What is CONCEPT?

Dear international partners,
On behalf of Taiwan K-12 teachers and students, we would like to invite our international partners to join our CONCEPT Project in 2006 – Collaborative On-line Network and Culture Exchange Project in Taiwan.
In the global village connected by the Internet, industries from different walks of life utilize information technology to reform the enterprises, to promote work efficiency, and to improve the quality of service. The application of the information technology facilitates the prosperous development of modern society. There is no exception for education. Both teachers’ teaching and students’ learning should incorporate the advantages of modern technology. Consequently, continuous changes could be made in accordance with the facilitation modern technology could provide with.
Recognizing the importance of information technology to students’ learning, the government in Taiwan is establishing an online environment to prepare students for the information society in the 21st century and to promote their problem –solving abilities. Meanwhile, it is crucial that students need to understand the world more and their international awareness and perspective should be fostered to cope with the globalization. With the strong support from MOE, we have begun to design and create an online learning environment for students in Taiwan. The core spirit lies in our students’learning collaboratively with international partners.
In echo with this mission, we plan to conduct a project-based learning (PBL) project-- Collaborative On-line Network and Culture Exchange Project in Taiwan. In this plan, 400 teams from Taiwan and 400 teams from other countries will be invited to this project on the basis of one-to-one team model. These 800 teams together will learn asynchornously and synchronously through the Internet. Based on the WebQuest theory, one team from Taiwan will match with the other team from abroad as follows:
1. They plan their own projects and formulate the topics.
2 They discuss the problems online and finally come to the solutions.
3. Such a process-oriented project includes the learning processes as follows:
1. To formulate topics
2. To decide learning tasks
3. To establish the exploring processes and the procedures
4. To seek the resources
5.To conclude the project
This project will recruit 400 teams with students from the elementary schools and high schools in Taiwan. Each group consists of 2-5 people coached by 1-3 teachers. The details will be published in the following website:
http://nt.stu.edu.tw/PBL
For more information about PBL, please refer to the following website:
1. http://course.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/s031705/EDD5169F/
2. http://www.berksiu.k12.pa.us/webquest/bowman/index.htm
3. http://et.sdsu.edu/APaxton-smith/eslwebquest/WebQuest.htm
4.http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Mouse/8059/CurriculumQuest.html
5.http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/grant/oceanpollution/introduction.html
6.http://inshow.idv.tw/webs/oldstreet/default.htm
We look forward to seeing you on line soon!
Truly yours,
Committee of CONCEPT, Taiwan
know more about this activity, please mail to jerome@mail.stu.edu.tw