In October 2024 I was contacted by the Sejong City Office of Education, South Korea. Communication was through my GMail, not my university email, which made me think they had looked at my Learning Confluence website or other online material from the K-12 global project days. Through their email I learned that they were running a 1-day conference and invited me to keynote virtually. I also learned that:

• Sejong City is Korea’s administrative-oriented planning city, similar to Canberra, a young city that opened in 2012
• The Sejong Office of Education and the education community are working hard to achieve the goal of helping its students grow as future leaders and global citizens
• As of 2023, there are 43 schools operating international exchange cooperation schools, accounting for 42% of the total, and operating various class-oriented international projects with 18 countries and 54 schools around the world.
• The conference participants are current elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and about 30% are currently operating international exchange and cooperation schools, and 70% are interested in international education, but they all wanted more information as to how it was done and actual examples

Main theme: The importance of global perspective, and how to activate international exchanges through edu-tech.

Objectives: To increase the demand for cooperative education of international exchange in preparation for hyper-connected world based on the development of cutting-edge technology, to provide examples of cooperation of international exchange by using educational technology, and to strengthen the teachers’ capability and to support the students’ growth through the provision of sample cases of international exchange cooperation by using educational technology (Edu-Tech) and through the communication with experts in relevant fields.

Sadly, I have never been to South Korea however I taught many expat. Sth Korean students when I worked at an international school in Beijing for 3 years. Twelve years later, through this brief interaction I am impressed with the vision Sejong has for its younger generation and enhanced understanding and global opportunities in the future. 

My presentation title: “Future-Ready Learning – Empowering Students through Global Connections and Innovative Technology”

I started with essential challenges in education today, moving to foundational concepts about online global collaborative learning, case studies and an implementation guide. For this session resources were pulled from past and more current material, including a section on the affordances, challenges and impact of AI on learning and global connections.

Here are the slides: