My main interest is the relationship between language (L1, L2 and FLT/L) and culture. I try to focus this in my classes from different perspectives according to the various objectives of the course I teach. My overriding aims are trying to raise and promote among my students cultural awareness, intercultural understanding and intercultural communicative competence. To be able to take an other person´s perspective and to question that of your own is crucial in education for democracy and global citizenship. It is also well in accordance with the guiding documents of HLK and the “basic values” underpinning the National Curriculum of the Swedish school.
I could immediately see a possibility to apply PICCLE activities to the course Cross-cultural Encounters in our teacher education programme. In “encounter” we include all kinds of cultural expressions relating to ethnicity, gender, class, age etc. This is a 5 week course, compulsory to all teacher students at HLK from preschool to high school, which is offered both autumn and spring semesters.

To promote intercultural critical literacy I may like to proceed from the reading of a popular novel by the Swedish author Mikael Niemi which quite recently has been translated into English. According to one of the leading Swedish newspapers the other day, it has just been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Observer and received excellent critique. The novel is about growing up in the 60´s in the very northern part of Sweden populated by an indigenous minority. Different kinds of cross-cultural encounters are being displayed in this burlesque, hilarious yet sad and somewhat indecent story. I think it would catch interest among students as, though belonging to another cultural context, they could identify themselves with many of the frustrations and challenges you experience becoming an adult, irrespective of time and place. The fact that the book is available both in Swedish and English would make the task more attractive to some Swedish students. As it consists of rather independent chapters students may choose to read parts of it and still get an intercultural experience to analyse and reflect upon as a foundation for further web activity.

To start with this semester, a PingPong student discussion would come in handy at the end of May fitting the schedule for the second Cross-cultural Encounter course. But the exact timing needs to be further considered. There will be approximately 120 students including about 10 international students, who attend an English speaking option. The first spring course (180 students) is mid March and I think that it is too early. The time schedule for the first course is already fixed and that would restrict the opportunities for PICCLE activities.

Spring 2005 would be the most convenient time to travel abroad.

Carol Davenport
cdavenport@nsu.edu

For the past five years, I have taught an English 203 class that is designed around instruction on critical thinking, reading and writing. My students have been very much involved in writing critical memoirs that reflect the theoretical framework of hegemony, along with the examination of the categories of race, class and gender, as these factors impact their lives. In addition, I have taught a cultural studies class that involves students choosing cultural icons to research and present in a written and visual final project.

Though I have not chosen a particular piece of material for the project, I’d like to consider submitting one of my course CDs that I use for my critical thinking course or my popular culture course.

I believe that I will be prepared to begin international correspondence around the first week of March 2004.

Tentatively, I would be interested in traveling abroad around the third week of August 2004.

My teaching interests are curriculum development and integrating technology within curricula. I have 3 courses that are candidates for our project and they are: UED 637 Curriculum Development and Technology (Graduate Level Course) and UED 520 (Graduate Level Course) and SED 420 (Undergraduate Level Course) Education and Technology

I have not made a final decision of what I will upload into PinPong, but I will probably upload an article from my course and a 3 minute video clip from the Matrix Reloaded.

I believe the best time for the discussion will be early March. That will allow me time to interact with my students and prepare the best time, based on my students’ schedule.

Tentatively, October 2004 and April 2005.

Fredrik Ebefors

Fredrik.Ebefors@hlk.hj.se

My teaching interests concern above all childrens and youth literature. Discussions between students about a text.
Ive got two or three different students groups that are possible.

Ive not decided what text I want to use, this something we can discuss but one suggestion is to read a chapter from Mikael Niemis book Popular Music. This a book about growing up in a small town in the northernmost corner of Sweden. The book consists of a number of tales from the community of Pajala,for example sauna contests, the thrill of a first kiss, and its filled with drastic humour.
Niemi has had great succes with this book in Sweden and both teenagers and adults can read it.

Discussion in
May or September.

It would suite me to travel in June.

Ladi Semali (PSU)
lms11@psu.edu

My teaching interests consist of involving secondary English students enrolled in the LLED 480 class to explore notions of bias in its many forms, e.g., cultural, linguistic, and so on, as manifested in a variety of texts—printed texts, media texts such as advertising, film, music, and other authored texts.

