product.

Veronica Galster, Eugenio Sudati, Silvia Mettel /MIC 4

Italian culture in the world

2009-11-07T08:01:00.004+01:00

ICoN (Italian Culture on the Net - http://www.italicon.it/) is an Italian universities consortium having as main purpose the development of Italian language, culture and image of the country around the world through the web utilizing different services and resources like:
- University degree on Italian language and culture for foreign students
- Language course at different level
- Library, museum, and digital encyclopedia
- Community forum and interactive teaching services
Beyond the e-learning teaching the web site is mostly a way to preserve Italian culture and to teach it abroad (i.e. point 2 on the Mind Map: ICT as means to preserve cultures).
The twofold characteristics are clear: the academic courses are for Italian student leaving abroad and for foreigners leaving in Italy but with a good knowledge of Italian language and the language course is only for foreigners interested to learn or further to improve their Italian language skills.
The web is settled with digital archives that allow the reference to different documents for specific disciplines of Italian culture (i.e. philosophy, art, literature, history, etc.) that enable the user’s intercultural exchange.
Through the web forum students and tutors may interact creating a real virtual community.

Veronica Galster, Silvia Mettel, Eugenio Sudati /MIC 4

Alif, Arabs and Allah

2009-11-06T13:15:00.009+01:00

In the Arabic language course there is a constant association between the language and the introduction to the Arabic culture and to the Coranic text. Referring to that a good example is the web site:

http://corsoarabo.altervista.org/ which has been analyzed using the first point of the above “Mind Map”.

The web, mainly built for the Arabic on-line language teaching and targeted for Italian users, offers even the possibility to learn the pronunciation (i.e. listening to the audio files in the alphabet section). In addition, it can be used as instrument for words translation.
Furthermore there is a specific section referring to the culture with the use of images of Arabic countries. There is also the Coranic text in Arabic and the latter already translated in Italian.
These instruments show how the ICT can provide access and give a meaning to different cultures through the e-learning methods.
A funny and strange element is the section titled “barzellette” with a particular title (i.e. “Ridere è universale”) where a lot of typical Italian jokes stories are mentioned in Italian and that we consider a strategic factor because it creates both curiosity and relax during the web surfing between language lessons, Arabic images and Coranic readings and especially for a language that is very different from the Italian one and, in general, that it is not so easy to learn.
Finally, even if the web graphic appeal is not so exciting (i.e choice of colors for links and background), we can admit that the whole web site is “User Friendly”.

Eugenio Sudati, Silvia Mettel, Veronica Galster / MIC 4

Looking back at the internet

2009-11-05T18:18:00.015+01:00

www.ubs.com

When I worked for UBS and was responsible for the homepage, I got the feeling, what it’s like to work for a multinational company and acomodate different tastes from all over the world, when in 2007 we started to revamp the homepage and wanted to give it a look they would like in Hong Kong and New York and everywhere else in between! Quite an intercultural challenge. It took one year and many global telephoneconferences and proposals until we reached a compromise (see image above). To get an idea to what it looked like when UBS used to be a pure Swiss bank in the 90’s, I could find out when going into the archive of the early pages of UBS.

http://internet.archive.org

You can browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.
What I found interesting: 1033 pages of ubs.com had been archived. One example of ICT as a means to preserve culture by archiving internet pages.

The internet goes archive! Of course the design had changed over times. But what struck me most, was the way the user was approached back then: The site focused on presenting what the bank could offer, whereas we now have come to the stakeholder approach, where we ask the user: What are you looking for? And they can answer to it globally?

posted by: priska spoerri / MIC4

links to resources which have been presented today (+ some others)

2009-11-02T16:25:00.000+01:00

Online Stopwatch
http://www.online-stopwatch.com

LISA: Homepage
http://www.lisa.org

DLI FLC: Field Support Modules
http://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/index.aspx

www.haltadefinizione.com - Homepage
http://www.haltadefinizione.com/home.jsp
MIT Visualizing Cultures
http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/home/index.html

ICoN :: The portal of Italian culture offers online the first degree in Italian language and culture
http://www.italicon.it/index.asp?

