Intercultural Collaboration

1. There is no question that emerging technologies are useful and should be used for intercultural collaboration.   Social media is all about connectivity whether it'd be friends, family, community, interests, states, and countries.  Intercultural collaboration using technology is all about opening the world to the mind. It is a meeting place and a virtual port made easier, quicker, faster.
   
   
   There is an example of a site (http://www.aec.asef.org/) that connects students from Asia and Europe by having students work together on the same projects.  I think that is a brilliant idea.  Different perspectives, environments, knowledge, ideas, and thought processes would come into play and these can be shared and understood by all parties.  In the past, we would have to physically travel to different countries, read about them in books, or passively watch videos to learn about them.  Now, with emerging technologies, students can actively engage with other students from other cultures, ask questions, collaborate, and form their own opinions rather than being fed information from a third party.
   
   
   As I have mentioned in class, there is a brilliant language translator that is being developed by Google for smartphones.  The speaker doesn't have to learn a new language or be limited by language issues to connect with a person of another language.  The technology would automatically and in real time, translate the speakers' language into a language the other person can understand.  This is not your usual translation technology that is already available out there.  This translator uses more AI, where the program will translate whole phrases and nuances in a language rather than translate word by word which results in higher accuracy.  If they can apply this technology with Skype voice and other voice chats and classroom chatrooms such as Eluminate, a huge barrier will be opened and there would be less limitations on how and who we collaborate with.
   
   
   Aside from admonishing my colleague for being very archaic about not willing to put the desire or effort into intercultural collaborations and that time and money is an issue to not pursue that avenue, I would advise them that the whole purpose for emerging technologies is to make things faster and easier for a busy society, as well as free for a money strapped society.  The amount of free and really well done emerging technologies continues to astound me as I learn about them in this ETEC class.   I would provide a list of free and easy tools and websites that would show my colleague examples of intercultural collaboration and the benefits of it.  As a bonus, we can sit down, review my colleague's class schedule, and plug in technologies that can be substituted in the schedule and ways intercultural collaboration using emerging technologies can benefit his/her class' subject matter.