Shevchyk Natalia

Department of the Lviv branch of the European university

Educational Internet-projects and intercultural communication

The employment of international educational Internet-projects gives opportunity for teachers and students from different countries to combine their efforts, to find adherents, partners for implementation of ideas and, of course, to improve one’s level of knowledge of foreign languages. Besides, the joint venture incites by itself, it’s convincing someone else can find it useful and interesting too. Projects like that always exceed the limits of its objective content and reach the level of socially significant results. The thorough knowledge integration is one more peculiarity of international communicational projects, which involves learning the subject of examined problem and acquainting with specifics of partners ethnic culture and disposition [1]. That is always the dialogue of cultures.

The first educational network was, probably, the iEARN, established in 1989. One can assume iEARN to be invented because of Soviet-USA satellite linkups in 1988-1988. The great interest between these countries prompted the participants to continue communicating, using the exotic thereafterat way – the e-mail. Then was the time of various initiatives, projects, which, as the time passed, assumed tremendous range. Today, the participants of the international educational network iEARN are pupils, students, teachers from over 20 000 educational institutions from 115 countries.

Special internet-resources were made to make finding the project easier, where tens of trends from different countries are united, which allows to crystalize a new idea or to find assistants. For example, international Internet-project Lingu@net Europa was created to further the teaching of foreign languages by means of multilingual virtual resource center on the Internet. [2, p.143] As for today, the site runs in English, French, Dutch and German. It invites teachers, supervisors, methodologists, scientists and students for cooperation. Lingu@net Europa gives its visitors an access to unique resource fund, which contains didactic materials, forums, activity plans, politic documents and perspective forecast in linguist and bibliography of themes, you might be interested in.

On the Web site of multilingual international Internet-project Viadeo, one may become a participant in one or more interesting groups and take part in their activity. The themes of the groups are diverse and inquisitive; it touches issues of culture and art, economics and enterprise, IT and TV, professional occupation in numerous fields, political and social problems, sport, leisure etc.

The projects with the theme of social and cultural aspects of life in foreign countries, the future profession etc., are chosen to be the student ones.

The game method, which improves communication between students from different countries, the use of computer and the Internet, can be used as preparation for participation in Internet-projects. Tasks like that prepare them for work in teleconferences and forums, held on foreign languages.

By working on the Internet-project, students study to write letters to partner school politely and correctly. Speaking of technical matters, they must be able to log in a network and to send (receive and save) e-mail; log in as an active conference member; be able to place their materials on Internet, use search engines and databases.

Model result of student work on project is mutual web-journal. But to access their activity, efficiency requirements should be used. For example, to access the activity of members, based on analysis of working material of the project, polling & interviewing results. The regularity of member access, meaningfulness and quality (fullness, literacy) of sent messages are also valued. Besides, students can be offered a list questions, answers to which could be used for external marking or self-analysis. Questions can be like: ‘how did you organize your activity?’, ‘what part of it did you choose and why?’, ‘what kind of information did you use, how did you find it?’, ‘did you have enough time?’, ‘what kind of extra activity did you take part in?’, ‘in what ways did you use computer?’, ‘who helped you to gather and systematize the information?’, ‘what did you learn by working on the project (how did you gather information, in which forms it can be presented, how to write a letter to a foreign partner correctly, how to conduct a discussion, etc)?’, ‘what have you learned about yourself and your group members; about foreign partners?’, ‘what was interesting for you and what wasn’t?’, ‘did you have any trouble with communication?’.

In process of working students should be offered intermediate stages to be drawn up as short essays, which could be placed on the site forum of the educational institution on the Internet.

The importance of international communication projects lies in helping students to overcome being inert and passive, their disappointment in their own power, gives opportunity to feel the importance of their own knowledge.

The update of student personality by learning extraneous reality and perception of other culture occurs by the intercession of social & cultural approach, integrated knowledge of countries, intercultural communication. Taking part in such projects helps students to use their knowledge of foreign languages and show the ability to coexist in common space, displaying consideration and interest in different mentality and foreign culture, comparing them with one’s views and cultural experience.

1. Проектна діяльність // Енциклопедія освіти / Гол.ред.В.Г.Кремень. – К.: Юрінком Інтер, 2008. – С. 717-718.

2. Романовська М.Б. Метод проектів у виховному процесі (методичний посібник). – Х.: Веста: Видавництво „Ранок”, 2007. – 160 с.

3. Сагитова Г.В. Формирование у старшеклассников проектно-исследовательских и коммуникативных технологий. Электронный журнал „Вопросы Интернет образования”. http://vio.fio.ru/vio_33/cd_site/Articles/art_2_4.htm.

4. Скалій Л. І. Використання інформаційних технологій у формуванні професійної компетенції майбутнього вчителя іноземних мов // Іноземні мови. – 2003. – № 4. – С. 5 – 9.