SEOUL,KOREA - "The Philippines is a populous country and lacks sufficient educational tools. If we can take advantage of the e-learning systems being in use by Korean schools, we will be able to fill the gap in remote areas where school services are inadequate," said Renato San Juan, officer with the Filipino Ministry of Education in charge of alternative learning programs.

 

 

 

The first East Asia Summit on Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) held on November 4 at Somerset Palace Seoul was an opportunity for Korea to promote its education-related technologies overseas. Educational administrators from Southeast Asia, who are deeply interested in the economic growth model adopted by Korea, were impressed with technology-based smart learning systems and vocational education schemes being experimented in Korea.

 

One of the technologies with which the participants were fascinated most was Kibot, the learning robot developed by telecom service provider KT. In the first session on e-learning, KT executive Mo Soon-rae showed the robot on the podium. As he demonstrated how the robot works through the RFID technology reading books out loud and making video calls, the audiences applauded with compliments like "so cute" and "amazing." Last year, the company supplied 80,000 units of Kibot to Saudi Arabia.

 

The participants also showed keen interest in smart learning systems such as the "Smart Classroom Program" developed by Forwiz Systems and the Samsung SDS-developed "NEIS" (National Education Information System) being in use by the Ministry of Education and thousands of K-12 schools.

 

Yang Hye-kyung, research fellow at the Korea Education and Research Information Service, said in a presentation, "In all classrooms in Korea, students can use Internet-ready computers. As many as 33 percent of teachers are being retrained in ICT skills every year." A Lao Ministry of Education and Sports official in charge of international cooperation said, "If we introduce a smart education system, it will be much easier to administer video-based learning or apply new contents."