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time
http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/FCBSTWeb/web/index.html
Free Worldwide Travel Guides - Wikitravel
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page

Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.org

Kids Web Japan
http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/index.html

Learn Chinese - Online Mandarin Language Learning
http://chinesepod.com
WFP Food Force - The Game, The Reality, How to Help
http://www.food-force.com

Voyage Beijing
http://gel.msu.edu/voyagebeijing
BBC - Learning
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/

Educational Games
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/

Digicult, New Media Art, Arte Elettronica, Cultura Digitale, New Media
http://www.digicult.it/
Navigastoria - RTSI
http://www.rsi.ch/navigastoria/welcome.cfm
Language Learning with Rosetta Stone
http://www.rosettastone.com

Knol - a unit of knowledge: share what you know, publish your expertise.
http://knol.google.com/k

TeacherTube - Teach the World | Teacher Videos | Lesson Plan Videos | Student Video Lessons | Online Teacher Made Videos | TeacherTube.com
http://www.teachertube.com/

Upload & Share PowerPoint presentations and documents
http://www.slideshare.net/

Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

OpenLearn - The Open University
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk

Distance Learning Courses and Adult Education - The Open University
http://www.open.ac.uk

Group Recipes - Food Social Network
http://www.grouprecipes.com/
Edward Tufte: Books - Essay: The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
eLECTIONS Your Adventure in Politics brought to you by Cable in the Classroom
http://broadband.ciconline.org/elections/Default.aspx

BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology
http://www.brainpop.com

assignment 2009

2009-11-01T17:15:00.006+01:00

you (individually or - better - in groups of max 4 people) are supposed to:

post 2 short presentation of ICT in IC on two different blog posts

in the post, the names of the group people have to be written
if possible, present cases you are involved in
the two cases must belong to two different areas of the map
cases can not exceed 20 lines
you can post also pictures and/or videos (not exceeding 3 minutes)
if possible add a link to the full story
make sure you take into account the topics being discussed during the class

add another post on a topic/idea/info you got from the class and you think may be useful for you
you are supposed ALSO to read (individually) at least two cases written by other groups and to comment them
1st deadline: 31, December 2009 (for posts)
2nd deadline: 10, January 2010 (for comments, this date has been changed 13.11.09)

thanks!

year 2009: welcome! (and the first map)

2009-11-01T17:07:00.000+01:00

Préserver sa culture à l'autre bout du monde

2008-09-20T12:30:00.004+02:00

Un peu dans le même ordre d'idée que le précédent post, mais ancré plus fortement dans le point 2 du mind map (préservation des cultures), le site http://nous-tamoulsdefrance.com/ .

Ce site est destiné à un public cible précis, la deuxième génération de tamouls de France (il n'est d'ailleurs pas traduit en tamoul). Ils peuvent ainsi d'une part être informés des nouvelles de leur pays d'origine et, d'autre part, garder en mémoire la culture de leurs parents (notamment grâce à la rubrique "culture tamoule" ou "histoire"). Cette communauté a toujours été bien organisée, mais l'utilisation du Net lui permet non seulement de transmettre son message a un plus grand nombre, y compris ceux arrivés il y a longtemps, mais aussi de l'augmenter. Chaque événement se déroulant dans le vie de la communauté tamoule de France (ou de Suisse d'ailleurs) est écrit, de même que chaque agression subie au Sri Lanka. On préserve non seulement sa culture, mais on crée aussi une mémoire à l'expatrié, à travers le récit des évènements qui se déroulent chez lui durant son absence (mind map point 3).

Sans compter que l'on peut utiliser ce moyen pour informer les européens de la situation politique au Sri Lanka (point 1).

Céline

Outil pour les nouveaux arrivants

2008-09-20T12:26:00.003+02:00

Un groupe de bénévoles de cinq nationalités a mis en ligne le site www.sionintegre.ch (en français uniquement) destiné aux nouveaux arrivants à Sion. Cet outil qui se veut pratique (infos sur le logement, le travail, la santé, etc., mais aussi sur les habitudes), manque cependant d'interactivité, même s'il offre la possibilité aux utilisateurs de partager, par e-mail, leurs impressions.

Il appartient clairement à la catégorie 1 du mind map, puisqu'il permet aux nouveaux venus, principalement migrants, d'approcher rapidement les us et coutumes helvétiques et sédunoises. Cependant, en partant du principe que celles-ci sont figées, il pourrait se rattacher à la catégorie 2 (et même à la 3). En effet, à aucun moment, on ne suppose que la culture suisse pourrait bénéficier de celle(s) de ceux qui arrivent. Ainsi, on aide à la préserver des nouveautés apportées par les migrants et on constitue artificiellement, en parallèle, une nouvelle culture, celle des migrants, pris dans un ensemble indissociable, indépendamment du pays de provenance. Le langage utilisé sur le site tente d'être neutre pour s'adresser au maximum, mais il suppose une certaine connaissance, déjà, du français, même si, pour celui qui maîtrise la langue, le site peut être très utile.

Les technologies de l'information (nouvelles) sont ainsi utilisées de façon sensiblement conservatrices.

Céline

the journal of the module

2008-09-13T12:03:00.001+02:00

in PDF format (it used to be in Microsoft Journal format) >>>

lorenzo cantoni 's own blog

a few relevant links

2008-09-13T10:43:00.004+02:00

issues
Edward Tufte

soft
google adwords
mindmeister
WebCEO
wayback machine
iTunes (university)

localization
Aaron Marcus
http://www.theculturallycustomizedwebsite.com/
http://www.bestglobalwebsiteaward.com/
LISA

language/culture learning/teaching - OER
chinese pod
palabea
Voyage Beijin
kids web Japan
avatar languages
MIT OpenCourseware
BBC Learning
OpenLearn

Russian forum & Hindi Group

2008-09-13T09:23:00.011+02:00

Voici deux entités virtuelles intéressantes pour aborder les ICT.

http://ictmic3.blogspot.com/

Marcello, Anastasia, Marcos & Alex

Facebook as a New Virtual Culture

2008-09-12T19:39:00.007+02:00

The second case I would like to present for this assignment is related to the 3rd element of the mind map: communities & cultures made possible and born in the virtual world.

I think the most evident phenomenon right now is Facebook. There are 132.1 million users around the world and most of them use a Facebook feature that allows them to form groups. These types of communities are born on Facebook and have their own 'little' culture, in regards to how they function, for example: 1° MEGAPARTY FACEBOOK FIRENZE ufficiale. This group was really born BECAUSE of Facebook, and they are gathered to plan a party for Facebook members in Firenze. In regards to IC, since people who live in Firenze not only Italians but also foreign students mostly, the members come from different cultures and get together, interact with each other for the same objective.

Another kind of community that can be found on Facebook is the one that is composed of people who are already members of an association, for example: I suffer from chronic CISV withdrawl. It is a group that is born in the virtual world of Facebook, based on an actual group of people who are members of an organization. The organization mentioned is already an intercultural organization, with the motto "Building Global Friendship", so in regards to IC, there is community within community in this Facebook group, and there is one culture (the organization's shared culture with its codes & traditions) that is composed of many cultures of its members from around the world.

Nanda F. Moenandar

Journalism Website by Students

2008-09-12T19:34:00.005+02:00

The first case I would like to present is related to the no. 1 element of the mind map: ICT/CMC as a means to access & get meaning across cultures.

I did a journalism course in France, and the emphasis was on introducing our cultures (we were a group of students coming from different countries) through our media. The course was called "Veille sur le Web". The professor set a website called Journ@lisme(s).net, and we as students contribute by putting information based on our observation in our local media in each respected country. The information was limited to journalism theme, and every week we had different theme to observe. By the end of the week, we put together 2 or 3 articles that sums up different stories in one theme.

The objective of this exercise is to introduce different media cultures in different countries. That way, we learned each country's media politic, media system, and how they function from the business point of view.

Nanda F. Moenandar

DIALETTI D'ITALIA

2008-09-12T17:41:00.023+02:00

http://www.dialettando.com/

"Megliu oi l'ovu ca dumani a gaddrina" - dialetto di Sicilia

What does this mean and where does it come from? With this site which promotes the preservation of italian dialects you can find Italian sayings related to different regions in different dialects. It serves as a source for many traditional productions like poems, stories, recipes and proverbs and can also be used as a translation dictionary whereby one can find the equivalent word used in each region for the standard italian word. This tool shows the enormous richness and diversity of these languages among regions.

The user can also become a collaborator and contribute to collect new words and curiosities in the dialect of his region. This is representative of online culture in that it allows users to choose whether they want to use the site passively as an information source or actively contribute (as per wikipedia). In this way the site continues to grow up and in future it will be an interesting archive collection for the traditional popular culture of Italy.

This case belongs to the second branch of the model, ICT as a means to preserve culture. The web is an excellent tool to promote regional languages and customs. With the Italian mainstream media serving to standardise the Italian language a site like this is important to help to preserve the rich character of the various regional dialect. For users it also can be used as a translation tool to understand locally distinct words and expression and their meanings. You can search for words by region and if you are lucky you might even find your nonna's recipe for spezzato misto.

Maura, Carmen, Victoria, David

Internations Expatriates Virtual Community

2008-09-12T17:16:00.002+02:00

InterNations.org is an international online Social Network exclusively for expatriates. It is a place where its members can interact with other individuals sharing the same situation abroad, similar interests, and intercultural experiences. This platform requires a free membership and personal invitation (you need to be invited to become a member), where the members can keep in touch with private or work-related friends and contacts on an international and local level and exchange interesting relevant information on specific topics with each other. Internations.org belongs to the third category of the ICT scheme as a virtual community. Each member creates his own profile consisting of members, groups, forums and events.

The website also contains some elements of augmented reality such as geographical localization of different communities on the world map and many information concerning different towns (temperature, time, images and videos). There is also a section called Internations Wire which indicates who is currently connected from the same community, who is the virtual ambassador of any given community and who posted a new comment.

This website is sponsored by some highly recognized organizations such as AFS, which gives it more credibility and renders it trustworthy.

Iman Said, Domenica Avila, Igor Nastic

Intercultural dialogue?

2008-09-12T17:12:00.005+02:00

http://europa.eu/debateeurope/intercultural/index_en.htm
2008 is the Year of Intercultural Dialogue promoted by the EU-Commission. On this website you can find a Forum and video clips which promote discussion about intercultural dialogue. This website enters in the first group of the mind map offering the possibility to share meaning and opinions through text-based forums on various subjects, online-voting and web2.0 based audio/video streams. It offers furthermore information beyond political borders.
The site is accessible in a wide range of European languages. It creates a new reality, building cross-national communities by means of CMC and ICT based communication and offers an easy accessible range of information.
It is interesting to read the legal notice giving instructions (disclaimers and data privacy), and stating that the EU-Commission is putting itself in charge to promote “Interactive communication services that allow better contacts with citizens, business, civil society and public actors thus facilitating policy consultations, and feedback mechanisms, in order to contribute to the shaping of policies, the activities and the services of the EU”. This takes up some central aspects of the mind map, more precisely points I and 3 and the general idea of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) & Intercultural Communication.
However here is the paradox: is there really cross-over communication promoting intercultural dialogue when forum groups are language divided? Is there a disconnect between the aims stated and the reality?

Sabine, Tatjana, Genevieve

Learning Spanish

2008-09-12T17:12:00.002+02:00

www.studyinmexico.com.mx

Studyinmexico.com.mx is the website of the International Program’s Office of the Technological University of Monterrey, Mexico. This website aims to attract international students to enroll in Spanish Language courses for foreigners, Spanish for regular students and/or English courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. From this website it is possible to access the different courses available, depending on the student’s level of Spanish. The websites provides information regarding admissions, housing, Mexican life style, student’s life and the online Spanish exam.

