intercultural – Page 16 – absolutely intercultural!

absolutely intercultural 26 +++ Second Life +++ B-people +++ Conference: Does Culture Still Matter? +++

Are there any B-people in Second Life? And does culture still matter?

absolutely virtual
Second Life is a virtual world but is it also a new culture which we can explore in the same way we can come to new cultures in the real world? To consider some of these issues I talked with Helen Keegan of Salford University who first visited Second Life on Christmas Day, 2006 and Sus Nyrop, a freelance educational consultant in Denmark who has visited both Danish and other areas of Second Life. We wondered whether your appearance matters and if it helps to have cultural informants as a guide.

absolutely flexible
BSamfundet is a new society in Denmark promoting flexible working hours. The structure of the day and attitudes to time are aspects which vary greatly across cultures. B-samfundet means B-society and by catering to those who only come alive after 10 in the morning they maintain that this will reduce traffic jams and will help those so-called B-people who are only fully functional later in the day. But is this an issue that is going to resonate in Denmark where work starts and finishes early? To answer this question I took a straw poll of my colleagues in Grenaa and I did manage to unearth some shattered B-people.

absolutely important
Does Culture Still Matter? That’s the name of the annual conference of the Intercultural Management Institute in Washington coming up on March 15 and 16. We were very honoured to be invited to cover the conference in an upcoming show.

The next show is our one year anniversary show and will be coming to you from our German station on March 23rd.

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

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absolutely intercultural 25 +++ Borrowed Identities +++ 40 people, 5 countries, 1 island +++ The lifeblood of Europe +++

Borrowed Identities – European Student Now! Project meeting on Achill Island and in Dublin, Ireland.

Welcome to episode 25 our Silver Jubilee of absolutely intercultural, which is absolutely Irish!
Laurent and I have just been on an excursion to Achill Island and Dublin in Ireland within the framework of the EU funded Intensive Programm “Borrowed Identities – European Student” now, and in this episode you will hear many different voices from many nationalities, but one in particular – Agnes Dus, a student from Corvinus University Budapest in Hungary has helped us a great deal with doing interviews and creating the concept for this episode, so thank you very much Agnes.

As a preparation for the proposed “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008” our project “Borrowed Identity” aims at creating an intercultural learning environment based on virtual and real mobility. The project is targeted at Business, Technical and Humanities students in Germany, Sweden, Spain, UK and Hungary and focuses on combining computer-mediated academic work, face-to-face meetings and intercultural communication.

This combination provided students with a new perspective of their own cultural identity as students, and the cultural identity of their foreign fellow students and hosts in Ireland.

So a short while ago 40 people from 5 different countries and actually 8 different nationalities met for 12 days in Ireland, to work together on a variety of academic workshops and to attend several intercultural lectures.

Now, to give you an idea of what the personal aims of the participating coordinators and teachers were we have asked some of them what they wanted to get out of the project, personally and for their professional life, and if their expectations were actually fulfilled.

We have also interviewed old friends like Sean and Margaret Cannon, who are a part of our “European project family” for more than 10 years now. And we have met new friends like Stephen Manning, who has just recently settled down on Achill after quite an exciting period of his life.

This episode is also a part of the general documentation of our whole project, and you can also follow a day-by-day travelogue of the excursion, written by the students themselves. Check it out – they have done a really good job!

A lot has happened during our time in Ireland, and we hope to give you a good impression of what our students have achieved, what the whole project is all about and what a good time we had on Achill Island.
The next show will be coming to you on the 9th of March from Anne Fox in Denmark.
So long…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited and co-hosted by: Karsten Kneese

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absolutely intercultural 24 +++ Corporate culture +++ bilingualism +++ business and the environment +++

Corporate Culture, bilingualism, business and the environment

Absolutely bilingual: We revisit the issue of bilingualism with comments from one of our listeners about her experiences.

Absolutely corporate: TrineMaria Kristensen of Social Square explains how companies define their culture around the stories they agree on and whether screaming with laughter in the A P Møller Mærsk offices is acceptable or not.

Absolutely Environmental: Peter Malbek of SCA Packaging explains why responsibility for the environment is built into the culture of SCA and also comes with news of this year’s trendy Christmas present; a bag of hot air.

Absolutely educational: We are very keen to hear about how listeners use our podcast in their teaching. The Leonardo Lancelot project plans to use one of our shows in their pilot course for training online teachers.
The next show will come from Germany on February 23 so … stay tuned!
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
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absolutely intercultural 23 +++ Preparation for a stay abroad +++ bi- & multilingualism +++

How to prepare yourself for a stay abroad // multilingualism

absolutely abroad
What can you do to prepare yourself for a semester or a stay abroad? Is reading up on the country you’re planning to go to or getting information from the Internet enough? Ariane Curdy, an intercultural trainer and teacher, gives us the answer.

