K12 online conference 2010

2009 PRECONFERENCE KEYNOTE:
The movie title: Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education
culture shock.
URL http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=424

This movie mainly illustrates a lot of interviews from students and teacher who have different backgrounds. For example, most of them experienced living in another country when they were young.

First of all, the narator explains about the positive aspect and negative aspect about international school.
Most of teachers as well as new students who come from different countries absolutely experienced culture shock. Especially this might happen at the very beginning. As for teacher, they sometimes confuses how to educate thier students who are from other countries because some of them have different perspectives and a lack of communication skills. On the other hand, these students also experienced strong shock from different culture. So, it might be seem cruel and awkward for students to go to international school. However, most of them who already have overcome these difficulties show some appreciation. For example, one student commented it is challenging to live diffent culture and its not always negative. He said this situation sometimes energizes him. In addition, the narator illustrates eastern culture for the purpose of comapring western culture. It makes us open our mind to understand how difficult international students live in diffent countries and  to go to their school.

Second, this movie contines interviewing many different people who have already lived in different countries. These people provide us with very interesting ideas. For example, one of them said that we need to enhance our communication skills to catch up with growing world. And, interestingly all of them emphasis on having tolerance, appreciation and empathy. Probably these elements have been indispensable for them to live in there. Because of that, I think that these people are much more sophisticated about communicating and getting along with other persons rather than any people who did not experience living in different culture. I could see most of these people are prodactive and constructive about their life. We can say that they already can deepen understanding for everything around them.

Third, the movie focused on the future of education. As times goes by, we will encounter much more international students who will live around us. Therefore, all teachers are needed to sophisticate themselves for such a future. The movie illustrates the importance of using technology such as internet because this is already valuable for students as well as teachers to connect with other persons. Twitter and some tool box are good examples. Joing such a social network would be necessity for people to live in the future. Of course, we can say same thing about future education. It would be great benefit for teacher and student in every aspect.

Finally, I noticed a lot of thing from watching this movie. It makes me understand how rapidly global society's advance is. Because I also experienced teaching in elementary school in Japan, I think that it might be great concern about how to educate international students and how to use internet efficiently. Global educaiton will absolutely require us to rethink about our own education. Thus, I believe that all teachers will be needed to be flexible and constructive for everything around them.