The university uses this website to be in contact with the international world. It is also used as an exchange of information (emails requesting for deadlines and prices, sending acceptance letters, etc) with the potential students. That is to say, the information submitted by the students to be admitted is externalized (digitalized documents) and at the same time the website represents an augmented reality for the visitors with the publication of pictures and videos of the lifestyle of exchange students.

This ICT would be placed in the first area of the scheme as a means to access and get meaning across cultures. This International Office is only in charge of the incoming students and the Intercultural Communication process takes place every day.

Iman Said, Domenica Avila, Igor Nastic

ICT as a means to preserve cultures

2008-09-12T17:07:00.005+02:00

Avoiding the digital black hole: how will we access today’s Internet content in the future?
The International Internet Preservation Consortium (http://www.netpreserve.org) aims to collect and preserve Internet content from around the world (Mapmeister 2) for future access, using tools created in common and made available to other communities for downloading, and addressing digital rights management (Mapmeister 3). It is an example of intercultural communication through IT by reason of its exchange and work among partners across four continents, but also in the way it will enable online content around the world to be used by future generations across time (and national borders).
The Consortium uses the strengths of IT to copy and search cultural heritage expressed through ICT, but also to address the drawbacks of IT with its problems of the long-term availability of hardware, software and content. The site itself (and communication) is only in English, which may restrict the ease of communication among partners, though saved content is in all languages (and media types – sound, text, video). Also, in its present form, however, its value as an example of intercultural communication is restricted to the partners.

Sabine, Tatjana, Genevieve

CAMERA PARAGUAYO ALEMANA

2008-09-12T17:05:00.007+02:00

http://www.ahkparaguay.com/paraguay

Our first case belongs to branch one, using ICT as a means to access and get meaning across cultures.

The aim of this bilingual site (Espanol - Deutsch) is to promote commercial exchange between Germany and Paraguay. One esteemed member of our group was responsible for the commercial aspects and communication for the site. The website took information from the journal of the Paraguay Chamber of Commerce, to enable users to inform themselves about the newest developments considering the commercial exchange. In addition, it publishes interviews with members of the chamber and information about chamber events (eg. Expo in Paraguay, confenerces etc.). General information about Paraguay such as economical and political news are published as well. German investors can get advice about the possibilities of an engagement in the country.

Another example of the site's engagement is the fostering of an Au-Pair programme for young Paraguayan women who are interested in working in Germany and similar projects. At the same time courses are provided for Germans who want to emigrate to Paraguay.

This site fulfills the classic role of opening the door to international business across national boundaries by acting as a portal for people coming from the two countries who do not have pre-existing relationships to investigate business opportunitites. In the ideal cyberworld, websites like this enable the population of developing countries access to global markets.

Maura, Carmen, Victoria, David

The use of ICT in IC, as a means to preserve cultures

2008-09-12T15:37:00.006+02:00

http://www.pompeisepolta.com

Grâce à l’utilisation d’Internet et la convergence de supports audiovisuels différents, les utilisateurs peuvent découvrir la ville de Pompei et des aspects de la vie quotidienne de cette société romaine. Le site est accessible à des navigateurs du monde entier (à condition qu'ils puissent accéder à Internet - digital divide). Le site ne présente pas seulement la culture antique de Pompei, mais relie cette dernière à des informations diverses et actuelles sur la région, du fait que les procédures de production, copie, modification sont&nb sp;amplement facilitées grâce à l'usage de TIC. De plus, l’utilisateur est projeté dans une autre dimension culturelle à partir de laquelle il peut naviguer à l’infini (augmented reality). Toutefois, afin d’améliorer la CI, il serait intéressant d’offrir aux usagers des plateformes d’échange (ex. blog).

