Tag: podcast

absolutely intercultural 35 +++ Second Life & the “Edunation” +++ Podcasting & Education +++


Second Life and the Edunation, Podcasting and Education

The EdunationIn this episode we talk about how new web2.0 technologies and tools such as the three dimensional virtual world Second Life and Podcasting are changing the way we learn, the way we teach and how we shape and influence the process – so generally speaking – how web2.0 is changing the culture of education.

absolutely virtual (part 1)
We have interviewed Nicky Hockly from the Consultants-E in Barcelona about their ventures into this new world, and what the hype about Second Life is all about. The interview is split up into two parts, and you really shouldn’t miss the second one at the end of this show where Nicky talks about “Edunation” and what you can learn there.

absolutely practical
And before we continue our second life interview with Nicky Hockly you will hear Sebastian Dorok, an Apple Distinguished Educator and teacher of English and music at a highschool in Germany. Sebastian talks about his own experiences as a teacher and gives a hands-on example from his podcasting project with young students.

absolutely virtual (part 2)
Nicky tells us more about “Edunation”, what is happening on the virtual island and how Second Life can be used for teaching. And she reveals whether she herself is a Second Life person or not…so stay tuned!

The next show will be coming to you on the 27th of July 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 34 +++ reboot +++ Ewan McIntosh +++ Wikimedia +++ WeBreakStuff +++

reboot, Ewan McIntosh, Wikimedia and WeBreakStuff

Reboot logoIn this show we talk to some of the people who attended the Reboot 09 conference in Copenhagen in late May. Reboot traditionally focuses on the Internet and online applications and tends to attract businesses and programmers but it is far from as technical as it sounds. The theme of the conference was ‘Human?’ and touched on issues such as achieving the ideal work/life balance, integrating children into a career, what happens to your blog when you die and how can cyber organisations which belong to no physical location motivate people all over the world to fund their activities?

Absolutely Educational: ‘Universities should be a place where you get it wrong.’ As part of his French studies at university, Ewan McIntosh spent some time teaching English in a French university. How did his students, used to the traditional academic French approach, react when he cleared away the desks and asked them to rank their own performance?

Absolutely generous: ‘Cheques are still free in France.’ Delphine Ménard, a French woman living in Germany works for the Wikimedia Foundation whose projects include Wikipedia. She talks about how such an international organisation can reach out to different cultures to secure the funding they need to continue their work.

Absolutely ideal: ‘It’s not the most practical thing but it’s not hard at all!’ Fred Oliveira from Portugal has decided what his priorities in life are and explains how he has managed to set up a cutting edge company without needing to remain in the Bay area of California.

Absolutely expert: Our very own PodKarsten, Karsten Kneese was invited to speak on an expert panel at the Podcast Day in Cologne on June 20th. So make sure you tune into the next show on July 13 to find out much more about it.

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 33 +++ Protestant Church Congress 2007 +++ Taizé +++ Religion & Society +++

Live from the Protestant Church Congress 2007 in Cologne – Taizé Experiences – Religion and Society

To do a show about religion was suggested by Irene Hansen who left a comment on our blog some weeks ago, where she also mentioned the Taizé Community. Taizé is a community in France but its members come from various different parts of the world – so the lifestyle in the community is at the same time religious and remarkably intercultural.

absolutely abroad
Our good friend Fernando moved from Spain to the USA a few months ago, and he tells us about his observations regarding religion in general and especially Catholicism in the United States. Fernando, welcome back to ‘absolutely intercultural!’

Father Rogerabsolutely personal
We got in touch with Irene and arranged to meet her at the five day protestant church congress in Cologne, Germany, which came to an end last Sunday the 10th of June with a service attended by over 100,000 participants from all over the world. Supported by Anne Knopf and Gereon Reuter, two of our students here at RheinAhrCampus, she interviewed quite a number of people about their wishes and dreams for the world, about their experiences at the church congress and about their visits to the Taize community in France.

absolutely recommendable
But of course we haven’t been the only podcasters at the protestant church congress. The Deutsche Welle Radio for example has created a fantastic feature about the event that will provide you with even more eyewitness reports and thoughts about faith and its position in the world. So we recommend to you to go to the Deutsche Welle website and listen to their correspondents reports.

absolutely lifelong
Watch out for international conventions, exhibitions, fairs or anything that brings people from other countries to your city. At these events is usually very easy to get in contact with interesting people and learn more about their culture and of course their language.
Street preacherabsolutely original
Listent to a street preacher at Victoria Station in London who was using a megaphone to draw attention to the importance of God and hear a group of believers of the Hare Krishna movement who were out in the street to reach out to passers-by and attract them to their religious beliefs by singing.
Announcement

Karsten Kneese will participate in a panel about “The future of educasts” at 4 pm on June 20th for the Podcastday 2007. The panel will be recorded and can be downloaded after the event.

