This interesting article in The Australian has interesting statistics and information about internet usage in different countries, including Korea, of course, and how this affects trends in marketing and recruitment of educational institutions.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/social-media-sells-education/story-e6frgcjx-1226113733750
The Article in the Korea Herald of December 12, 2010
The president of the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS) advocated the active use of ICT (Information & Communication Technology) in classrooms. It has proven its value so far in improving learning effects, especially in rural areas which formerly experienced a great lack of schools, teachers and other educational contents. The ICT projects led by KERIS included the digital textbooks and the U-learning classroom system, both of which are under test run in Korea.
He said that ICT is not to substitute the role of teachers or of schools but to seek what they could not do. It is nevertheless an effective tool to open up new views and ground, through which teachers and students may discover a whole new perspective of learning. He also said that, as the field of ICT is still relatively new to the world, its impacts may not be as easily predictable, making many reluctant to embrace the idea fully when it comes to education. Korea, with its excellence both in ICT and in education, should offer the world a leading example in what a combination of both may achieve.
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.
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).