When I began to teach, I wanted to bring much more than the printed word of the sterile textbook to my students. So I brought back REAL printed materials and realia of all sorts, took slides and later video pictures. I wanted to make sure the world of another culture was open to them, even if they could not afford to go there. We are visual creatures. We explore our world through our five senses.
Adults explore so much of our world through our sense of sight.
Certainly hearing, taste, smell, and touch are important. But much of our adult world is first explored through our sense of sight, and then through our sense of hearing. I notice that cats explore something new with their noses, but humans explore something new with our eyes and ears. Humans see with our eyes. We still have students who will not make it to the target cultures anytime soon.