Author: Maria Roussou

University of London

Keywords: Greek diaspora, world-wide-web, internet, intercultural communication, new technology, new pedagogy, new media, learner, virtual space, ideological space, cyperspace, modernity, postmodernity, culture, society, education, racism, xenophobia, ethnicity, identity, subjectivity, self-other, self discovery, empowernment, HERMES.

Article style and source: Paper delivered at the Conference: MEDIEN GENERATION, University of Hamburg, Germany, March 17-20 1998.

Content

• Abstract
• Introduction
• A Note on Terminology
• Background to the Pilot Study
• The Pilot Study
• The Target Group
• Some Preliminary Analysis of Pilot Study Data
• Education, New Technologies, New Pedagogies
• How New Technologies Empower the Learner
• Learning through the New Media
• Concluding Remarks: Intercultural Communication, Language and New Technologies
• Notes

"Let's start not from the good old things but from the bad new things"

Abstract

The controlling idea is that in late modernity and within the framework of the `Information Society', new space and new pace, as well as new semiotic / linguistic forms of expression and communication, are provided through the use of the new technologies. It is possible that this `virtual' space be subjected to the inequalities of `real' societal space. It can also be used, however, to help end the `silencing of the voices of the other' who may never have had the chance to become an equal, e.g. a competent speaker of `Standard English' which could facilitate their entry into politics, or the professions. The `other' here, is not conceived as the abstract other, but as a plurality of voices that can offer their individual, personal and yet political notions of what it is like to be in between two or more languages and cultures, and two or more societies.

It is taken as given that Cyberspace can host discourses and narratives other than those of mainstream society or culture. Thus the virtual space is transformed into an ideological space which has been opened up by the new technologies and can be employed by those groups which have not had the opportunity to express their subjectivity and help to mould the subjectivity of others. The ideological space is, in turn, supplemented by the virtual space, which will provide the vehicle for on-line communication, bridging geographical and other distances and bringing people closer. The double advantage of closeness and distance offered by the Internet can provide the forum for the negotiation of identities and subjectivities through which a host of issues about linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identity can come to the surface. content

Introduction

The world of Information Technology is under serious investigation by theorists, politicians, the corporate world and educationalists alike but from different perspectives; it is seen here and examined as a challenge rather than as a threat for education. Cyberspace in such theoretical or polemic discussions is often linked with the postmodern. It is a new space, a virtual space -not necessarily a virtuous one- since the old inequalities are acted out in a `new' way and there is no room for changes to the status quo. But it has also been argued that it is the answer to school failure and to inequality of access. I am using here a case study of a pilot project to argue for that. I will use some data from this case study of asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) between youngsters of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Greek Diaspora to support my argument that CMC offers alternative ways of communication which can empower youths in intercultural contexts of formal of informal education. The `closeness of its discourse' demystifies distance (geographical and psychological). At the same time it allows individuals to keep their privacy; it is relatively cheap, easy, informal, and thus, facilitates communication, enhances learning possibilities and frees the educational process from the confines of the traditional classroom and the teacher instructor.

In my attempt to reach the younger generations of the Greek Diaspora at the global level, while I was conducting fieldwork for the Greek Diaspora Archives (GDA) between 1991 and 1997. The GDA youth spoke about their need to escape their ethnic group, their need for global `circular' interaction in order to talk to other Greeks of their age group around the globe. Instead of continuing the usual bilateral relationship with the Motherlands (Athens and /or Nicosia towards London, or Melbourne of New York) they can now see the potential for global, two-, three- (or more) way communication . The old way of communication between families where members were told "write to your cousin'" or"Call your granny and talk to her a bit in Greek- she will be happy" have been, until lately, the only source of cultural contact with their ancestral roots in the countries of origin.

Looking into the naming traditions and the survival of ancient Greek names, with all the symbolic meaning they carry, and especially when interviewing young people, I found the name HERMES in the four continents. The youngsters were so willing to explain about the god Hermes and his role in ancient Greek mythology. It became clear to me that semiotics and the constructionist approach to language is very important in a study of Greek migration. That is how the title of this paper came about. Hermes, the messenger god of Greek Mythology, has survived miles and miles of dispersal of the Greek population from their ancestral hearth; it still carries with it, however, connotations of roots, of excitement of the unknown, of the news brought back home from the Diaspora, and this news dispersed out from the metropolis.

Is modern Hermes still carrying his messages via the "New Bad things""? Or is he capable of combining the "Good Old things" with " New Media" which can provide him with the ability to pass on visual, textual, audio and animated messages through the skies to make global communication possible? It is the strong interest and the dynamism that the younger generation of diasporas brings into cyberspace, in their interaction with each other at the global level that links the pilot study I conducted under the title of "Hermes on Internet Wings" to the themes of Intercultural education. content

A Note on Terminology

I understand and use the term 'Modernity', as characterised by industrialisation and the mass education movement. The modernisation of public Primary Education was followed by an expansion of Secondary and later on of Higher Education. As discussed by Turner (1990) and Tomlinson (1997) post modernity and late modernity have opened up opportunities for those previously excluded and it is in this line of discussion that issues of intercultural education (multilingualism, heritage or ethnic studies etc.) come together.

I also use the terms `Diaspora' and `Diasporic youth'. By `Diaspora' I refer to populations who were dispersed via violent conflicts (like the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the uprooting of one third of the Cypriot population who left the country as refugees, the ethnic cleansing of former Yugoslavia, the African countries ordeal of internecine fighting etc.) as well as those who of their own "free will" left their country of origin in search of work, better education, or asylum from dictatorships and political instability. The youth born in the host countries from population who migrated from its original Estia (The Ancestral Hearth) I describe as `diasporic youth' whether their own awareness of diaspora links is manifested with any kind of ethnolinguistic vitality or survives latent in naming traditions, `strongly-knit' families or in their involvement in the ethnic economies and local politics of their respective communities. The `2nd and subsequent generations' or `second, third and fourth generation' are terms I use to describe those born in the host countries, one or more steps removed from the original Estia, but for whom the term `patrida' the home country, is not an unfamiliar term. CMC is used for Computer Mediated Communication, synchronous and /or asynchronous. It involves knowledge of and use of IT (Information Technology, in the form of a personal computer, a server for Internet link or email address). In some cases the term Multimedia (MM) is used to denote the presence of image, sound, and/or movement transmitted within the Internet. content

Background to the Pilot Study

I now turn to a paradigm of potential possibilities in this regard. The primary sources used during the pilot, were developed by the Greek Diaspora Archives; amongst them were cultural heritage memorabilia and historical documents of the two motherlands (Greece and Cyprus) that were intended to guide pilot participants to:

• reread themselves- the direct mode of friendly, email interaction
• reassess feelings, thoughts, statements/attitudes towards languages and countries of origin.
• consider the use of distance education for historico-cultural imputes
• consider the benefits of improving their language skills in Greek, through the use of the Internet.
• Form -or, rather, reform- their subjectivities.

