Green Culture +++ Cultural Clashes +++ Green Challenge +++ Absolutely Intercultural 263 +++

Hello and welcome to show 263 of our podcast “Absolutely Intercultural”. Today we will talk about green culture. We have all heard about being vegan, consuming less energy, using paper-based packaging, reducing co2 emissions and driving sustainable vehicles. But is this really a culture, or just a trend brought by the 21st century? How does it affect our lifestyle? Is it always good to be green or it also has some disadvantages? Is it easy to adapt to green culture?

In this episode our guests attempted to take part in the green challenge – the experiment where everyone spent 4 days adapting to the green lifestyle: cutting meat, plastic and streaming out from their daily routine.

In our show, three students tell us a concrete situation, where they were the objects of stereotyping and how those stereotypes affected their personal lives. 

absolutely challenging

In our first category, “absolutely challenging”, Jan Lübke talks about the issues and challenges of being green in different cultures.

absolutely confronting

In our second category “absolutely confronting”, Rabee Jarrar from Jordan, tells us how can green culture clash with his own traditions and religion:

absolutely controversial

Finally, in our category “absolutely controversial” we set down with 6 participants of our green challenge which took place during the weekends for 4 days. We asked Jan, Ariana, Jency, Nikos, Lara and Moritz to try and adapt to the green culture, and after 4 days tell us what was the most difficult challenge they faced during this period.

What are your thoughts about this? Are you a green person or you are trying your best to contribute? Let us know in the comments.

Our next show will be coming to you on the 2nd of July.

Until then, 

Bleiben Sie absolut interkulturell!

The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Chief Editor: Giorgi Sulaberidze

Assistant Editors: Alina Vor, Natalia ObikhodNatia NikvashviliEsjona Musta.

 

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Motivation Culture +++ Workplace +++ Absolutely Intercultural 260 +++

Hello and welcome to show 260 of our podcast “Absolutely Intercultural”. Today we talk about different cultures of motivation. Can it be true that in our globalized world we still stick to our culturally determined motivation strategies? Our interviewees report about motivation strategies in their own national cultures. What is the best method to keep your employees from Albania, Georgia and Azerbaijan productive? Why do we seem to lose our motivation over time and how can we refresh it? Well, in today’s episode we interview students from three different countries about effective motivation techniques in their own cultures.

Continue reading “Motivation Culture +++ Workplace +++ Absolutely Intercultural 260 +++”

Soliya +++ Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange +++ African Science +++ Absolutely intercultural 232 +++

What is a virtual exchange? Maybe not what you think. We’ll be digging deeper into that in this special edition of Absolutely Intercultural coming to you from Denmark. My name’s Anne Fox and this is show 232. Today’s show is mainly about promoting dialogue between different groups of people. So what is dialogue? And can you tell the difference between dialogue and, for example, debate?

Continue reading “Soliya +++ Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange +++ African Science +++ Absolutely intercultural 232 +++”

Classroom Response Systems +++ Interactive Classroom +++ Learning Culture +++ Auto-Evaluation of Essays +++ Absolutely Intercultural 226 +++

Can technology in the classroom change the culture of teaching and learning? Could this culture be more democratic and give a voice to participants who in regular seminars would not be heard? Let us listen to Hannah Peter an exchange student from Canada who talks about a Classroom Response System she has tried out as a teaching assistant in lectures at RheinAhrCampus. Then we hear from a professor Jalal Kawash, also from Canada who has been using Classroom Response Systems for years. Finally,  Tsegaye Misikir Tashu from Hungary talks about a tool for Automated Essay Evaluation where professors can leave the reading and grading of essays to a computer program. Should we be scared by such innovations in the culture of teaching and learning? Continue reading “Classroom Response Systems +++ Interactive Classroom +++ Learning Culture +++ Auto-Evaluation of Essays +++ Absolutely Intercultural 226 +++”

changing the world +++ DNS College +++ Flat Pack Democracy +++ Restaurant Moment +++ Absolutely Intercultural 219 +++

Off to Africa to learn about the world! DNS College

How do you change the world? As part of the European Capital of Culture for 2017, Aarhus hosted a Rethink Activism festival in September where I met some interesting people, took part in some awareness raising exercises and learned about some innovative ideas. Continue reading “changing the world +++ DNS College +++ Flat Pack Democracy +++ Restaurant Moment +++ Absolutely Intercultural 219 +++”

Absolutely intercultural 209 +++ Stereotypes +++ Different cultures +++ New in Germany? +++ Refugees +++

javier_webIn today’s podcast we hear from Dennis Rayuschkin, a RheinAhrCampus student  from Kazakhstan who tells us about his cultural backround and his integration efforts.
Then we listen to to Dr. Wendy Spinks, who will explain some differences she has noticed between the German and Australian cultures.

In our third part, we listen to Javier Chapa Madrid (see photo), a student from Spain. He will explain what intercultural experiences in daily life mean to him and how he connected to the German culture.
In our last part Maher tells about the feelings and experiences he had around the time of his arrival in Germany. Continue reading “Absolutely intercultural 209 +++ Stereotypes +++ Different cultures +++ New in Germany? +++ Refugees +++”

Absolutely Intercultural 199 +++ Culture +++ Software of the Mind +++ Updates +++

blog-picture-software Absolutely Intercultural Show 199

Have you ever tried to explain something, and in the middle of it, you figured out that the best option would probably be to compare it to something else?

