The Living Web (2.0) & Intercultural education in Language ...

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The Living Web (2.0) & Intercultural education in Language Learning and

Teaching (LLT)

By Fred Dervin

http://users.utu.fi/freder/

The question of otherness arises less from a knowledge-based approach to labelling,

categorization and description than from inter-subjective understanding.

Martine Abdallah-Pretceille, 2007

In this article, I would like to suggest some answers to the question: how could we use

the Living Web, or the so-called Web 2.0, for intercultural education in language learning

and teaching (LLT)? The following issues will be dealt with: Why use Web 2.0? What is

intercultural education? How can we relate Web 2.0 and work on interculturality? I

consider this article to be one answer to the frequent query on how the approach to

interculturality that I have put forward in LLT can be implemented in the classroom.

Why use Web 2.0 in intercultural education?

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:

“static”

documents and limited “

living”

interactions. The first type of materials often

consisted of textbooks, “authentic”

documents (a questionable notion, I admit) such as

newspapers, magazines, brochures… but also films, songs, novels, etc. The birth of Web

1.0, often referred to as cyberspace, which was mostly “

read-only”

, allowed teachers to

access a lot more material like this. “Living”

interactions, on the other hand, could take

place with pen-pals, foreign teachers/assistants, through visits/stays abroad, etc. Note that

all of these are still very much in use. Yet, with the birth of Web 2.0 technologies and

applications (Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Flickr… ), unparalleled possibilities have opened

up for language and intercultural education. Instead of the static cyberspace, this living

web is user-centered and urges people to share information, collaborate, network, create,

manipulate… In brief, Web 2.0 allows us all to “

read-write-execute”

online (Tim

Berners-Lee, inventor of WWW - for a full definition and description of Web 2.0 cf.

Anderson 2007).

Most importantly, through Web 2.0, we have become “auctors”

(authors/actors)

of our lives (Bauman 2008) who “create and shape things as much as … [we] might be a

product of that creation and shaping”

. This is very interesting for LLT as a whole as this

new Web offers meaningful ways in authentic contexts, keeping up with the world,

bringing variety to our work, breaking the routine, getting new experience, being creative

and “meeting”

our learners (cf. http://www.elearningguides.net/guides/3b-GUIDES-

TUTORS-EN.pdf). As far as intercultural education is concerned, I’

ll try to demonstrate

later on in this paper how Web 2.0 can contribute immensely to it.

What is intercultural education?

I have written extensively on this topic and will refer the readers to my most recent

publication for definitions of intercultural education (Dervin 2010). What follows is a

short summary. First of all, intercultural education is not the same as cultural training.