This paper, on the empirical level, is a case study of the way that new forms of communication and sharing of meanings may affect formative learning, especially if it has to do with forming or reworking issues of one's identity. The pilot is not offering definitive answers but suggests the need for more empirical research. It uses the new media, the e-mail, in particular, to facilitate the communication between young members of a transnational ethnolinguistic community, which traces its origins back to the historic past of Greece and Cyprus as well as the present reality of two countries. The Greek and Greek-Cypriot Diaspora which has spread all over the globe in search of work, better education, safety from wars and other internal political conflicts, as well as in the quest for fulfillment of that `innate' quest for knowledge [hence the `Odysseus'(Ulysses) syndrome, a central element of a Greek's cultural heritage] has been for almost two generations drifting away from its shared linguistic and cultural meanings.

In the last 25 years, however serious political catastrophes in the motherlands took place: the Junta regime in Athens (1967-1974), the invasion of the Turkish army in Cyprus, the occupation of 40% of its land from 1974 up to today. Similarly, a number of political and social changes took place in the host countries. Since 1990 the Overseas Greeks started to be actively involved in establishing contact with other Greeks living and working in host countries. This revival of interest to come closer to one's own cultural representations, the codes of translating their heritage (language, culture symbols and signs coming from the motherlands) into viable practice in the Diaspora. This is more evident amongst second, third and even fourth generation diasporic youth and it is not a phenomenon of Western Europe, or America only; it is at the international level that this new movement of `Identity Search', as well as of `Demythologising Motherlands' is taking place. We have documented it in 1990 in Liverpool, London, Birmingham, and Glasgow in the UK, in South Africa in 1991, in Australia in 1992, in Florida, France, Connecticut in 1993, hence our interest in creating a global network of electronic communication between the members of the targeted group.

Greece is a nation associated with some of the most powerful early systems of cultural and symbolic expression through visual iconography, and with the use of such images to bind together a country dominated by a complex geography and equally complex political formations. Greece has been slower than other western European countries to capitalise on technological developments of representation through the use of media. Also, it has seen many of its younger citizens move to other parts of the world in search of economic survival, compound this sense of diasporic fragmentation and yet make `Greece' a powerful source of identification in terms of images of origin and belonging. In this connection, this project sets out to examine the symbolic aspects of the Greek diaspora by looking at how Greek youths turn to the use of media in their bilateral or multilateral communications and representations of their own country and the new countries into which they have been propelled. content

The Target Group

When the CMC proper started in October 1997 participants in this pilot study were 10 young people of both sexes (5 females and 5 males of ages 18 to 26). They all had Greek origin. All others were into full-time Further or Higher Education and permanently living in European that is UK, Germany, Greece and Cyprus or in international contexts such as Sydney and Adelaide -Australia, Baltimore-Maryland and New Jersey USA, and Johannesburg and Bloemfontein in South Africa. Once they committed their time to the pilot they were individually approached by the CMC moderator by phone to establish a `kind of a voice link' with the project base, then they were sent a draft `Learning Contract' by fax to comment if needed and then to sign it. After that they were contacted by email in small chat-like messages which facilitated the establishment of a friendly relationship of confidence between each other and with the CMC moderator. It was also agreed with them that some anonymity was to be preserved in any reporting of the pilot, and that only those biographical details absolutely necessary to explaining important points of the project would be released.

The Pilot

• to develop a small electronic network by collecting and circulating email address for exchange of information about
  1. participant's community/family and personal history,
  2. participant's personal experiences of Greece, and/or Cyprus (if any), and
  3. feelings, attitudes towards participant's first and second language and country; the `patrida' and `the xeni gi', (the term `patrida' is used widely amongst diaspora Greeks even if they do not speak the Greek language) were originally presented as contradictory terms but by the end of the pilot in their references the participants saw them as complementary imp0ortant experiences of their Self, their Identity.
• to study and analyse this asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication - CMC discussions on each of the 3 above mentioned topics with the participation of the team members (`as we go along', hence the action research element in the study), especially bringing out those elements related to the reinforcement of heritage language/s and culture.
• to address the question: "would it be better if we were to accept our multiple identities and built our future on that?" This was introduced in order to achieve self-confidence in one's multiple identities, taking account of the global level of interaction instead of concentrating on a mono-cultural definition of one and only national identity. An example of this is as follows: "What are you, leventi mou, the Greek teacher asked, and I said: I am a Greek" even if one has Australian Identity first, appreciating the benefits that Australian citizenship gives him.

The data collected during the pilot point out to the need for a much more serious study of a transnational (European and International) community moving towards the New Millenium. Such a study via the `Internetted eyes', `voices' and `words' of second and third generation Greek-origin diasporic youth might help not only the youth themselves but the older generations also. In this pilot, although limited in numbers participants appreciated the `action research' element in the project; the user group was involved in the process of developing the pilot from day one and had the possibility of formulating change within the project according to needs arising(e.g. when the concept of Greece as an inadequate motherland was attacked). content

Some preliminary analysis of pilot study data. Responses to a challenge:

Step 1 "The starters". A summary of the Introductory materials.

