Welcome to the Golden Anniversary show of Absolutely Intercultural. Yes, this is show number 50 and we are delighted to still be here. We would also like to say thank you to everyone for supporting us, writing comments on the blog, voting for us in award schemes, sending us audio files, giving us ideas and links and last but not least thank you to all those people who have taken part so far.
absolutely connected
I have known Vance Stevens, virtually of course, for over six years. He recently wrote an article about the challenges of implementing Web 2.0 in Arabic educational institutions but first he talks about what drew him to the Arab world from his native US and the extent to which expatriates there can stay ‘in the loop’
absolute winners
There were no entries for our competition for weeks and then two correct answers arrived within a week. Fortunately I had two Rivus CDs to give away and I managed to speak with both winners. By the way the correct answer was dulcimer or cimbalom. In speaking with Susanne Nyrop from Denmark, I asked her about the strange habit of celebrating the birthdays of Danish shops and it turned out that Susanne had been to the first year anniversary celebrations of the first ever supermarket in Denmark.
absolutely educational
Elaine Hoter, Talpiot Teachers College, contacted us about a free online conference on Wedneday February 13th starting at 10am GMT about technology and multiculturalism. By coincidence, Vance Stevens will be one of the speakers talking about RSS, tagging and other Web 2.0 tools. Other speakers include Dr Janet Salmons, Dr Michelle Selinger and Dr Sheila Geresh.
absolutely connected again
Vance Stevens finds his students in Abu Dhabi very enthusiastic about using web 2.0 tools as part of their learning and talks about the way in which his experiences are gradually gaining acceptance of his approach at an institutional level. One example is the way in which he convinced the management that Internet was necessary not just for the teachers but for all the students too. Vance’s call to be connected in order to learn means that he and those in his network transcend borders.
absolutely international
Our first winner of the Rivus CD was Mai Berry Dahl living in the Netherlands. It turned out that she was Danish but has an even more complicated background. The most surprising fact I learned from Mai was that it is possible to have three nationalities.
The next show will be coming to you on 22 February from Dr. Laurent Borgmann.
So long…stay tuned!
The host of this show is:Anne Fox in Denmark
So because this is our first birthday episode, we are going to be a bit more self-centred then usually.