And if you’re interested in learning more about how to prepare yourself, or your students, for a stay abroad, then you might like to know more about a European project called LIPS. LIPS stands for Linguistic and Intercultural Preparation of Students for the workplace and the aim of the project is to identify key situations in collaboration with potential employers and students and develop an innovative media-based learning community. You can find more information about LIPS at www.eu-lips.de

absolutely bilingual
What is it like to raise four children bilingually? Elisabeth is from Austria, but followed her husband 33 years ago to England. The children have been speaking both, German and English at home, and we also asked her son Thomas, what it was like for him to grow up with two languages at the same time.

absolutely endangered
Christina Cunningham talks about how the working language of the Commission has changed since the last enlargements of the Union, and what is being done to give the less spoken languages, like Danish or Lithuanian for example, more visibility and a stronger impact in the daily work of the Commission.

The next show will be coming to you on the 9th of February from Anne Fox in Denmark.

So long…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited and co-hosted by: Karsten Kneese

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absolutely intercultural 22 +++ artificial Zulu culture +++ clothes maketh the man +++ what do you call your teacher? +++

We are still waiting for Zanele Khumalo from Cape Town in South Africa to get in touch as the winner of our Frappr map prize.

Absolutely National: And we stay in South Africa to hear from Mark Anderson in Pretoria who explains the classification system of the old apartheid system and the beliefs this led to. Mark also explains how the Zulu culture may not be as old as we might think.

Absolutely Yours: Our feature on image projection in show number 21 struck a chord with Fernando from Spain who sent us an audio comment about what led him to discard almost his entire wardrobe of clothes when he had an internship in Germany.

Absolutely Educational: Anne has difficulty pronouncing Katarzyna Kubacka’s name. Katarzyna is a student teacher in Poland who was known as Kate during her time as a classroom assistant in Grenaa. Katarzyna was financed under the Comenius programme of the EU. Katarzyna talks about the differences in approach and mentions one thing which she found particularly shocking.

The next show will come from Germany on January 26 so … stay tuned!
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
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absolutely intercultural 21 +++ We won the Edublog Award +++ Image Projection +++ Internships and practical training abroad +++

Image projection and internships abroad – We have a winner for our frappr-map-competition – And hey! We won the Edublog Award!

Image projection Believe it or not – we are Number One in the Edublog Award in the category “Best Audio Blog”. This is really amazing and we’d like to thank each and every one of you for your votes and your support. And of course for all the comments and emails we got. We will get to all of them when we return from our Christmas break in January.

And our frappr-map-competition has come to an end. And the winner is… Zanele Khumalo from Cape Town in South Africa! Many congratulations, Zanele, and thank you very much for putting pin number 100 on our frappr-map. We will contact you soon and see how we can make you the guest host of one of our next shows. And of course we’d like to thank all the others for participating in our competition and for putting your pin on our map. It is nice to see where you are listening from.

We believe that “actively designing your image” is a very controversial but also an important concept that especially students should pay a lot more attention to when they are planning a stay abroad.

So let’s start with our first column ‘absolutely German!’ where Vera Klopprogge will tell us more about her internship at the World Health Organisation in Denmark.

But not only when you go abroad should you think about your image projection. Also when you start a new job or move to another city you could plan to try out something new. So we have asked Marlen Izquierdo from Spain and Anita Molnar from Hungary if they have worked on their image projection when they first started their new jobs, teaching at a university, and we call the second column ‘absolutely tiny!’, and you’ll soon understand why… =)

For our third and last column ‘absolutely abroad!’, we have interviewed Wiebke Begere, who is doing an internship in the tourist office on Achill Island, which is situated just off the west coast of Ireland. She’ll tell us about the differences between the buzzing Melting Pot Dublin, and the remote and very calm Achill Island. And she’ll also give us an insight on what she has learned from her stay abroad already.

We’d like to thank you once again for listening to us, for your support, for your comments and emails and basically for everything you have done to make this podcast what it is.

The next show will be coming to you on the 12th of January from Anne Fox in Denmark.

We are very much looking forward to the next year and hope that you will…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited by: Karsten Kneese

oedb And this came in last minute: ‘absolutely intercultural!’ has been named a Top 100 Education Blog by the Online Education Database. Wow, thank you very much! Now we’re really under pressure to live up to all the expectations. =)

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absolutely intercultural 20 +++ Live at Worldbridges +++ Online Culture & Language +++ The American Internet +++ Edublogs Votes +++

This show was sent out live through Worldbridges as a webcast. Guests included Jeff Lebow (thanks for all the technical streaming support) from Worldbridges who explained why Tibetans turn to English when discussing taboo topics.