The CMC moderator introduced the pilot "Hermes on Internet Wings" giving the participants a review of the work of the GDA, distributing a sample of scanned photos from its collections (e.g. items from the `US/gacos94'file, the `Aus/Adelaide 92' file and the `Glasgow/nicolas90' one), and informing them about some other organisations working on aspects of the Greek Diaspora, as well as some information about scholarship in this field. All participants were also aware that this pilot was part of the planning for a proposal to be put to funding bodies for a much bigger scale project to study CMC between Greek Diaspora Youth world wide. The first communication sent out ended with the prospect for a longer and wider CMC taking place later, spelled out as follows:

If the funding becomes available within 1998 or 1999 we may have much more to tell each other, but you can anyway continue building up your relationships within this network of ten. I want to throw in the dream of a holiday in Adelaide with your pen/ email friend or an Athens afternoon sharing coffee in `Plateia Syntagmatos (?) or Exarheia? ; one day in the near future. But first let us share some of our family history; our personal biographical details may bring us nearer to each other than personal visits might do some times. This is an open window for a partnership! for companionship?. Let's see what we can make of it. Here's my story: M.... R........., born in Cyprus, educated there up to College level and then in England where I did all my other studies in Social Sciences for 3 other degrees. I especially loved and hated my Ph.D years at the University of London where I set out studying myself, a self trip within, following religiously I thought the Socratic advice of getting to know myself as a Cypriot woman in post 1974 Cyprus.. Those Ph.D years were very difficult but I `ve made it. I learned something about the world, the Cypriot society, conflict studies, migration studies, women's studies. I am a mother and am now living in London for almost 21 years; I have experienced bilingualism and Multiculturalism within my family and around me in Cyprus and in the UK ; I have also faced racism and sexism in both countries. I have struggled to accept whatever `pure identity' I was given as a Greek Orthodox in Cyprus by birth and found that I always preferred calling myself, defining me with more than one descriptions till I ended up with the following: I am a woman, I am a Greek-Cypriot , I am British and European, and I am also a worker in education who sees this planet as a whole, a unity interacting, being influenced by and influencing all residents of this planet. Some people call me environmentalist, others a pacifist, others a nationalist. Sometimes I am happy with being a woman of Greek Cypriot background living and working in Europe. Your turn now....

Second communication ......

Amongst the materials I have posted to you with the information leaflets about GDA there are some photographs which show part of me at various stages of my development, including two as a young student like you some years back, one as a professional teaching in a classroom, (may be teaching some of your relatives back home), and one of me at the field collecting material and interviewing Diaspora Greeks for the GDA. All is transparent, is it not? I have gone through many of the dilemmas you are going through! I have done my revolution and have made my mistakes. Till now I have survived and I am still searching for the truth about me and others my personal identity or identities and the collective one of us Greeks of the Diaspora.

Times have changed and the email gives me the chance to talk to all of you at the same time, to be able to read your responses emailed back in a day or two, and for me within the role you have allowed me to have in this team work,( to redirect parts, or all of your responses to the others, or some of the others, according to subject and interest) our CMC on Hermes n Internet Wings is a great challenge.
Over to you ...... M........

The participants' responses and their brief biographical details came in within a week or two and were summarised and attached to their email addresses; they were then circulated to all members on the list and CMC proper started with the first discussion on what kind of CMC data were to be generated, on securing some anonymity while also creating a bond between the participants, ie. our Virtual Greek family. (Here I remind the reader that the emails sent out by the moderator and most of the selected extracts can be found in Appendix II). Once formalities and practicalities were out of the way, the discussion on "Search for an Identity" was introduced by the Moderator: Step 1 of CMC proper was an email dated 2.10.1997 which presented an incident of name calling: "Greeks, the Mousakka people" . To this real incident CMC participants reacted immediately.

Responses to a challenge:

Participant 8 -our 23 year old young man from Bloemfontein, was the first to respond the next day: after his preliminaries to `warm us up and take my anger away' he said:

Tell him, this. Well, man, I am a Greek and I like mousakka very much especially when mum makes it. But I also like fish and chips, and pasta, and.. and.. I like good food, but I am not Italian, I am not English. .........

My army officer in Cyprus asked me many times who I am, because I had a funny accent of Greek when II first started in the army. I always said in the army: I am Greek from Bloemfontein. In South Africa, when asked, I say I am South African like all my Portuguese-origin or German-origin friends who say the same; in Cyprus, in my mum's the village when asked, I said I am Cypriot, and to my self when I ask `me' I say: I am P......s, and above all a Greek from Cyprus in South Africa, and I am a South African and a Superman with one foot on Pentadactylos and the other on Cape Town here; I am all of them.

Step 2 was to circulate this response to the other nine participants:

P.10 from Sydney advised me

to `make a copy of P.......s' answer and stick it in this `bully's eyes, or if I want to be more serious to give him photocopies of Stuart Hall's (1997) Representations: cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, pages 40 and 68/69 on how an advertisement for Panzani products was analysed by Barthes. It tells it all...That's what I am reading these days and I am happy with it.' 2

P.5, from Maryland US wrote:

I am Greek-Cypriot and Greek-American and a woman also. I do not like mousakka at all, but I like souvlaki especially in Cyprus. I like dancing all dances, Zorba and others, and I also like Vrakaman, because I find him funny, like Mr Bean; I follow all his programmes on radio and TV when I go to Cyprus summer time. Vrakaman is not just for Greeks. I brought the tapes I made of him here, and my friends who know nothing about Greek except what they hear and see via me, they like him too. We also like Yiannis especially his `Yiannis on the Akropolis'. I do not like being called "mousakka woman" or any other names. Do people in your schools used to call you names, or is it better where you are?

P.2, from Munich responded (in her message in Greek written with Latin characters and translated by the moderator before circualted) that

`yes, her German school when she was little ( sto Demotiko) was rough. She and her brother were always in trouble because people called them names and they left. They went to an all Greek school. She thinks she is "Ellinida" but she lives now in Germany, so she is also `German' -Den Xero! I do not really know if I am also German!. Her parents say after her studies they will definetly go back to Athens or Thessaloniki. They have bought a flat for her there'.