The next show will be coming to you on the 29th of June 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 32 +++ pregnancy +++ contact hypothesis +++ Spanish Latinos +++

Pregnancy, contact hypothesis and spanish latinos

PregnancyAbsolutely Yours: Thanks to Anastasia Pryanikova for her kind comments about our show. Check out Anastasia’s blog if you need wise words about teaching in general and teaching law in particular.

Absolutely childish: ‘I felt that I didn’t have any private space anymore.’ Listen to how it felt for Kenyan, Collette Wanjugu Döppner, living in Germany to be pregnant the German way!

Absolutely theoretical: Elaine Hoter from Talpiot College in Tel Aviv explains the contact hypothesis and how it is used in a tripartite collaborative project bringing the three main disparate cultural communities in Israel in a session during the CONNECT Webheads in Action convergence conference. You can listen to the rest of Elaines’s session, my session about using podcasts in language teaching and many more of the sessions on the conference archive page.

Absolutely personal: Carla Arena from Brazil explains how she and her husband are surrounded by Latino stereotypes as they spend two years in Florida.

Absolutely essential: Don’t forget that Karsten Kneese will be partcipating in a panel discussion about educasting on June 20th at 5pm (15:00GMT) as part of the PodcastDay2007 in Cologne.

The next show will be coming from Germany on June 15th.

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 31 +++ International Week @ RheinAhrCampus +++ Study abroad +++ Where is Lithuania heading? +++

International Week at RheinAhrCampus – Study abroad – Where is Lithuania heading?


For one week each year we celebrate the international and intercultural aspects of the University of Applied Science Koblenz, this year again with support from the DAAD initiative Go Out!. Every year we invite guests from our partner universities and experts who give presentations for our students about studying or working abroad. However, this time, there were not only students from our own university, but also Agnes Dus from Corvinus University in Budapest in Hungary, and Johan Olsson from Umea University in Sweden. Agnes and Johan were our roving reporters for this week, and they ran from one location to another, always looking for good opportunities to interview people and find out about their international and intercultural experiences.

absolutely studentlike

For our first column they have interviewed three students about their intercultural experiences and plans. Isabelle for example talks about different cultural ways how people do business, and Daniel tells us how his stay in Singapore has changed his life and why you shouldn’t trust too much what you can learn from books about intercultural behaviour.

absolutely experienced
For the second column Johan spoke to Professor Patrick McMahon from the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education. He turned around the perspective and asked him, what he as a lecturer can learn from international students and what has changed most in the British student culture since he was a student himself.

absolutely lithuanian
Agnes met Ruta Jankauskiene from the University of Kaunas. Ruta will give us an insight on the Lithuanian perspective on international exchanges and where her country is heading.
absolutely lifelong
And last but not least we are proud to present a new column “absolutely lifelong” where we will share good ideas to organise your own life long learning. Today’s contribution has been produced by Anne Knopf and Gereon Reuter, two of our students at RheinAhrCampus. They will give you some good advice on how you can improve your English in a realistic way and have a lot of fun at the same time.
Here are the links:

Announcements
Anne Fox will give a talk/workshop on “Using Podcasts in the EFL classroom” at 20:00 GMT on May 19th. Please go to wiaoc.org to find out more about this event.

Karsten Kneese will participate in a panel about “The future of educasts” at 5 pm on June 20th for the Podcastday 2007.

The next show will be coming to you on the 1st of June 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 30 +++ working in Japan +++ Haiti and the Dominican Republic +++ Hofstede in action +++

Working in Japan – Haiti and the Dominican Republic – Hofstede in action

Rush hour in JapanAbsolutely National
Yogesh Bang, an Indian software engineer, has worked on assignment in Japan several times. His advice to anybody thinking of working in Japan is to be prepared to lose out on sleep. He also noticed the effect of concensus decision-making, hierarchy and the status of women employees during his time there.

Absolutely Educational I
We have another report from Chris Saenger of the Intercultural Management Institute of Washington on their annual conference last March called ‘Does Culture Still Matter?’ This time he talks about their second keynote speaker Laurence Harrison who is not afraid to make controversial propositions as to why for example Haiti and the Dominican Republic perform so differently economically even though they share the same island.

