Chief Learning Officer - June 2008 - (Page 25) O n the surface, Europe and the United States have much in common. But look deeper, and a number of striking dissimilarities emerge. For one thing, Europe contains more than 40 separate languages, and if you accept the most popular sociological view, some 80 separate cultures. Amid talk of the world becoming a “global village” as technology develops and allows us to communicate with almost anyone anywhere in the world almost instantly, it is Europeans who already have many years of experience tackling the language and cultural issues that such communications raise. Europe’s multicultural publishers have been living with and making a living from this complex ecosystem for centuries. Over the years, they have learned that being successful as a publisher of multicultural learning materials, in all forms, involves a great deal more than merely translating text across languages. “You don’t just communicate with the words on a screen within, say, an e-learning program. There are also explicit and implicit messages contained in any screen of information, and different cultures interpret these messages in different ways,” said Fabrizio Cardinali, co-chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), a consortium of international players in the e-marketplace that includes IT, content publishing and service provision for the e-learning market. ELIG provides industry thought leadership and policy input to the European Commission (EC) and national governments within the European Union and, at the same time, functions as a networking and partnering platform for its members. “When designing learning materials to be delivered via technology — whether that is via traditional e-learning or, increasingly, via mobile devices — you have to take account of the learners’ abilities,” Cardinali added. “For example, an ‘able’ person looking at information on a small screen may have similar difficulties to a differently ‘abled’ person who sees that information on a large screen. Each of these people — and, indeed, everyone — has a right to access “Since everyone has something to contribute to the society in which they live, no one should be precluded from having access to the learning materials that they need, and these should be presented to every learner in the most appropriate way.” – Fabrizio Cardinali, European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) Chief Learning Officer • June 2008 • www.clomedia.com 25 http://www.clomedia.com
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