P.3 the young woman repatriated from Germany to Athens, reacted with anger both to the `bully' who called me names here in London and to all the other participants whose emails she read and who identified themselves

"as Greeks, just Greeks". No, she says, "Greeks are those who never left Greece. We are all different from them, because we have something more than them. we have 2 patridas, and we know more things, more languages and had more difficult time than those who are always in Greece, do not move from their school. `einai stegnoi avtoi!' they are `monos', we are multicultural, but we are not " mousakka people". We like it yes, we cook it and eat it more than the fish and chips but, calling us immigrant people names, they make us leave our second patrida again; in the end we suffer from going here and there. Such bullies must be shut up. How, I do not know yet."

P.1. from London said she is vegetarian and she never eats mousakka because it has meat in it.

`Still at school they used to call me `mousakka-man'; and I am a girl; they saw I was a girl and still called me `mousakka man' to make me angry. But I want to say I am Cypriot. I am not Greek. My parents are from Cyprus, we speak Kypreika at home, at the grocery shop, at the church and at the Greek school on Saturdays. Our school has teachers from Cyprus. The government of Cyprus pays them to teach us. I am Kyprea- Cypriot'.

P.4. reacted to this as if somebody was stealing from him something he owned:

I am the only Kypreos `Cypriot', because I live here in Cyprus now; I speak all Cypriot, - I write Greek- and I did my army service too, like Panos. So don't change me. You are `englezokyprea' he,hehe!! I am the Kypreos; you are English, Americans, Australians, South Africans.

P.7. wouldn't accept that he is only South African. He is also Greek from Ithaca,

"like Odysseus! My mother's father was born and raised in Ithaca; this is my heritage, and I am learning Greek at the University". I am a Greek-South African also; and I am a socialist also; and I am an environmentalist, internationalist as well. So I am everything I choose to be but basically I am Greek but not like some Greeks here who are very conservative and racists...'

When participants moved from humorous expressions to serious and some times offending comments about other people, the US 4th generation `wise young woman' came in:
Participant 6:

Hi guys! Why do you get so upset about this? This is only an exercise from which we are all going to learn something. Stay cool. I say I am Greek- American and that's it. I have my Greekness in my family. I cannot deny that. I do not yet speak Greek; but I will learn. I am also American living in the state of New Jersey US; I am not a Mexican American, I am not a Canadian. I am also a New Jersey person. I vote here too and I am proud of my city. I lately read the "Dinner with Persephone book"; it's wonderful for people like us. Get it if you can or let me know I can send it to you. When I go to Greece with the family I do not have a problem to say I am Greek, but they have a pro9blem to accept me as a Greek. I am American for their eyes and ears... And I agree with E. in Athens. I was quite disappointed with Greece the first time I went as an adult.

Step 3 was to take up P.6's suggestion to look into personal experiences of Motherlands, so `Subject b) Separating the Myth from reality' started with the moderator intervening to move the discussion forward, towards the `demythologising motherlands' issue.

She asked P.3 E.... in Athens to give more details about her thoughts and feelings and some facts about Greece as she is experiencing it now living permanently there. Her first reaction was to go back to her comments that

`things are different when you are here for good; the others tell me I got into the University with a "meson()" because I was foreign and the exams for us are easier than for the Greeks proper. That was a shock to realise they had no idea of what bilingualism meant, and that I knew well two languages, and giving exams in Greek was not at all easy for me. There was always antagonism with my co- students. In the end I searched for others like me who came from abroad. I found one whose parents are still in Belgium; He is in another department and is studying completely different things than me but we share and help each other more than with the women in my class. I hate Greek bureaucracy, especially the University "Grammateia-Secretariat" they drive me mad with their attitude. I try now to keep my problems until I speak to my parents, or to my friend here in the medical school. Are these enough facts to make you realise how I came down from the sky - kyriolektika epesa apo ta synnefa", when during my first month in Athens I had found closed doors almost everywhere... *I am looking forward to the end of my fourth year, I hope I will have finished by then, I work very hard, to get out of the country as soon as possible. I try to persuade my cousin in Munich not to follow her parents, when she finishes. Find an excuse for a Masters or whatever and stay there a bit more .
I don't want to look as if I hate Greece; I find Athens impossible for me to live in continuously, may be if I find work in the `eparxia - the countryside' it will be better. Did I say too much?

P.5 was alarmed with her comments.

` surely it cannot be so bad because you are in a place where everybody speaks Greek, and you some relatives to pop in and have lunch with them, ... and then you have the sea!.... YOU HAVE Akropolis and the concerts, you have the cafes with the "trapezakia exo- all those little cafes with the outdoor activity', the weather if you compare it with Germany... Be more positive. may be you are homesick'.

The word "homesick" sparked a vivid discussion around what they considered "Home" and the P.4 declared that he is very happy with his two homes,

"and feeling homesick in Cyprus because he misses his family in the UK, he misses the shops full of new computer wonders, his friends, and the television channels; it's my other patrida but so what?
I also feel homesick of Cyprus when I have prolonged visits in the UK. I can make a list of things I miss when I am out of Cyprus, and another for the things I hate in Cyprus. I still call it "patrida mou" as I call London `home'. I started liking the idea of feeling homesick for something wherever I am; it makes dreaming while awake very relaxing for me".

P.9 was very skeptical about Greece and Cyprus because he heard a lot about both Motherlands but he has not seen them himself yet. So it is good for him to

"have the dreams of spending six months in Europe and staying in Cyprus with relatives after my degree to get to know them both. My relatives are so good to have me for 6 months so ... the extended family all over the world now, grandparents in Cyprus, an uncle in Greece, two cousins in the UK, and a father's cousin in Maryland USA is just what I want for my year off"; it can't be that bad to have two countries as mothers, and the rest of the world as uncles, cousins etc.!

p.5 came back on the subject of motherlands and suggested he should visit her when he goes to Maryland. She is very much in love with Cyprus and Rhodes the two islands where she would like to live and work, and enjoy the sea and everything else...

`think of the food, and the walks by the sea front, and the music concerts in the open, and... all that laughing we do with `our people',... I cannot find it at the college here or at the Greek church. Why?

