Fulbright U.S. Education Center

Some of you may be interested in the post on my Korea Information Society blog about the Ministry of Science and Technology’s plans for digital textbooks.

Read it here.

As some of you who follow this blog already know, I author another blog called koreainformationsociety.com.   Quite frequently there are posts on that blog that I think might be of interest to people reading this one.  After all, education is one of the major pillars, arguably the most important one, in building an information society.  Education is at the heart of South Korea’s progress over the past three decades in building an information society.

Also, I realize that many university administrators and others in the U.S. education sector are interested in Korea’s rapidly evolving digital media environment.  This nation’s goal of becoming the world’s first ubiquitous society has definite implications for U.S. schools who currently and in the future will recruit Korean students.  The new category, Korea’s Information Society, should help to bolster the existing one on “Recruiting Korean Students.”

Comments and suggestions on this new category are welcome.

I’m pleased to inform readers of this blog that the 1996 book I co-authored with Mel Gurtov and Robert R. Swartout, Jr., Korea’s Amazing Century:  From King’s to Satellites is now available full-view with a downloadable PDF option on Google Books. The book was a project of the Fulbright Korea Foundation and the Korean-American Educational Commission in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Fulbright Program.   Please use the link option (upper right hand corner of the page above the book cover) provided by Google to e-mail your friends or embed the book in your own blog or web site.

The Chosun Ilbo reports today that the Korean government has designated eight universities as IT Research Centers (ITRCs), with a view to developing IT-based core technologies and nurturing high-quality human resources with master’s or doctorate degrees. The new ITRCs are Sogang University (S/W verification engineering technology), Korea Maritime University (oceanic LED light), Kyunghee University (ubiquitous IPTV), Chonnam National University (mobile phone interface), Chungbuk National University (hybrid vehicle energy), Kookmin University (Energy and IT convergence), Chosun University (real-time IT), and Gyeongsang National University (aviation S/W).

The government plans to provide each ITRC with an annual budget of W500-800 million for up to four years (US$1=W1,349).