About this portal

"Picture communication" portal

Of the more than 3,000 languages that exist in the world, only one, according to the author of A Primer of Visual Literacy, Donis A. Dondis, nears universal understanding: visual language. Visual intelligence is crucial to understanding the physical realities of our environment, symbols found in gesture and text, and abstractions of reality, such as those found in works of art.

As a continuation of the Colabs Socrates Minerva project, ELTE TeaM lab is launching an experimental project - using the infrastructure developed under Colabs project - to provide environment for collaboration between children from different language cultures.

Aims of the project:

• To provide experience for children in attaining and practicing communication of thoughts between cultures not speaking any common language.
• To provide a meeting place for making acquaintances and developing friendships with children around the world and to provide experience for children on evolution of relationships in a virtual society.
• To expand children’s thinking, beliefs, expectations, knowledge and view about different cultures around the world.
• To enhance children’s fantasy, self-expression, creativity, skills in communication and social sensitivity, both in real and in virtual community settings.
• Learn foreign words and language, and last (but not least) - when finding a common language for interaction - to develop communicative skills in that language.

Activities envisioned:

The activities during the project period are twofold:

• Story telling and interpretation of others’ stories.
• Reinterpreting art pieces offered by peers.

Project orientation and on-line mentor guidance will be provided.

Duration of project: 18^th April, 2005 – 10^th June, 2005. (Could be extended!)

Application for participation:

We are expecting applications of small groups of children – about 10 children per group, 9-10 years old on average – with an enthusiastic, English speaking teacher/mentor/caretaker. The group should be interested in story telling with picture communication, art and painting, and have an interest in different cultures.

The teacher/mentor/caretaker applying should express interest in undertaking this project, give reason by emphasising the group’s motivation in doing so, and convince us that children will have enough free time access to fast computers with contemporary software tools (See technical requirements).

Please, send your application by e-mail to colabs@freemail.hu till 15^th of April. 
We will consider your application even after the deadline, since we wish to engage groups from different cultures!

Due to technical restrictions only 1 or 2 groups per language culture shall be accepted for the purpose of the starting experiment. We shall be looking forward to possibilities of expanding our facilities in the future in order to operate site with more open access!