The moderator's prompting on the two issues of:

1. Identity search: Who am I? One or multiple identities
2. Demythologising Motherlands: patrida, second patrida, motherland, brought up the comparison with the "general American (not the Greek-American) experience in relation to England, where people speak the same language - English - and share quite a few customs and politics etc. They then compared themselves to the American mosaic and a few email messages were exchanged on the subject of "if by any unforeseen reason they were to be under the Parthenon all ten of them together, would they recognize each other, would they have common links to built something together? and what about the differences of experience; "Are we more or less like the Americans, from different countries but with a core element of Greekness"?

b) I put together here a summary of their last discussions using phrases selected from the CMC data:

• So are we Greeks?
• Can we vote in Athens' elections? Are we represented in their parliaments?
• Each one is what he feels he or she is.
• It `s difficult to say now but if there was war between our second patrida and Greece then what are we all going to support?
• What about war between Britain and Cyprus? Oh! Which identity will become stronger?
• NO THERE WON'T BE WAR!
• What about the mousakka identity?
• and the Zorba the Greek?
• and the Cypriot Vrakaman?

The moderator was given the wise advice: to enjoy the CMC we had and have a nice cup of nescafe with the `bully'/ student. Anyway, he and you are both Europeans with roots from two continents: Africa (Nigeria) and Europe (Cyprus). content

Education, New Technologies, New Pedagogies

Education is about empowerment; knowledge is power. Empowerment is about self-confidence, which then can be the basic ingredient for successful learning. Empowerment of the self comes with:

• mastering knowledge about `Who I am', and `What do I want to do',
• mastering practical knowledge for survival (how to ride a donkey safely if one lives in mountainous regions of this planet, or how to drive safely if one is in Paris or Athens,
• mastering knowledge/skills for professional development which will then bring financial stability but above all knowledge of `Self' in relation to the `Other' within the social system in which one lives and works.

• "Am I Greek only?
• Or American/German/British/Australian only?
• Or both?
• Can I have two identities or more? I am Greek-British and also European".
• Is there hope for International Understanding if education plays its role properly maximising the potential for Intercultural Education?
• Am I alone in this quest for identity, for "Gnothi s'afton" ?
• Can I share my anxieties with others in my country of present domicile? in my continent? Globally?
• What about all these Americans, South Africans, Australians, British people called `Hermes'?

These are indicators of an attempt towards forming identities that point towards ethnolinguistic and cultural continuity, moving to the future while rooted in the past. Is it a hopeful sign of an individual linking time (past, present and future) strengthening the chain and paving the way for `acceptable' change in new geographical and cultural contexts? How will these various people named Sophocles, or Hermes, or Aphrodite will feel when they link on a discussion list via the Internet and they find out that some other people with similar family histories have also kept their ancient names alive. Is there hope for International Understanding if education plays its role properly maximising the potential for Intercultural Education? content

How new technologies empower the learner

Today's technological infrastructure is based on a past history of innovations and innovators who managed to find the finance for their studies and physical resources to develop them and bring knowledge and academia in general forward. Papert uses the example of Leonardo Da Vinci and his efforts to invent an airplane. Although his planning, his research was sound, Da Vinci did not have the fuel or any other necessary technology was available to him hence he was not able to experiment and make his dream come true; alone he could not do it. His great dream was left on paper unfulfilled. Thus Papert (1996) assures us that child power is an ally of the Machine power `and megachange is impending' because of technological innovations.

Kress, G. (1997) on the other hand, in his article in the book `Page to Screen' 4, entitled "Visual and Verbal Modes of Representation in Electronically Mediated Communication: the Potentials of New Forms of Text," states his argument from the beginning: that today's far reaching changes in forms of communication should not be attributed to technological innovation per se; `it is a deceptive impression that they have their provenance in technological know-how'. He stresses that it is the `How technology is applied' that plays the most important role. He takes the example of informal language used in emails to argue that:

Making technology prior for instance, we could say that this form of communication is so quick, so speedy, but also so democratic that it is the technology itself, which enables and therefore encourages informality. Making the social prior, we could say that the informality of language in general and of speech in particular is a factor of social proximity.... email produces new social relations - it effectively puts me in the temporal even if not geographical co-presence of my interlocutor, somewhat like a situation typical of the use of speech. And it is this remaking of the social situation which then reshapes language in the direction of speech-like form (1998: 54).

Kress goes on to add that the present is characterized, as he argues, by a

"conjunction of social, political, economic and cultural as much as of representational/communicational and technological developments. Changes in social and political configurations have brought new arrangements and distributions of power. These have had positive effects for groups previously excluded, marginalised or oppressed, so that social and communicational changes tending to greater informality cannot be said to have just a technological origin: social, political and technological elements coincide" (ibid: 54).

This statement supports my argument that the new media enable different forms of communication especially in terms of the use of informal language in written communication. Also code switching is acceptable, hence the empowering of youth whose first language is not Queen's English. 5 Also visuals added to text can be of a different cultural symbolic set that the language used, so multimodal also allows for multicultural sources of meaning in one message. Bringing the debate nearer to formal compulsory education we will briefly look into debates about effective learning, curriculum and the role of intercultural education within it. According to Abbot J (1994) learning is:

"that reflective activity which enables the learner to draw upon previous experience to understand and evaluate the present, so as to shape future action and formulate new knowledge".

"influenced by the use to which learning is to be put, and whether the learning may be effectively retrieved in future situations'.

In presenting a process model of learning Watkins et al use the circular model of Kolb in which the verb DO expresses the active process in learning, the verb REVIEW the need for reflection and evaluation which then leads to LEARN through extraction of meaning, and then finally action comes expressed with the verb APPLY in this model. The clockwise movement of the arrows from Do, Review, Learn, Apply show a process of continuous activity taking place in learning. content

Learning through the New Media

My intention here is not to present the new media as the panacea for all problems in education and the only solution to societal inequalities. Quite the opposite; we are aware that the Media in all their forms have, for decades, promoted and sustained racist stereotypes and xenophobia.

More innovations in the media world now increasingly come upon us in a powerful and mystifying tone, in some, at least, of their forms. In the past, new technologies especially at their first appearance (even the invention of writing) have guided social attitudes, sustained governments in power and influenced educational processes. Today's multimedia are even more powerful, attractive and mystifying to young people while they may create fear in those who have not yet entered the field.

