PROMOTING UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN K-12 ENVIRONMENTS: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN OF AN INTERACTION ENVIRONMENT

Cultural differences abound throughout society from classrooms to shopping malls. Sometimes these differences are amplified or result in a breakdown of the environment. There are prejudices and fear of differences across social, cultural, and religious lines that still exist that need to be addressed for a peaceful to exist. The earlier in a student’s life these fears and prejudices are addressed the better off society will be. We propose a graduated process of acclimating students to cultural differences using the advanced new communication tools available on the Internet. In this paper we present the design process for creating an interaction environment built on successive iterations of communications with and about cultural, religious, and social differences.