Intercultural Competence

It happens regularly in our ETEC 647 class:  inter-cultural exchange and collaboration of ideas using a Web 2.0 technology tool, Elluminate.  We have heard from Annie Saint-Jacques in Canada,  Jin and Ayako in Japan (although Jin is from China), and from Dr. Kumiko Aoki in Japan.  It seems to be a regular event in this class, that I never gave much thought to skills needed for inter-cultural exchanges.  But when I think about it, it is true that even in those short meetings, participants on both sides of the culture had to exercise patience, desire to speak in a foreign language or try to understand despite the heavy accent, and be open to new ideas or perspectives.  Those moments were good exercises for both the speakers and for us.

Here in Hawaii, the melting-pot of many cultures, intercultural interaction is a regular part of life.  We all had classmates and neighbors from another country or another state, and we tried to understand why they act, think, eat, or dress differently. We Hawaiians have been given the gift of learning intercultural competency from childhood.  Therefore, transitioning our youth to become inter-culturally competent global citizens should be easy and natural.   We can apply educational technology in classrooms to enable and enhance opportunities to collaborate internationally, beyond our own neighborhoods and social circles, so that the learners can become competent global citizens.