Media in the form of computer games, CD-ROMs, videos, asynchronous CMCs have developed with great speed and work like a magnet on youth; employing the combined elements of sound, visuals and movement which are the essential elements of today's learning machines. For example, the vocabulary used by the latest version of the Macromedia programme Director 6 words like: `Animation, shockwave, lingo, debabiliser, onion - skinning, screen, sprites etc.', are used as spin words by young people. Director 6 is a relatively new programme for the creation of, amongst other things, of animated and interactive web sites, computer games, interactive CD-ROMs for language courses and other educational media. It is amazing in its potential and it can be put to good use by education once the learner understands that Director 6 will soon be replaced by Director 7 and a few months later by Director 8 or Dreamweaver etc. Such technological innovations become successful in education if they teach the learner `how to learn' by itself.

Multimedia is here to stay. The companies promoting their educational multimedia tell us that their products create new information and, as Crimes and Patel argue (1991) they juxtapose data in new and different ways. Feldman (1994) goes further in his support for new technologies infiltrating education, by presenting multimedia as a seamless integration of data, of text, sound and images of all kinds, which create new digital environments; that is the information technology environment that passes on the messages, strong and clear messages that aim towards wholeness, as they argue.

"The production of electronic information radically alters traditional notions of time, community and history, while simultaneously blurring the distinction between reality and image. In the postmodern age, it becomes more difficult to define cultural differences by means of hegemonic colonialist notions of worth and possibility, and more difficult to define meaning and knowledge through the master narratives of `great men'....In the age of instant information, global networking, and biogenetics, the old distinction between high and popular culture collapses, as the historically and socially constructed nature of meaning becomes evident,, dissolving universalizing claims to history, truth or class".(Aronowitz, Giroux 1991:115) content

Concluding Remarks: Intercultural Communication, Language and New Technologies

• Helladic demotic Greek- the standard Greek Language, or
• Cypriot- or Cretan-Greek, i.e strong dialects of the standard language
• or British-Cypriot-Greek, a new and continuously developing version of the dialect in a Diaspora context, all used in one sentence or in one text of CMC.

The complex /and diverse geography and linguistic experience of global Hellenism as well as the political formations within which the International Council of Overseas Greeks SAE works are to be looked at critically under the light of the possible role/s of centralising institutions like SAE, The Greek Academy, "Philosophikes Sxoles-Greek language and Literature academics", in opposition to the realities of CMC and the Greeks at the turn of this troublesome century.

Today's efforts towards an intercultural curriculum are manifested in education via ongoing discussions and practices on equality of opportunity, intercultural values, gender studies and human rights in education. Books of teenage fiction and other children's literature have lately been addressing the above issues with the intention of furthering debates on intercultural communication, on comparing prevailing differences and at the same time offering the historical perspectives as well.

History is no longer perceived at least among enlightened professionals as `the ethnocentric equation of activities taking place within the framework of the nation-state'. It is accepted that there are no legitimate centres and no one legitimate knowledge; the individual lived experience is `deemed interesting and useful in providing a global, and not necessarily globalised view of what's going on'. Thus a more and more fragmented world is at once unified by the common experience of difference. History is no longer seen as a museum of information but rather as the voices and lived experiences of the people themselves. Such voices come to life through Oral History; writing biographies for example, difference and similarities are found in the stories, the determinant being the reproduction of one's life history alongside an interpretation of the social as lived by that particular individual. This is seen here as the postmodern aspect of History. Hence `tradition in post-modern terms is a form of counter-memory (: 116)'

But despite such ambivalence, stereotypes, images as construction processes give way to social generalisations, students discover their own `normality' by researching on the exoticism of the other; consequences of xenophobia. Despite such cultural imperialism the survival of difference, of the `Other' is also here to stay, even now 2 years before the new millenium and during the era globalisation and virtual village spaces offered to transnational communities via the Internet.

Our argument has been that the timing is right for Intercultural education to see New technologies as allies in education to apply new pedagogies for the benefit of the whole of the society. But should it be left to Educators and Policy makers to decide whether this is a hopeful sign of an individual linking time (past and present), strengthening the chain and paving the way for `acceptable' change in new geographical and cultural contexts? Taking account of the historical fact that Education worldwide has failed to acknowledge in time and cater for the special needs of linguistic, cultural and other minorities (disabled etc.). and that generations (2 and in some cases 3) of bilingual or multilingual citizens have been deprived of basic educational support (hence generations of diasporas still confused) then we welcome New Technologies and being technologies and not human beings we propose that we use their potential to the full. If today's media are geared towards an explosion of the boundaries of the school and the creation of the new sites for learning then today's diasporic youth if empowered with new skills for using efficiently new technologies may enter the process of marketization from the position of an empowered master of technology. This youth, relieved from the restrictions (stereotyping, semilingualism, etc.) of traditional schooling as their primary agent of socialization. These youngsters have already entered the new sites of learning within the superhighways environment, 'super' being their word and world; they are 'surfing' the Internet and it gives them a great 'thrill', 'moving' comfortably within their ethnolinguistic international peer group (communicating via the email in the International language of the market), using synchronous and asynchronous CMC and soon the video Conferencing. All these are much more attractive compared to the traditional world of written text.

This contribution suggested that technological innovations demand New Pedagogies and that Intercultural Education in its broader sense (broader than in that of education of the children of the migrants) can be put in the service of celebrating diversity via the use of New Technologies alongside its other important role of promoting understanding of the `Self ` and the `Other'. It is taken as given that the Internet provides the ecology that can be friendly to the discourse promoting interaction and cooperation between members of various groups within society. It offers accessibility to the international forum in order to exchange information, knowledge and experience.

The global experience acquired through the use of the Internet, of other people sharing the same social conditions, discussing similar social problems etc. by itself empowers the individual. The thrill of new geographical and social spaces can be experienced. This feeling of personal achievement empowers, too. It brings internal balance and satisfaction. With all that, offered by formal and informal education, the realisation that one belongs to a large group of same or similar people, larger than an individual's immediate family and community around her/him for example in London or Birmingham, larger than the group of Greeks in Britain,, makes the individual self-confident and more responsible towards the society as a whole.

