InterculturalAntennae


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I**t is a huge world in many ways; diverse, ever changing. We no longer have "just our neighborhood" as our place of being. So we need more skills about living in a more diverse world. Businesses are global. Learning transcends all borders. Even our social lives stretch across the world, enabled by internet connections.

- awareness of cultural differences across any group of people we are interacting with. How much do we need to know? - awareness of our own cultural assumptions. This builds on the self awareness competency. - respect for all the cultures represented in our communities. This means less "either/or" and more "and." It means that there may be no "one way" to do things. Openness. - willingness to learn from others about their own cultures and to model this learning in our communities.
 * This involves

The new hybrids** It is also true that we are all stepping into an emerging new online culture. We may move from solely identifying with our geographic culture of origin and adopting and adapting from others. As an example, think of the youth who do have access and who live in a world that seamlessly spans online and offline, who play as easily with the youth next door as the youth around the globe. They are growing up in this new reality. And as access to broadband increases, one possible future scenario is that people select their culture, as much as grow up in it. Pretty wild.

So how do we shape this together? How do we get from "here" to "there" to enable useful interactions online across cultural traditions without erasing those very traditions.

For example,
 * 1) What are our cultural assumptions concerning self-disclosure?
 * 2) What are the technological implications of our cultural assumptions concerning oral and written communication?
 * 3) What about cultural assumptions concerning collaborative and individual learning?

This one is also very tied to the Self Awareness competency

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