The beginning of a beautiful adventure!

Well, here I am, embarking on yet another new adventure:  studying to become a high school English teacher!

There are two topics of conversation that keep coming up in all of my classes.

The first is multi-cultural education.  The second is 21st Century education. 

After several weeks of class (which, obviously, makes me an expert, right?) it seems to me that these two topics are inextricably entwined.  To sum up my learning so far in a nutshell:  It's a small world.

Old barriers are breaking down.  A river or a forest or 150 miles no longer presents an obstacle to interacting with the people on the other side.  Whatever barriers weren't already broken down by automobiles, airplanes, and telephones have been eradicated by that most cutting-edge 21st Century tool:  the Internet. 

And yet, access to the the Internet is also one of the most common indicators of socio-economic status.  The Internet has actually created new forms of multi-culturalism.  In addition to the growing gap between people who have access to the Internet and those who don't, there are also new cultures emerging in the form of gamers, bloggers, coders, podcasters, and so on and so forth.

If the online world has its own language - and if each of these aforementioned web-cultures speaks their own unique dialogue of that language - people who haven't been exposed to the Internet or who aren't part of a given community aren't fluent in the language. 

What happens when you're a non-native Internet speaker?  The same thing that happens to clueless tourists or vulnerable immigrants throughout the world:  people exploit your weaknesses, you feel overwhelmed and lost, and you have trouble understanding and responding appropriately to social cues.

More and more, I find myself wondering both how we can use technology to support and include diverse students and also how we can help students learn how to use technology effectively and comfortably.  Most of all, I find myself thinking about how these two questions intersect and influence each other.