Education is about empowerment; knowledge is power. Empowerment is about self-confidence, which then can be the basic ingredient for successful learning. Those groups with multiple ethnic, and possibly, linguistic, religious or other identities can survive outside the geographical constraints of one's neighbourhood, school, town or country. Diaspora youths have problems within the mainstream of traditional modernist western education where silencing of voices, of difference, was enforced by processes of assimilation and later on by a form of integration. Their members organise their world in alternative ways, present in the different expressions of their social belonging. Geography does no longer dominate their contact with people with the same ethnic root and similar or different experiences in their every-day life. Diaspora youths have problems within the mainstream of traditional modernist western education where silencing of voices, of difference, was enforced by processes of assimilation and later on by a form of integration. Today's cyberspace has created a new kind of open space hosting discourses and narratives other than the mainstream ones. It can bridge distances creating the feeling of belonging with one's own people, bringing together transnational communities of similar ethnic, or linguistic backgrounds, as it gives opportunities to specialist interest groups to be involved in their discussion lists.

To conclude, the Internet offers a new learning space. Communication in this new space allows for freer interaction between learners and the material to be learned with less interference from a powerful adult, be it a domineering and racist teacher or a more liberal one who also has to follow a prescribed curriculum and timetable. It offers the possibility to remake the world of learning in the interest of people with differential access to educational opportunity. content

Notes:

² I agree with Hall (Hall, S. (eds.) (1997)Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices, London, Sage/The Open University ) that `

Culture is one of the most difficult concepts in the human and social sciences and there are many different ways of defining it. The anthropological definition is that culture is whatever is distinctive about the way of life of a people , community, nation or social group. It is also used to describe the shared values of a group or of society . Culture it is argued is not so much a set of things - novels and paintings .. - as a process , a set of practices. Primarily culture is concerned with the production and the exchange of meanings - the giving and taking of meaning - between the members of a society or group interpreting the world in roughly the same ways and expressing themselves, their thoughts and feelings about the world, in ways which will be understood by each other. Thus culture depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and making sense of the world, in broadly similar ways... Also culture is about feelings, attachments and emotions as well as concepts and ideas cultural meanings are not only in the head... It is participants in a culture those who give meaning to people, ... It is by our use of things, and what we say, think and feel about them - how we represent them- that we give them a meaning In part we give things meaning by how we represent them, the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the values we place on them. Culture in this sense permeates all of society's symbolic domain at the very heart of social life.

³ Seymour Papert (1993) The Children's Machine: Remaking School in the age of the Computer argues that technology offers choices and chances to both theorists and practitioners for further technological and other achievements, something that was not there to help Dewey or Da Vinci to fulfill their dreams.
See also: Thomson, K. (ed)(1997) Media and Cultural Regulation, London, Sage, The Open University. back

⁴ Gunther Kress (1998) in his `Visual and verbal modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials of new forms of text' in the book Page to Screen- Taking Literacy into the electronic era. back

⁵ Stuart Hall (1997) talking about language ` Queens English'.
See also: Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Blackwell publishers and Hall S. (1992) `The West and the Rest' in Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds) (1992) Formations of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, The Open University. back

⁶ Chris Watkins et al (1996) discussing "Effective Learning", Lowe, R. (1997) Schooling and Social Change 1964-1990 Routledge London, Rutherford, J. (ed.) Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, Lawrence and Wishart London 1988 and Woodward, K. (eds)(1997) Identity and Difference, London, Sage, The Open University. back

Appendix I:

Participant no one (p1) is a second generation young woman of 19 years old, in her first year of University education in the UK. She lives in London with her family in a relatively Greek-populated borough, where the strong presence of the Orthodox Church, the Greek schools, the London Greek Radio (LGR) and satellite TV with Greek and Greek-Cypriot channels are a continuous presence. The ethnolinguistic vitality test of her family and her peer group scored high seven years earlier in a study done in 1989() when she was attending the Greek school as an extracurricular activity.

Participant no two (p2) is a German-born Greek - origin young woman, 20 years old, again of the second generation who is attending University in Munich. Her address was given to the project by a friend of p1 who visited her relatives in Munich and tried to create a network between p1 and p2 as she thought that they were both studying similar things and had similar hobbies. The two women became good friends and have regular communication although the Munich-based Greek knows little English, while the London based Greek knows no German; they have to communicate mainly in broken ` Athenian Greek written with Latin characters'; we refer to Athenian Greek (as opposed to the Greek - Cypriot dialect- see more later on this), which is the language of her parents and of her close cousin (p.3) who was repatriated to Athens at the age of 18 to do her degree at a Greek University.

Participant no three (p3) is 22 and is one of a considerable number of young repatriated second generation Greek-origin youngsters of the Greek Diaspora who went back to the Greece with or without their parents to take advantage of the offer from Greek Universities of free education at the third level as part of the Overseas Greeks Support Programme of the Ministry of Education. She is now in her third year and has struggled to adapt to the society she knew only from her parents' descriptions, her own summer visits and from books given to her at the Greek school. Very little did she knew she was going to be in a strange land, a stranger herself feeling the coldness of loneliness more than in cold, distant Germany. Her participation in the discussion group has sparked fierce debates about Greece, `the real people', not what `we hear from schools and political speeches in the diaspora! My God! Nobody helps you, when you are in need!" Hence the "Demythologising of Motherlands" part of the pilot.

Participant no four (p4) is another repatriated Greek - Cypriot of the second generation, brought up and educated in the UK. He is 25 years old and a young man who after graduating in the UK, decided "to take some years off in Cyprus and get to know his relatives better and speak the language as a native". He was the oldest in the pilot group and the one who played a leading role helping the moderator in terms of initiating the discussion about new technologies and world wide diasporas, and facilitating those who faced any technical problems in their email communication, keeping up the spirit when email provision went down; he in fact played the double role of participant and assistant to the moderator as an outsider, insider.