- Chiara, Natalie, Habib and Sturle

Penguins 4 Africa

2008-09-12T15:36:00.016+02:00

http://www.penguins4africa.org/

The website describes a project of a group of students at the University of Bern (Switzerland), who collects disused computers, equips them to Linux and makes them available to people in Africa through the partner organizations Linuxola and Worldlinks. The project targets developing nations. On no other continent than Africa does the technological divide to developed nations appear to be as large.The project aims also to democratize information and knowledge.

The project's symbol is Penguin (Tux), which is the official mascot of the free operating system Linux, who's slogan reads “since penguins can't fly, the can't crash”. Tux is a symbol for stability.

The website refers to the fourth area of the mindmap: ICT as a culture itself - digital divide. The project aims to diminish inequalities that exist in Internet access, especially in developing countries in Africa.

The project focuses on one aspect of digital divide: providing technical equipment (PC's including an operating system). Other aspects of digital divide are: the infrastructure (electricity, telephone lines, structures for reparation, etc.), and economic, social and psychological factors which influence people's opportunities to use the technological equipment. A critical remark on the project would be that it does not deal with these aspects.

A banner on the website refers to a price which the project received. However, this banner overlaps the website's text, which hampers its reading and professional presentation.

Video

Annatina Frizzoni

Caroline Bosia Diabang

Albertine Zanting

Using the web to promote social change

2008-09-12T14:05:00.028+02:00

Children At Risk Foundation (CARF) is a foundation with focus on street children in Brazil’s largest city, São Paolo. The foundation aims to create an alternative to a life on the street by reaching out to the local community as well as attracting the attention of local and national authorities. The work of the foundation rest on the importance of estethics in the attempt to keep the children off the street. A fundamental part of the work is cultural development and artistic expressions against violence. The artistic work is expressed through theater, dance, sport, music, and graphic design. All activities are promoted internationally through a multimedia web portal including a norwegian website, various sub group sites such as Gritos Urbanos and Capoeira Beija Flor, the image sharing site Flickr, a CARF blog and Youtube that all provide an augmented perception of the multiple activities taking place. "Open source" web facilities such as Youtube, blogspot and Flickr offer a flexible media convergence and a way to easy guarantee content development.

- Chiara, Natalie, Habib and Sturle

Travailler en Chine: les règles du jeu

2008-09-12T13:44:00.016+02:00

http://www.frizzoni.com/

Site web dédié aux personnes désirant se rendre en Chine, principalement pour y travailler, mais aussi pour y étudier et/ou voyager. Afin de se préparer au séjour il est recommandé d'acquérir quelques connaissances de base sur les styles de communication et comportementaux chinois. Ce site propose des formations et donne les renseignements nécessaires afin de s'inscrire aux cours.

Ce site se réfère à la première partie du mindmap: les TIC en tant que moyen d'accès et de comprehension des significations à travers les cultures.

Externalisation: utilisation de textes, symboles et images afin d'atteindre les objectifs informatifs du site.

Production et distribution de documents:

- rapports rédigés par des étudiants afin d'aider dans le choix d'une université en Chine

- informations sur l'expérience et l'expértise du formateur

Circulation de l'information:

- accessibilité accrue aux informations pour les demandeurs

- promotion des services

- moyen bon marché pour les relations publiques

Contenu et mise en page:

- mises à jour régulières afin de fournir une information fraiche et pertinente (voir copyright)

- sobre et simple, adapté au public cible suisse

Annatina Frizzoni

Albertine Zanting

Caroline Bosia Diabang

final assignment

2008-09-12T11:54:00.002+02:00

you (individually or - better - in groups of max 4 people) are supposed to:
> post 2 short presentation of ICT in IC on two different blog posts
> in the post, the names of the group people have to be written)
> if possibile, present cases you are involved in
> the two cases must belong to two different areas of the map
> cases can not exceed 20 lines
> you can post also pictures and/or videos (not exceeding 3 minutes)
> if possibile ad a link to the full story
> make sure you take into account the topics being discussed during the class

> you are supposed ALSO to read (individually) at least two cases written by other groups and to comment them