Using the Internet to Increase Multicultural Understanding

Chapter 10

Teaching with the Internet K-12: New Literacies for New Times
Leu, Leu, and Coiro

When I think about multicultural understanding, I think about several things.

One incident was when my brother returned from the military with a German wife and two year old. She and the child spoke very little English. My husband and I later went to Germany and visited her parents in Gernsbach, Germany.

The other occurrence was when a high school Foreign Exchange Student gave a talk at our rural community building – the country schoolhouse. She shared information about the cowboys in her country and their dress. Their cowboy hats had strings under the chin to keep them on while most of our cowboy hats do not have this. We learned many other unique cultural differences and facts from her, too.

Last of all my parents sponsored a fourth cousin and his wife to immigrate from England as farm laborers in the fifty’s. Although we spoke the same language, they used many different meanings for words such as a boot is a trunk of a car. Their British accent was different. I can remember barely understanding what they were saying when they first got off the train in Rapid City, South Dakota late in the evening that first day they arrived.

So the main idea of this article is to remember that it is very important to have diverse ideas represented in the world’s problem solving. Having lots of ways to look at an issue gives us more ideas to help in making solutions to problems. We know that our world is constantly expanding and we need to prepare our students for changes. A very powerful source of help comes from using the Internet and Literacies to develop a greater understanding of diverse populations and having greater respect/appreciation for our differences.

Since our two fourth grade classes plan a cultural education field trip in May, I particularly wanted to look at and share with these fourth grade teachers Web Sites that would be helpful to them in teaching about diverse populations and appreciation of the differences of individuals. A Webquest I thought that looked interesting was Native American in a Natural World. A Registry site would be Registry Global School Net Project Registry. Then Directories that could be helpful would be “Index of Native American Resources on the Internet”, “Native American Sites Awareness”, and “Yahooligan: Around the World”. Other interesting sites would be the “American Indian Education” site, “The Circle of Stories” site, “Evaluating Native American Web Sites”, the “Oyate” site, and the “Alaska Native Knowledge Network” site. The Internet Project Registry had a current project regarding the Native American Tribes. They wanted basic information about the Tribes in a simple design format. The student, teacher and school would get credited for the research done. Then the Evaluation of Native American Web Sites was very helpful and could be used to evaluate other types of sites.

Then because we have many Spanish speaking families in our school and community, I wished to find Internet URLS that would be helpful for the teachers and our students. I believe that I could set up a whole page on my PBWiki with ELL and ESL information and Directories for Latin Americans. Since my daughter-in-law teaches Spanish, I could share these sites with her. For assisting the individual students the “ESL Independent Study Lab Activities for ESL Students” would be helpful.
Many other sites had very helpful, useful information. I liked Miscositas, TESL/TEFL/TESOL…..Directory, Activities for ESL Students, E.L. Easton: Materials for Teaching English, FLTeach: Foreign Language Teaching Forum, Center for Applied Linguistics, and Interesting Things for ESL Students. The Tower of English had a World Clock site where you could set up times to meet with others in other countries using the World Clock.

The last Web site I was interested in was the "Cranes for Peace" site which represents the 50 year commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima. A teacher at our school had the children in his class make lots of cranes which were made into a huge mobile that is now hanging in our library. I thought this teacher would be interested in this particular site.

Again looking at all the above sites would be very helpful in teaching cultural awareness of others. Lots of information is available for the teachers to use.