Participant no five (p5) is a US citizen living in Maryland, with Greek-Cypriot parents who left Cyprus because of the occupation of their town and home by the Turkish invading forces in 1974. She is 18 and following College education in preparation for her University degree course. Her recollections of Cyprus are based on descriptions of the war days and her parents' harsh experiences, as well as short summer visits to the free part of the island. She religiously followed the Greek school classes, the Washington rallies of the Greek communities, the various debates in the press and through her father she met some of the Senators and was photographed with them (as her attachments to emails with scanned photographs communicated to the project base show); she also marched with her youth club during Greek Independence days every 25th of March, and had a very sensitive attitude towards the critical comments of p3 about the `real Greece' she got to know when she went back to Athens. Participant no six (p.6)was 24 when the project started and was the only fourth generation Greek-origin participant, a young woman whose great grandmother came into New Jersey in 1901 as a young mother to join her husband who was already working in the steel mills of Bethlehem US. The family kept the memory of the homeland alive, but the language died when the second generation went to the American school "to learn good American". Our participant, contacted first by the project research officer (the CMC moderator) when her name and address were given via the Greek Diaspora Archives, was very enthusiastic about joining the network as she assured us that she was doing a family tree and collecting Oral history of her family roots and also having lessons in Greek as a foreign language to acquire some understanding of the language alongside what she was learning about the culture.

Participant no seven (p.7) was a third generation man of 23, whose direct links with Greece (mother's roots from Ithaca) and with Cyprus (father's roots from Pafos), were very weak until the Greek Diaspora Archives fieldwork officer facilitated contacts between him and other members of his family spread around the world. He was studying architecture at a progressive State University in Johannesburg; politically he seemed very mature and shared a lot of Mandrel's ideas, and ideals. He stressed that issue in his short biographical profile and during the email preliminary chat-discussion both to team members and to the project officer. He wanted everybody to know from the start that he was antiapartheid from birth, not like some of the Greeks here, who ...my God are so racist...' He was the first South African young man to join the project pilot, he was very enthusiastic and is the one who put us in touch with his cousin in Bloemfontein, participant 8.

Participant no eight (p8) a 21 year old Greek-origin South African from Bloemfontein in the Orange State, was quite an interesting case study as he had decided `to try out living in Cyprus'; finishing his University entrance exams he took a year off to go to the village his mother came from, do a six months' military service - compulsory for those repatriated youth who want to stay in Cyprus and get a work permit - as he intended to finish his studies and go back to Cyprus for good. According to some of his comments during the CMC having lived there he has changed his mind.

Participant no nine (p9) a 21 year old student of the University of Adelaide, was living in Adelaide where his parents, also refugees from the occupied part of Cyprus, fled from the Turkish army to save themselves. They first joined their relatives already established in Sydney where they spent 3 years and then started a business of their own in Adelaide. This young man of 20 years old was born in their new home of Adelaide; he has not been back to Cyprus at all but has kept the old photos of the occupied village (such photos were saved by the other relatives who immigrated before the invasion, and were reproduced and kept like icons in the most prominent positions of their house) of his parents on his Hi-fi and spoke about the village with vivid descriptions as if he has been there and played in its church yard with other kids in the same way his parents did. He was one of the very enthusiastic participants.

Participant no ten (p.10) was a Sydney-based youngster second cousin to p9 with a strong affinity to the Greek Orthodox Church of his area and a sense of strong roots in both Australia and Cyprus. He was a third generation diaspora youth of 24 years old with less knowledge of both the Greek language and culture but more understanding of migration issues, as he was a social sciences post-graduate student. He was also very keen in participating in the pilot. back

Appendix II: Extracts from CMC. Emails of 1st and 2nd October 1997

Dear all, Here comes Hermes on his Internet Wings, a bit formal to start with but friendly and cooperative as his usual self (from Zeus days to this moment, millennia of experience). Please do not get frightened and above all do not forget your lovely humour; we are going to laugh at ourselves... By the way I do accept the title `Proxenitra'. Will you invite me to the wedding receptions and ..the dance?

Finally we are ten (eleven with me, but let us not count me now) in the team! We are all of Greek origin and we all agreed to play the game according to certain rules as follows:

• as the Moderator of the CMC, I have promised that none of your photographs, email addresses, or other personal information disclosed to me will ever be published in any form, unless you see the material first, agree to it and sign under the document sent to you by registered mail. All our CMC will be /stored /kept on a Zip disk locked in my office and we all have common ownership of the raw data.
• I also promised to have the responsibility of final analysis and presentation of the report of this pilot project as well as the preparation of any funding proposals for a full scale study.
• You have agreed to delete all files of email messages as soon as your reply to them has left the server of your internet provider in case of problems with the security of the data.
• You have also agreed to continue our CMC till the end of the pilot in December 1997- unless serious illness or other unforeseeable problem interrupts your contact with the project.

Those of you who met me before in person, during the GDA fieldwork, know the legal status of the contract we signed then for depositing the interviews at the Greek Diaspora Archives, and I hope that when you see the final product of this pilot you will decide to deposit some of you own data if not all with the GDA for the production of more scholarship in the future.

Have a good night you down under Australians, enjoy your lunch Europeans, and a good morning to you ... if you are in the US... ( and please don't forget, read tomorrow's message) Yours M

After the formalities and practicalities were out of the way, the discussion on their "Search for an Identity" was introduced: Step 1 was an email from the Moderator dated 2.10.1997 sent out to the group of ten, which read as follows:

Dear all,
October now. The academic year for us Europeans and North Americans, has just started, for the others in `down under' Australians and South Africans, is moving towards the end, am I right? By the way if you think I am the calm well organised and full of answers academic you are in for a surprise; read on, this is a real story: Christmas is 3 months away and I feel very angry this very moment because a student from Lambeth College here threw the following on me while in the cantine: you are the "Souvla and mousakka and vrakaman people, all you Greeks"... Oh, no dear sir, I immediatetlyresponded: I hate them all; souvla is too much fattening meat, mousakka is too difficult and time consuming to make, and expensive in England...; they are both tasty dishes yet, but why do you call me names like that? Not all Greeks in the world are the same. I am not a mousakka person, I am not a vrakaman - I am a woman anyway...". "Fourtouna mesa mou!" I was really angry......

Anger does not help good clear thinking anyway. I know that much... I left and decided to think again later about these messy things; ...........BUT who am I? Who are you? Could you answer him better? (not with a punch of course, with words). Help me. I will see him again on the 15th. It's my birthday ! It will be really good if I win on that day. HELP me please. Waiting..... M. back

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