Garry’s Rambles

Day 3 included a visit to a school, to the Samsung Factory and to KERIS. The school visit was to a local boys high school. In Korea, high school starts in Year 10 and students complete their last year of school three years later. Single sex schools are a relic from the past, and most recently built schools are co-educational.

We observed a group of Year 10 boys undertaking career development using Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). A UMPC is a smaller version of the tablet PC. It is described as the device that will become as indispensable and ubiquitous as mobile phones. The lesson was undertaken under the trees in the school yard. Pleasant as it was under the trees, there was no real reason to be using the devices outside of the classroom, apart from the fact that you could. The school explained that they were still to best understand how to use these devices to transform learning rather than replace what they were already doing. A number of speakers yesterday admitted this was the challenge for educators. It would seem that one opportunity would be to better understand how students use technology out of the formal school environment, and build upon that experience. Why not ask the students?

The Samsung factory was really a promotional event for Samsung. We were able to see some future products that had not yet gone to market. The trend which is not really new is the convergence of technology applications into smaller devices. For example, a mobile telephone that on one side looks like a phone and then on the other a fully featured digital camera. Another interesting trend, was the integration of mobile TV/Internet devices into household goods such as the fridge. Finally, the home entertainment system reverses the trend of getting smaller by having ever larger screens to view multimedia events.

KERIS is an organisation funded by the Ministry of Education to support the integration of technology (building infrastructure, services, content, supporting professional development and reducing administrative time for teachers/principals). Given the large budget for KERIS, the government demonstrates its commitment to change and keeping up to date with this rapidly changing environment. For more information about KERIS, go to www.keris.or.kr.

Well, its time to leave and it has been a great trip. The impression left is the overwhelming financial commitment by the Korean government for supporting change at a systemic level to ensure that school education is equipped to contribute to an economy that will be transformed by technology