All the world’s a stage, and people are actors, said Shakespeare.
The theatre is certainly a wonderful way to learn about society and its history, and the students of Hoover High School (USA), and Jeonmin High School (South Korea) did just that. Meeting virtually through the IVECA program, these students used classical plays to teach one another about different aspects of their cultures and celebrate their differences and similarities.
The students worked together for an entire semester. Students from Jeonmin introduced Hoover students to Chunhyangjeon, or “The Tale of Chunhyang” one of the best-known love stories and folktales in Korean history. Students from Hoover shared Shakespeare’s Hamlet with their counterparts at Jeonmin. Students analyzed the plays and stories and shared their own perspectives which inspired wonderful discussions and opportunities for self-reflection.
Not only were they able to learn about their partners’ classical plays and folk tales, but students also learned more about plays belonging to different cultures by comparing them with those of their partners. The project helped participants better realize and identify the differences and similarities between the theatrical productions in the West and in Korea.
It is obvious that technology plays an important role in people’s lives everywhere in the world. Through technology, people today use a number of innovations that help better their lives, such as artificial body parts and intelligent machines. However, who knows what technology will be uncovered in the future? What fields technology will change and in what way? These are some of the questions elementary school researchers tackled this past fall.
Little researchers from Sunderland and Barnard Elementary Schools in the USA and Boram Elementary School in Korea invested time and energy to examine future technologies. They believe cooperation between people and technology could result in amazing achievements. That is why they did their best to find out how technology can serve human rights, justice, and equality. In small groups, these students had 4 virtual meetings that took place in November and December, to present their findings to each other.
“Today, we are talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution as an extension of the Third Industrial Revolution” agreed all the little researchers. They presented their findings about the application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in many fields and how to use this technology to make a better future for people. Making a home for everybody, helping sick people, improving education and revolutionizing transportation are amazing ideas that our researchers shared.
After presenting their findings, the US and Korean students discussed their presentations and gave feedback to each other. And yes, we always learn from sharing, they also could identify similarities and differences among the ways they have been thinking about future technology and how it could help people live in harmony.
Dr. Eunhee Jung, IVECA Founder, speaking at the UN-AI forum on "Unlearning Intolerance: National and International Perspectives in Global Citizenship Education" - Photo Credit: The UN Academic Impact
From the United Nations Academic Impact
December 1, 2017
One of the indicators of Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, is the extent to which global citizenship education has been mainstreamed at all levels in national education policies, curricula, teacher education and student assessment. In this first of a two-part series on global citizenship education, we interviewed Dr. Eunhee Jung, founder and Executive Director of the non-profit organization IVECA International Virtual Schooling, on the use of information and communications technology in global citizenship education.
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Dr. Jung describes an epiphany she had regarding the nexus of educational training, intercultural communication and technology. I saw a Korean man who was practicing English using his cell phone. In a flash, I had an image of students ere sitting on a playground here and there in groups and working together on school tasks using mobile devices. Soon afterwards, she decided to take up graduate studies in educational technology and international/comparative education. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Virginia dealt with Intercultural Competence Development: Implementing International Virtual Elementary Classroom Activities for Public School Students in the U.S. and Korea. Out of this research grew the IVECA (Intercultural Virtual Exchange of Classroom Activities) programme, an international online schooling platform that Dr. Jung founded and now directs.
According to Dr. Jung, IVECA harnesses the recent affordable developments in information and communications technology to enable elementary and secondary school as well as university students from different backgrounds around the globe to interact directly with each other. She sees IVECA's virtual learning experience as promoting a new sense of living together. Partnered school students can communicate in a genuinely reciprocal manner, indeed, in a way that offers some distinct advantages over what is all-too-often a one-way learning environment in which visiting students must adapt to their host country and assimilate to the local culture. Dr. Jung believes that IVECA helps create a learning space especially suited to global citizenship, inasmuch as online connectivity allows the participants to learn from one another on a more equal footing.
Global citizenship means to Dr. Jung communicating and collaborating appropriately and effectively with people in both local and far-flung communities. Interacting with people from different backgrounds brings with it a powerful potential to reflect on the relationship between global dynamics and individual choices. Global citizenship also means being able to solve problems creatively through compassion and respect for cultural diversity, Dr. Jung says. Whether virtually or in situ, the interconnectedness of phenomena that lies at the core of global citizenship, she believes, can best be tangibly grasped through face-to-face interaction and collaboration with people in diverse cultures and countries.
