Multicultural Education and Technology Virtual Field Trip

        You and your family are planning a trip to visit another country to explore and embrace a new culture. Before your big trip, you would like to research the area to inform your family what to expect about the culture of the country you visit. Therefore, students will be divided into groups and randomly assigned a country to visit and explore, emphasizing aspects of multiculturalism and recognizing language, food, practices, beliefs, and cultural awareness (Chisholm & Wetzel, 2001). Students will utilize Google Earth through Virtual Reality application to visit different countries.

Lesson Objective

Candidates will be able to:

• Articulate various aspects of multiculturalism.
• Distinguish similarities and differences concerning cultural behavior.
• Identify misconceptions deriving from cultural stereotypes.
• Reflect how cultural awareness impacted student perception.

Students will embark on a group virtual field trip, in which they will be randomly assigned to visit a particular country to gather in-depth knowledge regarding the cultural relevance of the area. Specifically, students will create a multimedia presentation utilizing the cloud platform Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/ to illustrate the cultural significance of their chosen location.

Each student will compose notes of their findings through the web-based application Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/.

Next, groups will review their notes and create a multimedia presentation demonstrating their experience from the trip, elaborating on the heritage, culture, food, music, practices, beliefs, and language.

Lastly, students will review other group presentations and discuss how learning about different cultures impacted their perception of societal norms.

Each group will create multimedia presentations using Google Slides to illustrate their learning experience regarding their trip and label their slides accordingly. Slides must include illustrations and sounds.

Slides must include:

• Title Slide
• Background of Country visited
• Culture
• Food
• Language
• Beliefs
• Similarities/Differences
• Reflection

1. Students will gather information utilizing the wiki resource: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Educational_wikis to assist them in analyzing the culture of their chosen country to visit and compile their notes in Google Docs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKfdzMoyf8Q

2. Students will watch various videos through Teachertube: https://www.teachertube.com/ exploring concepts of cultural awareness exhibited from their chosen country.

Resources

• Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/
• Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/
• Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/
• Wikiversity: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Educational_wikis
• TeacherTube: https://www.teachertube.com/     

3. After students have gathered their information, they will review their notes through Google Docs, where groups will assign students particular roles and fill out a specific portion of the presentation in Google Slides (ex. Culture, food, music etc.).

4. Once slides are complete, students will share their finalized products with other students, review other groups presentations through a web-based discussion created in Google Docs.

        Upon submitting their field trip presentation, students will observe other projects and develop feedback, reflecting on the importance of multiculturalism in a web-based discussion formed in Google Docs. Essentially, this will allow students to openly discuss their experiences observing other cultures, elaborating on certain concepts such as diversity, racism, prejudice, and tolerance. Lastly, students will discuss any suggestions to enhance the WebQuest activity further to promote a more purposeful learning experience.

                                                                            References

Chisholm, I. M., & Wetzel, K. (2001). Technology and multiculturalism in the classroom: Case studies in attitudes and motivations. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(5), 1-33.

Dorfsman, M. I. (2018). The development of discourse in the online environment: between technology and multiculturalism. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0110-5 

Green, T. (2002). Using classroom simulations and technology to explore multicultural issues in a middle school classroom. Multicultural Education, 10(2), 35-37. http://search.proquest.com/docview/216321225?accountid=8289 

        In general, the overall lesson was designed to implement technological tools and allow students to collaborate through a meaningful project that accommodates multiple learning preferences. Fundamentally, creating the lesson with a virtual field trip allowed my students the opportunity to witness other cultures first-hand and explore any misconceptions they had regarding that culture (Dorfsman, 2018). Through WebQuest, students are provided with an array of technological resources necessary to complete the project, involving wiki resources, videos, and articles to compensate for diverse learning needs. The assignment encourages the students to hone in on their particular strengths to become content creators, as they are allowed to express their learning innovatively by utilizing multimedia elements to demonstrate their mastery of cultural competence (Green, 2002). Overall, the purpose of the instructional WebQuest was to reinforce awareness of how cultural differences can profoundly impact how people live, think, and behave (Chisholm & Wetzel, 2001). Also, students had the opportunity to reflect and share their experiences to articulate how cultural awareness impacted their perceptions and if there are similarities and differences regarding their own culture (Chisholm & Wetzel, 2001).