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Pre-conference (optional):

CULTURA: Web-based Intercultural Exchanges
October 10-11, 2009
University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawai‘i, USA

Introduction

The Cultura project, pioneered at MIT by Gilberte Furstenberg and her colleagues, has inspired a variety of online cultural exchanges based on a set of principles and best practices. The first Cultura Conference took place at MIT on October 2007 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the project and was attended by 35 people who came from all corners of the world.

This second Cultura Conference will take place at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on October 10-11, 2009 and will serve as a pre-conference to a larger one sponsored by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), entitled Language Learning in Computer Mediated Communities (LLCMC) to take place on October 11-13, 2009.

Entitled Cultura: Web-based Intercultural Exchanges, it will bring together teachers who have implemented a Cultura-like exchange as well as those who are curious to find out more about the project itself. It will be a place for sharing goals, materials, methodologies, tools, and classroom practices.

It will take place over one and a half days, starting at 1:00 pm on Saturday, October 10 and ending at 3:30 pm on Sunday, October 11.

Anyone is free to attend (see Registration for more details).

Content

The Cultura Conference, which will use the original web-based Cultura project as a basic model, will consist of a series of panels dealing with a variety of topics related to online intercultural exchanges, as well as a Tech Fair (electronic poster sessions) where some participants will demonstrate their own projects.

For more details, see the schedule. Ample time will be devoted throughout to questions and answers.