Cultural and Global Considerations

Module 5 – Cultural and Global Considerations

Introduction – page 1

Video: Did you know? 3.0 (Official Video)-2009 Edition

The number of internet devices in 1984 was 50?

Did you know if you’re one in a million in China……there are 1,300 people just like you. China will soon become the NUMBER ONE English speaking country in the world?

The 25% of India’s population with the highest IQ’s…is GREATER than the total population of the United States. TRANSLATION: India has more honors kids than America has kids.

Did you know the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010…did not exist in 2004?

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist… using technologies that haven’t been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs… by the age of 38.

1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year. 1 in 2 has been there less than five years.

Did you know 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online?

There are over 200 million registered users on MySpace. If MySpace was a country, it would be the 5th largest in the world. (Between Indonesia and Brazil)

The #1 ranked country in Broadband Internet Penetration is … Bermuda #19 the United States #22 Japan

Did you know we are living in exponential times. There are 31 Billion searches on Google every month. In 2006, this number was 2.7 Billion? To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)

The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992. Today, the number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million Radio 38 years TV 13 years Internet 4 years iPod 3 years Face book 2 years The number of internet devices in 1984 was 1,000 The number of internet devices in 1992 was 1,000,000 The number of internet devices in 2008 was 1,000,000,000

There are about 540,000 words in the English language. About 5X as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

Translation of THECB Grant Module videos and podcasts into text format Page 1 Prepared by Gina Coleman Cultural and Global Considerations

It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a life time in the 18th century.

It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0x10^19) of unique information will be generated this year. That is more than the previous 5,000 years. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 year.

For students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that…half of what they learn in their first year of study will be out dated by their third year of study.

NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable…that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber. That is 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second. It is currently tripling every six months and is expected to do so for the next 20 years.

By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain.

Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.

Did you know during the course of this presentation… 67 babies were born in the US 274 babies were born in China 395 babies were born in India And 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally.

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Here's How – Going Global - page 11

At the MIT Media Lab, Dr. Mitchel Resnick and the Lifelong Kindergarten Group have developed a programming language called Scratch. Video in text below:

Scratch, Media Lab Video Mitchel Resnick: We take the name scratch from where the hip hop disk jockeys scratch with music. They take pieces of music and combine them together in unexpected and creative ways. We want to let kids be able to mix together media in the same type of way. To take graphics and photos and music and sounds and mix them together. We are watching the scratch software now. The people around the world can download it for free, make their own scratch project and then post their projects to share with people around the world. (Showing scratch pictures) Andres Monroy Hernandez: Scratch is trying to bring the high level computerizational concepts to anyone. Mitchel Resnick: Trading a program is just a matter of snapping graphical blocks together on the screen. Like putting Lego bricks together in the world. Natalie Rusk: Rather than just having something change, you can control how it changes so rather than warping …say as I move the mouse I want it to warp in this way or I want it to change colors as I move or depending on what I do. So it can respond to you dynamically and a lot of programmers know how to do that but there’s not that many assessable tools to really let young people make interactive software, make their own interactions come to life.

Andres Monroy Hernandez: In the scratch it’s easier than in other languages to get parts of other peoples projects or programs into your own environment. Jay Silver: I like the idea of a tool that can be used in schools but suggest to the learner, I can use them autonomously. Mitchel Resnick: Our goal is to bring together a worldwide community of creators who are consistently using scratch to create new projects, share them with their friends around the world and learn from one another in the process. http://scratch.mit.edu

Big Idea – Issues and Considerations for Global Learning - page 15

Podcast with Dr. Larry Ragan, Director of Faculty Development at Penn State University World Campus; the most important thing to remember when working with a global audience is, "communication, communication, communication."

Communicating what your expectations are as clearly as you can and in multiple formats, I think it is absolutely critical so that the learner understands where you are coming from. Language can be a barrier. It can be a barrier between folks in the north and in the south or people speaking English. We still have language barriers. In the online environment, it’s principally written but increasingly we are putting in podcasts such as this and video casts, but it’s largely written word. I think being very clear about…for example an assignment and communicating what you want when you want it. For example, here’s the rubric I’m going to be using to judge /evaluate your input. So that people understand exactly what it is as clearly as you can. I’m always struck…I talk about this all the time…I’m always struck by this know matter how clearly I think I have stated something somebody still… and I’m talking about primarily English speaking individuals in my case that still miss-interpret it. I didn’t say it right, I didn’t clarify what I meant and I go back and I reread it and I think…well yeah…now I see exactly where they are coming from. I use that feedback, that evaluation feedback to consistently improve. Whenever I see those issues arise…misinterpretations, misunderstandings… I take that as an opportunity to improve my writing. So I go back into my text or I redo the video clip that I have included and I make it a little bit clearer, in hopes that next time there won’t be a question about what is meant. I think around the idea of international including the audience, drawing them in to the conversation, communicating that it’s OK to question; to push…that’s what I’m looking for...if that’s what you are going after…if that’s the style you want. Letting people know that and not assuming everybody understands the same context of the classroom because it does vary by culture and the more we are sensitive to it I think the richer the learning experience will be for everybody in the class. There’s so much that can be learned in a larger international context. The more folks in putting their ideas, their backgrounds…boy, just makes it more fun for everybody. I think it really adds to the learning experience.

