Talking Cultures

Integrating culture and language learning

British Council Ukraine and the Institute for Innovative Technologies and the Content of Education invite applications from secondary schools of all types to participate in the international online Talking Cultures project.

Talking Cultures promotes intercultural dialogue
and improves students’ communication skills through
mini-projects using Wikispaces as a collaboration tool

Structure and Procedures

Talking Cultures is a series of mini-projects using an intercultural teacher’s kit containing ten units each one focussing on a specific area of culture. Each unit has a series of tasks that lead to the production of a wiki component. This wiki is shared with a class in another country so that the learners can discover a new culture.

The topics have been selected with a teenage audience in mind and are skills focussed to build up the confidence of the learners. There are 4 main stages to each topic which may take a few lessons to complete:

Preparation
The listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks help students prepare for the mini-project.
Mini-project (writing)
Students may have to do a few drafts before uploading onto the wiki. It is best for the projects to be done in pairs or small groups.
Share
Students upload and edit the content on the wiki.
Exchange
Students get acquainted with the content of other country wikis and do a series of tasks, e.g. Read 2 projects and write down an interesting fact, a similarity and a difference. Using the Discussions feature of the wiki, students could write their comments/reflections.

Participating countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine.

Target Group

The project is for teachers of English and 13–16 year old students.

Requirements

Participants (teachers and students) should:

have reliable internet access
have personal e-mail addresses
be confident in using MS Office applications and the internet
be able to access the wiki on a regular basis
be prepared to work collaboratively
be well-organised to meet project timetable and deadlines.

How to apply

To participate in the selection, fill in the Application Form and send it back to Sasha Shalenko (British Council) and Oksana Melnyk (IITCE) at: Oleksandr.Shalenko@britishcouncil.org.ua; ok_melnyk@ukr.net

ukraine-education-talking-cultures-application-form-2011.doc

The deadline for applications is 10 September 2011. The results of the selection will be communicated by 15 September 2011.

Selected participants will be invited to a one-day project training which is to take place on 24 September 2011 in Kyiv.

DCSIMG

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