Two newspaper articles will be put into a pingpong piccle discussion board for international discussion. Title of the two articles are:
1. “Eyes taken from dead children in study here: Study angers relatives of dead children.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 27, 1994)
2. “Malaria vaccine successful in Africa test, study says.” (Center Daily Times, October 28, 1994).

Period for International Discussion:
25 February – 3 March 2004. During this period, students will have media study days. They will create their own media and author their own texts as an attempt to tell a different unbiased story. They will also engage other international students in questioning the stories in the above newspaper texts.

Travel Abroad;
The two-week time period I plan to travel abroad will be between April 28 and May 12, 2004

Ebba Sundin (HLK)
Ebba.Sundin@hlk.hj.se

My teaching interest in this project is to create the possibilities for the students to interact with students abroad and thereby share knowledge and ideas. Another interest is the use of PingPong and the development of new teaching tools for distance learning. I have two student groups to be involved. Both groups are students within Media and Communication Studies: a) Swedish students b) International exchange students. They both study a course called News Production. I think it would be of interest to involve all three American universities within the project. The reason for this is that they all are placed in parts of the USA with stronger or weaker links to the Scandinavian culture.

2. The course material to be used will be articles from a magazine and a newspaper. The magazine article will be from Scandinavian Living. This magazine emphasizes the Scandinavian culture and the target group is young people. The cover of the latest issue can be seen on www.cphliving.dk The article to be analysed contains both text and pictures. One interesting point is that the magazine, despite the promotion of Scandinavian culture, is in English. One example on the promotion of the culture is taken from the web page: Get connected with the coolest continent. The article used in the project should have a strong cultural link to the Swedish students. The newspaper article will be from a British newspaper and not about Sweden or the States. It should reflect on some news from a cultural part of the world where neither of the participant students are familiar with. An alternative to this would be to use an American news story to have the cultural link to the American students.

The course News Production will be during the following time: February 23 – March 26, 2004.

The best period of time to travel and follow up the project would be in the later part of June. Even if that means that it is not likely to meet participant students it could be a good time to follow up the results together with the participant teachers for a discussion to analyse the results, write and publish a report together.

This semester I will be teaching three sections of English 102, Communications Skills II.  “English 102 provides instruction in the organization and development of expository and argumentative essays.  This process-centered writing course emphasizes critical thinking, argumentation, and research and documentation techniques.”  For the PICCLE project, I would like to examine, along with my students, print media coverage of the American presence in Iraq from both the United States’ print media and other countries’ print media to discern whether or not cultural differences and/or other factors play a significant role in whether or not America is supported in its mission in Iraq.   In particular, I would like to know if America is supported  by the global community in its quest to set up a multinational peacekeeping force in an effort to help the Iraqis gain full control and independence?  Do other nations, indeed, believe that this is what America is trying to do, or do they believe that America may have other interests? Print media on the subject in other countries will give my students and I this insight.
 
In particular, it would be ideal to explore this topic with international students in my classes.  Last semester I had two students from Czechoslovakia enrolled in one of my English 102 classes.  All students, however, should find this topic interesting.

 At this time I have not chosen any specific articles, but I would consider viable print media sources, such as Newsweek, Time, USA Today, and The New York Times, crucial to the success of this project from the American perspective. 

Perhaps mid semester, which would be late February, might be a good time to begin international discussion.

I would be interested in traveling abroad the first two weeks of July 2005.

Jeanne Anderson

Jeanne.Anderson@stcloudstate.edu

My teaching interests include instructional design, instructional technology and intercultural communication. During the spring term, 15 students in the class "Information technology and cultural relevance" are able to participate in an international discussion. A section of "Exploring Information Technology" will also participate.

Title: International perspectives in news media
Author: Jeanne Anderson
Media: Newspaper and other texts available on the internet
My teaching interest consists of involving students enrolled in my class to explore multiple perspectives on world events, e.g., cultural, national, and so on, as manifested in a variety of newspaper and other texts from different countries.
The topics include space exploration and the war in Iraq.

It is my goal to have students participate in international discussion beginning Feb 10 and lasting as long as possible throughout the term which ends in early May.

