Video Learning Materials for Teacher Training Sessions to Provide Understanding of International Education Satoru Fujitani Department of Child Studies, Faculty of Human Sciences, Mejiro University 4-31-1, Naka-ochiai, Shinjuku, Tokyo 161-8539 Japan
[email protected] Tadashi Inagaki Department of Human Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Tohoku Gakuin University 2-1-1, Tenjinzawa, Izumi, Sendai, Miyagi 981-3193 Japan
[email protected]
Abstract: School Teachers are now in an era of significant change throughout society. Although they know that collaborative learning has great power for children to overcome the hardship of global world, they feel many educational problems for practices. The author has hold teacher training sessions to provide understanding of international education, and provide its on-demand video showcase on the web. Educators who have interests for international education can access to the website to the semblance of social networking system, e.g. myspace.com and mixi.jp, and can cultivate their readiness through his/her video viewings.
Every educator who meets with the Internet can easily imagine its potentials for network-based collaborative education in the classrooms. International education (Knight, 2003) through the Internet scaffolds learners’ mutual understanding of global situation, e.g. cultural differences, hostilities and conflicts, natural disasters, and so on. To place collaborative international education activities within the broader scenario of the Internet, educators should overcome their problems, such as establishment of educational partnership among schools, and teacher training and assistance to help their practices directly (MEXT 2005). Especially for educational practical scenes, teacher trainings will enhance their abilities of practices more progressively. From international moves toward PBL (Problem-based Learning) under Japan’s domestic-centered internationalization (Kudo & Hashimoto, 2007), encountering international education activities through PBL has powerful meanings in Japanese educational environment. The author has held a teacher training conference with a series of working sessions with an NPO (Non-profitable organization) that contribute to the diffusion of international education programs in Japan. Furthermore, using the gathered audio-visual recording at the conference, the author has implemented an experimental web site for on-site learning materials for international education. The web site users can review and enhance teachers’ skills of education methods.
Teachers’ working sessions on international education The teachers’ conference on international education practices has focused on acquired ability for students to learn during international education practices. The conference held in August 2007 accepted the entry of approx. 100 school teachers, cram school teachers, and volunteers from seven European, Asian and Pacific Rim countries. The parallel working sessions (Figure 1) are mainly consists of introduction of practices on international education by foreign and Japanese teachers. Followed by the parallel working sessions, the attendants have taken part in a discussion session which they reciprocally evaluate their education activities. The attendants will express the characteristics of their each education activities for making clear the strong and weak points. Here is the summarized list of strong points cultivated on cross-cultural international education activities which found on a discussion session.
Figure 1: Parallel sessions and a discussion session on teachers’ international education conference A) Communication Skills, e.g. Presentation skills. B) ICT Skills, e.g. Skills for PC usage. C) Thinking Skills, e.g. Creative Writing, Creativity, Logical Reasoning, Scientific Reasoning, Ideas. D) Collaboration Skills, e.g. Friendship, Interpersonal Skills. E) Personal Development, e.g. English Language Skills, Knowledge. F) Cultural and Global Understanding, e.g. Empathy, Sharing Culture and Global Awareness.
Building a web site offering video delivery service During the teacher conference, a series of working sessions are included on digital video tape recorder. In this study, the author arranged these audio-visual resources to show off. The approach is not a conventional way, e.g. streaming server/client system, but Adobe Flash Video (Adobe Online) file format. This file format enables us the video contents to show on the regular HTML web pages with Adobe Flash plug-in. The author had implemented a prototype video browsing environment applying on social networking system (SNS) modules (Figure 2). This is a web server application under development. By taking familiar user-computer interface, like SNS, into account, users can understand the structure of the web service and easily look appropriate video materials up. It also becomes easier to communicate with each user on the SNS service, e.g. blog and community bulletin board. Viewing audiences, as a trainee from these video learning materials, will promote a better understanding of the video contents.
Figure 2: Prototype website in video teacher training terms
Future tasks The author is now going ahead with distribution of the video learning materials through the SNS web site with school teachers who are interested in international education in their classes. A survey about the usage of video contents is now in progress. The author is going to remodel the design of this web-based learning environment by improving the availability and comparability of video materials on the web.
Acknowledgements The author holds high appreciation to Matsushita (Panasonic) Educational Foundation, Tokyo Japan, for supporting this educational practice.
References Fujitani, S. & Inagaki, T. (2007) “Teachers’ Professional Development Workshop for International Collaborative Learning: A Pilot Study”, Proceedings on 14th Annual Conference on Japan Association for Educational Media Study (In Japanese), K3-3, pp.95-98, Akita, October 2007. Kudo, K., & Hashimoto, H. (2007) “Can Japanese Universities Become Global Leaders in an Era of the Knowledge-Based Economy?”, Occasional Research and Policy Seminars, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne. Australia. December, 2007. http:// www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/ downloads/2007%2012%2013%20U%20of%20Melbourne%20Seminar.ppt Knight, J. (2003) “Updated Internationalization Definition”, International Higher Education, Boston College, No 33. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/News33/text001.htm MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, Japan) (2005), “Report of study for the promotion of international education in K-12 education in Japan” (In Japanese)