Absolutely Educational II
Speaking from Iceland, David Stroud, a senior British civil servant, talks about why the Hofstede model is so useful in international negotiations.

The next show will be coming from Germany on May 18.

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 29 +++ Adult Education +++ Lifelong Learning +++ International Emergency Calls +++

The culture of Adult Education – Lifelong Learning – International Emergency Calls

absolutely grown-up

Lifelong learning is often promoted by institutions of adult education, so for our first column we have interview Ulla and Beate, who both work for adult education institutions. Ulla works for the Folkuniversitetet in Sweden and Beate for Deutscher Volkshochschulverband in Germany. We tried to figure out whether there is a specific culture of adult education, and what makes people want to carry on learning throughout their lives.

absolutely personal
Laurent met his long-time friend and colleague in many European projects Pat Shrimpton, who went from England to Sweden 41 years ago with her husband Neville. She also started her career at the Folkuniversitetet but later on became a teacher at the University of Umea in the very north of Sweden. She talks about how the field of adult education has changed in all those years, and why she won’t move back to England after her retirement this summer.

absolutely on fire
Now, imagine you have just started a new job in a foreign country somewhere in Europe, let’s say Lithuania. At work you mainly speak English, and you haven’t really mastered the Lithuanian language yet. One night you wake up and discover that your house is on fire. You rush to the telephone, dial the emergency number 112 and suddenly realize that the operator at the other end might not understand you. This is where Dieter Nüssler and his wife Helga come in. They have won the European Language Label for the project Multicom112, which tackles exactly that problem.

absolutely lifelong
And last but not least we are proud to present a new column “absolutely lifelong” where we will share good ideas to organise your own life long learning. Today’s contribution has been produced by Anne Knopf and Gereon Reuter, two of our students at RheinAhrCampus. They will give you some good advice on how you can improve your English in a realistic way and have a lot of fun at the same time.

The next show will be coming to you on the 4th of May 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 28 +++ Does culture still matter? +++ Gypsy music in the Czech Republic+++

Just in time before the Easter holidays – Report from the conference “Does culture still matter” – Gypsy music in the Czech Republic

cimbalom

Absolutely yours: We get birthday congratulations and an idea for a new show.

Absolutely educational: Chris Saenger reports on some of sessions he attended at the ‘Does Culture Still Matter?’ conference hosted by the Intercultural Management Institute of Washington DC. First Chris recounts how an activity involving holding two water-filled cups of water can show you various aspects of how you react in an unknown situation. Later he tells us about how former US ambassador, Prudence Bushnell, adopted various strategies to enable a woman’s voice to be heard in patriarchal cultures.

Absolutely musical: On a recent trip to the east of the Czech Republic, the Rivus trio play traditional gypsy music in which the cimbalom or hammered dulcimer instrument (pictured) plays a leading role. This is not a music podcast but music can have an important role to play in culture.

The next show will be coming from Germany on April 20.

The Host of this show is: Anne Fox

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

absolutely intercultural 27 +++ The 1st Anniversary Show +++ Behind the scenes +++ Show 1 revisited +++

It is our birthday today – and we are taking you behind the scenes of absolutely intercultural!

Happy 1st birthday to AISo because this is our first birthday episode, we are going to be a bit more self-centred then usually.

For the column absolutely nostalgic we’re taking a look back at our very first show. Do you remember? It was about the Tapas culture in Leon, in the north of Spain, and Steve Evans from the British Council in Madrid constructed an English lesson around this show. As he was one of the first teachers who have used our show in the classroom, I decided I should visit him and interview him about it. So I met Steve a while ago and we chatted about the reactions of his students and how our podcast has influenced their way of learning and communicating in the classroom. Please also have a look at the Madrid Young Learners Video Podcast, which they started after listening to our first show.

For our second column absolutely influential Anne, Laurent and I have talked about how our podcast has influenced our own working lives and maybe even our private lives. And right after that we’ll go absolutely indiscrete and take you behind the scenes of absolutely intercultural. Have you ever wondered how we actually produce this podcast and meet all the people for our interviews? Well, your questions will be answered soon. And we’ve got some confessions to make, but that’ll have to wait until later.

And in the end you can learn a little bit more about us, the makers and moderators of absolutely intercultural, if you like.
The next show will be coming to you on the 6th of April 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo

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?

Helen and Anne meet in SLabsolutely 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

Download
Podcast-Feed
iTunes-Abo