Travel Dates: I am very flexible. I would like to travel abroad during the fall semester any time during the month of October 2004, but could also travel in August or between May 13 and 30.

Kimmo Salmenjoki

ksa@uwasa.fi

My interests around PICCLE are usage of online learning and
technical communication tools for Engineering and Communication major
students.
Taken broadly, during this spring term, the aspects of the common discussion
could contain
- communicational aspects (ex. environments like Digital Home and
user communication in it)
- usage of mobile and wireless communication
- multimedia based communication
Personally I teach several courses around Internet technologies and
multimedia communication:
Internet technologies (communication in Finnish, but material in English!),
Techniques of multimedia (communication in Finnish, but material in
English!),
Tietamystekniikan perusteet (Knowledge Engineering, communication in
Finnish, but material in English!),
Ubiquitous computing, and Java programming.
Of these the courses Java and Ubiquitous computing will
be run this spring term 2004, and they also use English
as a language of teaching and communication.
Our student groups are relatively small (around 10-30
students), mostly, and the students are in general able to
communicate in English.
Finally we have a course Multimedia project. Here students
work independently (on some multimedia software delopment issue),
and they could present their final result and report in a discussive manner
via this project.

In all of my courses the essential course material is web based
(even lecture notes can be printed from the lecture pages), and can be found
in http://www.uwasa.fi/~ksa/opetus2003.htm.
Sections of these, could be used (along with PingPong) in the development
of PICCLE. How ever, I would prefer use of other multimedia content, or
real-time communication via videoconferencing (we host a Tandberg 880 MCU) or other technical approaches (mediafiles, -streams, or live), tools and applications that could be tested in the context of online learning.
Some related material (excepts from relevant books) can be found online,
and these could be a good place for activating PICCLE based interaction between the students.
Ubiquitous computing: two book sites, one by Alesso- Smith
http://www.web-iq.com
... and by. R. Kutzweil:
http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/kurzweil/excerpts/exmain.htm

For this spring's Ubicomp course the start of April, 3.4.2004, Saturday(!)
at 8-10
local time, would be ideal (could be late-Friday evening in the US:)).
This, and
other necessary times, can of course be adjusted!
In Java the end of the course, mid May would be ideal time for online
communication.

The timing of my travelling can be flexible. For example, early spring (May
to June)
or early autumn (August to September) are most fitting for my present
schedules
in the year 2004.

Jackie Edmondson (PSU)
jxe117@psu.edu

I teach language and literacy education courses (LLED 400 & 401) to undergraduate students who are elementary education majors. The students are typically in their 6th or 7th semester of study, and usually these LLED courses are some of the first they take as "official" elementary education majors. I'm interested in helping students in these courses to realize that language and literacy is about more than having students pronounce printed words on page, and that language and literacy education is a complex endeavor (in other words, we can't expect to teach all children to read in the same way that we were taught -- which is an idea in some of their heads when they come into my classroom). Instead, the issues we discuss and read about in these courses concern human rights and social justice, even in elementary schools. My hope in having undergraduate students participate in international discussion is to help them connect the issues they understand from American public schools to broader contexts as they realize the challenges they face are not theirs alone. I also hope they will begin to understand American public education within a broader world context so that we can educate students as responsible, participatory citizens in a globalized world. I'm motivated in part by Arundhati Roy's charge to 'join hands across the world to prevent certain destruction' and I hope that students in my class will make connections with other educators in such an effort. Perhaps my goals are bit ambitious, certainly idealistic and maybe somewhat naive, but we need to begin somewhere....

The LLED students in my class develop a thematic unit of study for elementary students during the last part of the semester. Part of this unit involves naming their beliefs about language and literacy education and teaching, connecting this to research in LLED, and stating what this means for their teaching and this particular unit of study. In addition, they must compile appropriate texts (books, film, music, etc.), and plan classroom lessons and activities.
This spring semester, I would like to have the students plan units on the topic of 'shoes.'

Any time is fine with me. I am in Chicago for AACTE in February, England over spring break, in Reno for IRA in May.... I teach a three week class beginning June 21st. I prefer to be here when the semester begins in the fall, but am willing to travel once the semester is underway.