From the Field – Issues and Considerations for Global Learning - page 17

Podcast with Drs. Palloff and Pratt - discuss issues related to teaching international students whose first language is not English.

Dr. Pratt – One of the things we’ve experienced… and both you and I taught overseas extensively is the fact that in a face to face classroom, in a different cultural environment, we have a lot of control on how we interact with learners. We can…I don’t want to say force interaction, but we can interact with learners and encourage them to be open and honest with us. To do that in the online environment is much more difficult so you have to figure out ways to pull students who are not use to that kind of interaction with a instructor into the conversation because an important piece of online classes is collaboration. It’s hard a lot of times to get a student who is from a culture that doesn’t allow challenge of the instructor to get them involved in conversations with the instructor and with other students. To do that online…especially if they are in China…you’re not going to call them unless they are on Skype. You’re not going to call them and have a conversation with them but you still have to pull them into the classroom and you do that in a multitude of ways. You create groups with different people. You have them work together on a project and as part of that project they have to participate. Those types of things to bring them into the group and to encourage them to be part of the process that goes on. I’ve had some difficulties with this in the past. Rene I know you have – “Rene Pallof; “Oh Yeah”. – Especially the Asian students who are under the old English/British system. If they have gone to school under that, it’s difficult to get them to…it’s not disrespecting the instructor…it’s collaborating with the instructor. Those are things you are going to have to deal with in the online classroom. It’s just tough sometimes. The other issue is language barrier. We do a very poor job …at every institution I’ve worked for and we both have worked for a lot of them, I don’t think there’s but one or two doctorial institutions that’s online that we haven’t worked for. One of the things we don’t do a good job of is helping students that don’t know English as a first language learn to read and write so that they can get to that point in their lives where they can become a PHD or they can get their Master’s Degree. We do a very poor job of doing that and I think that’s another thing we have to deal with is writing and reading and doing things in English when it’s not our first language.

Dr. Rena Palloff- Right and you’re saying Doctorate and Master’s level. I think the same is true at the Associates level or at the Bachelor’s level. I don’t think that we are doing it. I agree with you. I don’t think that any institution is doing particularly a stellar job of providing the writing resources that non- native English speakers need to be able to be successful in the online environment. Now, we both have read research that shows that the more that students participate in synchronized online text based classes the better their writing skills become. So, we shouldn’t give up on these students simply because they can’t write very well in English or because they have a difficult time understanding a lot of what’s being written by other students or what they are reading. Certainly those skills can improve but institutions that are doing this work really need to provide better writing support for all students and particularly for non-native speakers.

From the Field – Culture page 21

Video with Nithyanantha Sevanthinathan, Director of International Programs and Services at Lone Star College in the Woodlands, TX. He summarizes some of the issues online instructors should consider when teaching international students.

Faculties are very smart people, by the same time the curricular of any success of offering online causes us to be aware about the surroundings especially when you have students from around the world. It’s very important to know how they learn using the American way of teaching and learning. Some of the things I see that would be valuable for faculty would be well aware of their English language the other one would be academics systems, the third one is social contacts. Why am I bringing these three areas up? Let me spell out in detail about the language. Some of the issues I see will be very helpful for faculty when they present their course materials thru online modes. You should be speaking slowly and clearly, provide written instructions, pair international students with native speakers, provide a list of key terminologies, provide guidance for good note taking, and refer students to the writing or ESL center. That will really help them to understand how they can learn the material better. The next area that I would like to talk about is the academic system. Not every system is the same as the United States, so you need to help students to understand how the academic system works. How my classroom works for the student to be successful is that my method of teaching is very simple. I want you to feel like you are just another student coming into this class. If you need to reach me here is how you can reach me. If you could make that known in the classroom that will make students at ease that I can interact in this faculty’s classroom the same way that I can interact with anyone else. I don’t have to be calling him or her Doctor. This will help the students to understand that even in online mode they can use anyway to learn the subject matter. The other thing is to understand the social context of learning. It’s very important because of how individuals grow up in the different parts of the world. The social context, especially where we understand the individual vs. group learning, the outcome is different. I think it’s good for faculty to spell that out. Classroom etiquette, it’s very important, so that students will know what to expect of themselves when they are in these online classes. This is what I would like faculty to be aware of as they prepare their online courses.

Translation of THECB Grant Module videos and podcasts into text format Page 6 Prepared by Gina Coleman