Google has an e-Cultural Institute!
Sebah Al-AliWe laughed a lot when one of my colleagues told us about a conversation that happened in her class.
Teacher: Do you know where Alaska is?
Student A, confidently: In Europe.
Teacher: silence and a pause
Student B laughs arrogantly: You smart one. It’s in China! –and holds her map pointing at South America
Although we might not all have such funny incidents in class, I guess most of us are aware that most of our students’ lack of global awareness. I mean, they do know a lot about Turkish or Korean cultures thanks to many famous series, but they know very little about global warming, historical events, world issues, and so on. We can debate for hours on why this is the case, but don’t you agree that such global knowledge is needed to pass the IELTS? I mean, shouldn’t many of our lessons cover trending topics covering geography, history, tourism, and so on? To help them become more familiar with these topics and any vocabulary used for it so that they’re not completely shocked when they get these reading passages in IELTS, and even some writing task 2 topics.
If you do agree, and you’re looking of a very cool resource, Google has a not-so-well-known inventory called: Google Cultural Institute. And, not to sound nerdy, but it is SO COOL!
As you can see in the video, the website is meant to offer you a glimpse of art projects, historic moments, world wonders, and famous people from around the world, with pictures and videos. For example, you can explore
- Egypt and the pharaohs (link)
- Celtic life in the UK (link)
- African textiles today (link)
- Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Centre of Memory (link)
and many many other topics that will most probably be mentioned in an IELTS test. And, the COOLEST part of it all is the 3D virtual and interactive tours of museums. This means, you can visit the gallery and virtually move around. You get to choose the floor and room you want, you get to go in any direction you want, and you can zoom in on displays and click to get more information about them. It’s as if you’re there. Magic, right?
Give it a try and go around the British Museum: link –my favorite so far is Anne’s jewelry (ground floor). But, I’m still looking for the Rosetta Stone. –do you know where it is?
In class? You can use it to teach directions, and make it real! Have students visit the museum and guide them to the item you want using directions. It’ll be funny to see how lost they will get. Also, you can ask have students practice speaking skills. They can pick an art project for example and then tell the class about it (or record an Adobe Voice video and share it with you. You can use it before a reading class about a topic that you can find there (use the search engine on top). Give them five or seven minutes to read about the topic and ask them to share on interesting thing they learned about that topic. For example, I just searched for World War II and found two exhibits and a street view (here).
–If you find anything interesting to explore or see, please do share your feedback (using comments).
