Who needs to travel when you have TECHNOLOGY?

In reading Brave New Digital World, by Robert Blake, I was touched by one single quote: "Technology, then, if used wisely, could play a major role in enhancing L2 learners' contact with the target language, especially in the absence of study abroad" (2).


I re-read the quote a few times and looked at it from differing points, before I really saw the word ENHANCE and not read it to mean REPLACE study abroad.  Obviously, nothing compares to standing on top of a hill looking down at a village in Guatemala that sits at the foot of a volcano or ordering in an ACTUAL (and not just authentic) Mexican restaurant.  However, I teach in a high-need urban area.  In reality, how many of my students are going to be able to afford to study abroad when they're worried about meals for the week?  By my curriculum being enriched by the sights, sounds and possible interactions with people from other cultures, maybe my students can escape their own reality for a bit and gain some of the innocence they seem to have lost by experiencing some things for the first time! Skype has proven to be quite the tool for this type of interaction and I hope when the time comes, my students are as receptive and excited as I am!


I see teaching a LOTE as one part communication and one part culture.  You can't truly understand one without the other.  For my students to be able to see even a bit of the life outside of their sleepy little town could mean the world to them. It's essential to me to learn about other cultures and I want to help them not to be so ethnocentric and see that it's okay that people do things differently.  After all, if we were all the same, what fun would that be?