We also heard from Helen Keegan at Salford University, England who revealed whether synchronous or asynchronous online communication reveals the most about national culture in the course of her ESMOS project.

Karsten Kneese, the producer of this podcast told us about adapting to the different conventions of formality in German and English. Karsten also gave us an update on our Frappr map competition where you can win a free trip to Germany simply by adding your pin to our Frappr map (at the bottom of this page).

Please add your pin! We don’t have a winner yet so please don’t hesitate and have a go.

Barbara Dieu (Bee for short) from Brazil talked about her experiences blogging with her high school students and the blog project exchange Dekita.org. She also talked about the early days of the Internet. Did she stay too long in the American internet? Listen and find out. Bee is also one of the people who nominated Absolutely Intercultural for the prestigious Edublogs Awards.

Please vote for us before December 16 at the Edublog Awards.

The next show will be coming to you from Germany on the 29th of December.

Until then…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

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absolutely intercultural 19 +++ Win a trip to Germany +++ GO OUT +++ Managing Cultural Diversity +++ Fruits and Condoms +++

Win a trip to Germany – GO OUT – Managing Cultural Diversity – Fruits and Condoms

Add pin number 100 on our frappr-map and win a trip to Germany! Do you want to know how? Then please read the first comment to this posting.

Absolutely International: We hear about the GO OUT campaign, which has been initiated by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Absolutely Diverse: How can intercultural diversity be managed? And why should it be managed? Marlén, one of the lecturers of the seminar, provides you with the answers.

Absolutely Student Like: We have asked the participants of our Managing Cultural Diversity Seminar to generalize a little and describe student life in their home countries, and what they think makes it different from the life of students in other countries. So let’s listen to Sami from Finland, Anita from Hungary and Anders from Sweden.

Absolutely Prepared: Vera Klopprogge from Fulda tells us about her internship at the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organisation in Copenhagen, why she went abroad in the first place and what fruits have to do with condoms.

The next show will be coming to you on the 15th of December from Anne Fox in Denmark.

Until then…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited by: Karsten Kneese

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absolutely intercultural 18 +++ The BOBs +++ UK & NATO +++ schooling & worklife balance +++

You will hear about The BOBs, the GO OUT campaign and what British schools and the army have in common.

Absolutely Fantastic: The support you gave us for The BOBs was absolutely fantastic and thank you to everybody who voted, commented and listened. We came third in the user prize category and that is solely down to your votes. Add your comments here or send us a mail or audio message to let us know how we can be number one next year.

Absolutely Mobile: Laurent and Karsten from the Fachhochschule Koblenz, Germany, give you some background information on the “GO OUT” campaign initiated by the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD. During this week students can prepare themselves for a semester abroad, both, at a partner university or in a company.

Absolutely Personal: The show concentrates on two individuals who both went to work for a period in the UK.

First we hear from Dane, Tommy Søholm, who went for three years working for NATO in the UK. Life was not as regimented as you might think for Tommy the soldier, but on the other hand even his youngest child was drafted into the disciplined ranks of the British schooling system much to everybody’s surprise in the family.

Then we hear from Yogesh Bang, a software engineer based in India who has been posted abroad for short periods on assignment several times now. Hear what he has to say about the work life balance and the concern shown to him by his landlady in the UK as he went off for a weekend in Chester.

The next show will be coming to you from Germany on the 1st of December.

Until then…stay tuned!
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

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absolutely intercultural 17 +++ The BOBs +++ Borrowed Identities +++ European Students +++

Borrowed Identities – European Student Now!

Have you ever thought about your own identity? Or about borrowing another identity to see what it is like to live the life of somebody else? Have you ever marveled about how your life would have been if you grew up in another country? Or if you were a homeless person?

Well, in this episode we try to answer those questions as we talk about a European project which we’ve started recently together with students in Sweden, Spain, England and Hungary.

The title of the project is “Borrowed Identities”, and to cast a little light on this we have interviewed Vy, Lili, Jessica and Ross from the School of Languages at the University in Brighton and Pat Shrimpton from the University of Umea in the north of Sweden.
And please also have a look at the “Achill 2006” website, which documents a very similar previous project.

And, of course, we say hello to our listeners TT and Veronique from the USA, and Halla in Saudi Arabia who have put their pins on our frappr map. We talk about the feedback we’ve received from you, and about the nomination of ‘absolutely intercultural!’ as one of the 10 best podcasts for The BOBs award.

Well, we hope you will enjoy the show and are looking forward to your comments.

The next show will be coming to you on the 17th of November from Anne Fox in Denmark.

Until then…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited by: Karsten Kneese

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