In my profession of education, I deal with multiple cultures. These cultures range from Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern to name a few. We are a hodgepodge of cultures on my campus. This is everyone from the students to the teachers. Reaching everybody equally can be challenging. Various ways of communicating must be utilized to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Communication may come from social media, e-mail, or a telephone call. However, it order to communicate with a diverse and multinational audience neither one of those can be used exclusively.
My school utilizes social media quite a bit. We use social media to inform our community about upcoming events like sporting games, awards, and anything else that is important going on at our school. Doreen Starke-Meyerring says, “the Internet now allows professional communicators not only to access audiences around the world but also to actively engage them in increasingly open genres— those that allow audiences to participate in producing discourse (e.g., Weblogs, Wikis)— that are networked globally” (Meyerring, 475). With the use of social media our audience (students and teachers) are able to actively engage. Ultimately they make the decision about whether they want to be part of the online community. With social media, it has made us able to participate now in what we want and how we want it. Long gone are the days when we were presented with something and had to take it as is. Audiences now have a choice. For example, at one point our school used a Twitter feed. We have since ditched that social media platform because it wasn’t meeting our communication needs. Our Facebook page accomplishes everything that Twitter can including important messages, pictures, and videos. The pictures are crucial in our community because of the language barrier, thus addresses the globalization aspect. Here’s an example from our homecoming game win this past week:
I think it’s impossible to communicate effectively all the time, especially in my field of education. With the language barriers that deals specifically with ELL (English Language Learners) students, things are going to get lost in translation. Deborah Cameron says, “I know of no case in which the communicative norms of a non-Western, or non-Anglophone society have been exported by expert consultants. Finns do not run workshops for British businesses on the virtues of talking less; Japanese are not invited to instruct Americans in speaking indirectly” (Cameron). There is a lack of globalization type of education. How we communicate with others across borders is crucial, especially for organizations in today’s world of social media. However, the educational system has at least attempted to solve this issue. When I was in high school (a whole ten years ago…) all there seemed to be for foreign language classes was Spanish and French. While these important languages to learn there is others that are just as equally important. German, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese are now being offered because those are the languages that many people need to know if they are going to succeed in the world of business.
Technology has put everyone at equal footing. Yunus says, ““the Internet, for example, is spreading at an exponential rate. At its present rate of expansion, Internet use worldwide is doubling every year. The most attractive aspect of this spread of information and communications technology is that it is not under anyone’s control. Neither government, nor big business, nor anyone of any authority can restrict the flow of information through the Internet. And it is becoming cheaper every day” (Yunus, 253).” At the beginning of the school, I do a lesson with my seniors that discuss the advantages they have now versus students did a mere ten years ago. The advantages are in their pockets. With the spread of information, there is no reason that we can’t be better than the person next to us. Our opportunities are endless. It’s about how we use it though. Sadly, many of us don’t use technology to this advantage. Instead, we’d rather Snapchat with someone. We need to use our technology to spread information and ideas.
Cameron, Deborah. “Globalization and the teaching of ‘communication skills.'”
Globalization and Language Teaching. Ed. David Block. N.p.: n.p., 2002.
Starke-Meyerring, Doreen. “Meeting the Challenges of Globalization: A Framework
for Global Literacies in Professional Communication Programs.” Journal of
Business and Technical Information (2005)
Yunus, Muhammad. The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle of World Poverty