Making Cultural Connections Through Technology
While most students aren’t able to travel across the globe, teachers can bring cultures from many places into the classroom via videoconferencing.
Language teacher and world traveler Akash Patel knows the academic value of immersive language and cultural experiences, which is why he regularly connects his students to people around the globe via video calls—and helps other teachers do the same, so they can start making cultural connections through technology in their own classrooms.
Patel began his education career teaching Spanish in rural Oklahoma, where he brought his experiences as a traveler and an immigrant to all his lessons. After seeing how live conversations with people living in other countries opened up his American students’ worldview and helped them build empathy and perspective-taking skills, Patel started a nonprofit called the Happy World Foundation in 2014 to start connecting volunteers virtually. In the years since, technological advances in videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet have made experiences that allow students to see the world without ever leaving the classroom more accessible than ever before.
“This opens a world of possibilities for a child who lives in an inner-city community or a rural community who may have never traveled,” Patel says, “for them to consider college, volunteering, interning in other parts of the globe.”
Today, the foundation’s network includes over 1,200 native language speakers from 150 different countries, and volunteers have trained more than 100,000 educators in how to use the resources the foundation offers to promote cross-cultural understanding and global citizenship. Patel sees applications in every grade level and every subject, from social studies to math.
For most students, who don’t have the means to travel to countries like Brazil, France, or India, access to simple tech tools—and a willing participant on the other end of the call—can broaden their horizons and bridge vast geographic and cultural divides.
To find more ideas on cultural exchanges at the primary level, read Sara Elia’s Edutopia article “Making Global Exchanges an Integral Part of Elementary School.” For resources for cultural exchanges in high school, including other activities that help teens develop empathy, check out Maurice Elias’ Edutopia article “How to Help High School Students Develop Empathy.”