I chose this question for a couple of reasons. First of all, I am leaving in January to travel to 11 different countries and live as a missionary for a month in each one of them. A month is a long time to live in a country in which you do not know the language or the culture. It could be very easy to unknowingly offend the people around you. Therefore, I believe it is important to learn as much about each country before entering into it. Secondly, I feel that a majority of prejudices about different groups of people stem from ignorance. If people were more aware of other's cultures, they would be less likely to form incorrect assumptions that fuel the prejudices. Thirdly, by researching the cultures of countries, social issues within the countries should become evident. Then I will be more prepared for the possible forms of missions work I will be doing within each country.
The purpose of this question is to try and use technology to discover information about my 11 countries: Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, China, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Nepal. I am not completely sure about how to go about this. Using the internet is definitely a source of technology so that is where I am going to begin my search.
I typed "using technology for cultural awareness" into the google search bar and came across this blog. The author seems to be a man teaching his students in Brazil about cultural awareness. He does this through the use of various social medias such as YouTube and Twitter. I think this is a really interesting idea so I decided to explore YouTube myself.
I searched "cultural awareness and found the following video.
I then decided to continue my search through viewing more videos. I felt that this next video was a great representation of actual intercultural training. It is a clip from an 11Alive News broadcast about the importance of becoming aware of China's culture before heading there for the Olympics in 2008.
Overall, I feel like I am at a great start for understanding how technology can be used to better understand cultures of foreign countries.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI love this idea! I also believe that learning about other cultures before visiting them is extremely important. There are very simple things we could do that could potentially disrespect others, so we should be aware of them. I think YouTube is a great place to start - there should be a lot of videos people have created to help others understand their culture. Another place I would suggest to look would be a travel company/tourist site for each of your countries. I believe they might also have some good things to look out for.
Have a great trip in January,
Sami