Promoting intercultural exchanges with blogs and podcasting: a study of Spanish-American telecollaboration

Blogs and podcasts open new ways for global communication and development of intercultural awareness. This article reports a Spanish-American telecollaborative project through which students created blogs and podcasts for intercultural exchanges in light of the sociocultural perspectives. The article outlines the methodology for the project including pedagogical objectives, task design, selection of web tools and implementation. Using qualitative data collection, the study explored how students collaboratively created blogs and podcasts using task-based activities and how blogs and podcasts facilitated cross-cultural exchanges. How the use of Web 2.0 tools affected the way in which the students viewed intercultural communication was examined. The findings showed that effective use of task-based instruction created a dynamic climate for interactive collaboration and afforded unique opportunities for both American and Spanish students to explore the target language and culture. The study suggests that building interpersonal relationships and making personal commitment to online contributions are vital to successful intercultural exchanges.