Hofstede did the same thing with culture and software, showing their similarities in his book “Cultures and Organizations – Software of the Mind“.

The metaphor of culture as the software of the mind works really well when we compare them in terms of installing, uninstalling and updating cultural software, for example.

In this episode, we listen to two interviews about Hofstede’s idea, on how you can easily see his theory present in your daily lives.

Continue reading “Absolutely Intercultural 199 +++ Culture +++ Software of the Mind +++ Updates +++”

Absolutely Intercultural 195 +++ international students +++ internship experience abroad +++ gypsy art +++

Sander WillemsIn today’s podcast we hear about ‘‘International students and their internship experience abroad”. We talk to Sander, a Dutch student who is living in Spain working in a bike tour company and he told us about how to plan, organize and prolong a student internship then we listen to an interview with two gypsy artists Delaine and Damian from Great Britain who are traveling the whole world and exhibiting their art in various places, e.g. at VHS Aachen Continue reading “Absolutely Intercultural 195 +++ international students +++ internship experience abroad +++ gypsy art +++”

Stereotypes +++ Dubuque +++ Yartey +++ Ideal Global Life Summit +++ Absolutely Intercultural 186

1622414_10203754713767118_2814680752038057489_oHappy New Year! Welcome to the first Absolutely Intercultural show of 2015 brought to you by Anne Fox in Denmark.

absolutely global
We start by going absolutely global as the Living Your Ideal Global Life Summit, which ran for the first time last January, is about to happen again. I will let Sabrina Ziegler one of the main organisers, tell us what we can expect this year. Don’t forget that it is free to participate, you can sign up at the website  and the dates are from 26 to 30 January. If we’re lucky we may be bringing you a few highlights from the summit in a future show. Continue reading “Stereotypes +++ Dubuque +++ Yartey +++ Ideal Global Life Summit +++ Absolutely Intercultural 186”

absolutely intercultural 164 +++ UniKey +++ entrepreneurial skills +++ Sugata Mitra +++ internships +++ Fulda University

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2012_09_03_course_graph_v5In this show we’ll be hearing about a new online training for foreign interns and if you decide this could be for you then you have the chance to take part free of charge starting in March! And not only that, if you take part in the course you could be in the running for a free trip to Brussels in September.

absolutely fake
My name’s Anne Fox and I wonder if you guessed correctly which of the stories we told you in the last show were true or not? Do you remember that we were asking students to imagine themselves in a future scenario where they take an internship abroad and some of them were true and some were not! This was a demonstration of the old adage ‘Fake it til you make it’ and we’re hoping that the effort that Younes & Philipp put into their stories will lead them to put at least some parts of their stories into practice anyway. You can read their comments about their plans on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page.

absolutely self-organised
And it was through Facebook that I discovered that Professor Sugata Mitra who was featured in Show 72, has been awarded the TED prize for 2013. TED is a growing bank of short talks by inspirational speakers which are freely available on the Internet. Every TED speaker is asked to describe their dream and this year it is Sugata Mitra who gets to put his  into practice. Mitra’s research shows that we are are all capable of learning wherever we are and he wants to apply these findings to provide education in areas where it is poor or non-existent. And now with the prize money he has a million dollars to start realizing his dream.

absolutely entrepreneurial
So we’re in the middle of a financial crisis; there’s high graduate unemployment so maybe it’s a good idea for graduates of any discipline to find out more about how business works? They can do this through sponsored internships but today we’re going to hear about asking the interns to also follow a course during their internship to really get them noticing these entrepreneurial processes.  And you could join them! The first pilot has just ended and we’ll be hearing from two interns who took the course and if you like what you hear and are planning to be an intern by April then why not apply to join the second pilot? The application form is at the Unikey website or you can contact me through our Facebook page or here on our blog.

The project is called UniKey where we invite foreign interns to go absolutely entrepreneurial. We hear first from a couple of the project partners and their vision of the UniKey project, Christina Langsdorf  and Professor Dr Carsten Müller who teaches business subjects at Fulda University. The UniKey course is aimed at foreign interns, who are based in small and medium sized organisations and also social enterprises and the course is based on authentic entrepreneurial situations. We also hear from Nina Raiss, a German doing an internship in France, about why she agreed to do an additional Unikey online course on top of her internship.

We also meet Collette Wanjugu Döppner, the UniKey course director who you will meet online if you decide to do the course.

And as if it wasn’t enough to be doing a course on top of an internship, we added a slight gaming element in the form of extra challenges which were not compulsory. But if you did do them, there was a chance of winning a trip to Brussels. I was able to catch up with two of the winners and asked them about their motivation: first Nina Raiss,  and then Torsten Scheithauer who is doing his internship in Northern Ireland.

There are lots of other added touches to the UniKey course and one of them is the opportunity to meet with a different entrepreneur or expert in each of the seven modules and ask them questions. For example in the third module which looks at ethical dilemmas we meet Ilona Jehn who worked at Lufthansa Cargo.

So if you want to join the next course starting at the end of March then apply now! And full disclosure: I am a partner in the project which is why I know so much about it!

absolutely Amazon
By the way I just added a resource to the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store, a sort of do it yourself multimedia course in intercultural competence called Komunipass. If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.

The next show will be coming to you from Germany on April 5th with Laurent Borgmann so until then stay tuned!

The host of this show is: Anne Fox

Editing done with the help of Hindenburg Journalist Pro