High School Students Make Global Difference

February 5, 2018, IVECA International Virtual Schooling & Samsung Electronics America (Samsung) and with the support of the UN Department of Public Information hosted a half day event of the STEAM Education for Global Citizenship to Achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Organized around two themes – STEAM Solution Developed Through Global Education and Private-Public Partnership on STEAM Education for Global Citizenship – the event has explored the holistic and intercultural integration of global citizenship. High school students, educators, diplomats, NGO-representatives, and social entrepreneurs from many countries joined together at the United Nations to discuss the dilemmas, challenges, and the positive impact of global citizenship through intercultural education.

TThrough the Global Classroom STEAM Challenge (GCSC) program provided by IVECA with Samsung’s sponsorship and collaboration, students from eight high schools representing five different countries: Korea, USA, Brazil, Tunisia, and China have worked passionately for about a semester, more than 10 weeks. Each school worked with their global partnership school; for example, Ross Butler Tech School(OH) is partnered with Korea Science Academy of KAIST (Korea), Downtown College Prep High school (CA) with Zhenjiang Vocational Technical College (China), Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy (PA) with International School of Tunis (Tunisia), and Lawrence County High School (AL) with Luiza Formozinho Ribeiro Public School in São Paulo (Brazil). Covering the subject of areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM), they come out with innovative solutions to contribute to accomplishing the SDGs. Before coming to a final prototype, students discussed with their partners and exchanged questions and answers through mutual respect and intercultural collaborative learning process. By working together, students realized many similarities as well as differences in cultures and socio-economic systems between their communities and countries. Each representative student team expressed that global education and partnership is the fundamental pillar for tackling poverty, racism, gender violence, climate change and for promoting equality and economic development

The outcome of their one-semester collaboration and their prototypes of solution were presented to over 500 audiences at the United Nations and globally through the UN Web TV. Students’ hard work was shared through visual presentation, dialogue, and talk. The moderators, panel speakers, and audiences were mesmerized by students’ wonderful ideas, innovation, creativeness and the way they answered during Q&A session. Along with students, Ambassadors of Korea, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Qatar also spoke emphasizing the importance private-public partnership for holistic education and global citizenship. The entire event can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/2C5cwJU

This event was co-sponsored by the Permanent Missions of the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, the Republic of Tunisia, and the State of Qatar to the United Nations, UNESCO New York Office, NGO Steering Committee for an International Day of Education for Global Citizenship, and NGO-DPI Executive Committee. The event undoubtedly is most memorable, inspirational and honorable moment for the youth leaders who came to the United Nations for the first time. The event was concluded with the Luncheon Award Ceremony. Representative students and teachers were conferred with the GCSC certificate and award endorsing hard work, dedication, intercultural competence and global citizenship they have demonstrated.

The World is Their Stage

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.

Future Technology for the People

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.