Why International Collaborative Project(ICP) activities

WYM2008 naturally lead the student to build up the new horizon.

Chair of World Youth Meeting Steering Committee

Nihon Fukushi University

Makoto Kageto

Dear Professors and Students who are interested in Information and Communication technology and Internet use in Education . It is a great pleasure for us to invite you to 10 ^th international conference hosted by Nihon Fukushi University.

World Youth Meeting is designed to motivate students in secondary schools and Universities to break through the wall of English and enhance ICT competiences.

International exchange gives participants real-life experience; it is essentially an activity in an actual environment. It is a fruit of an integrative effort at practical use of all the learning and experience gained in the subject “Information” such as giving a presentation, designing a questionnaire, making a graph with spreadsheet software, gathering information through the Internet, and comprehensive training. It is an activity beyond the boundary of a classroom and needs three kinds of communication, namely, communication with peers at other schools in the same country, communication with participants in foreign countries, and communication with one’s own self that live in this very age.

Like a project at a company, successful international exchange rigorously requires setting and accomplishing a goal and yielding results.

In addition, exchanging e-mail with foreign participants in English is a place of practical use of English learning. Students shift their focus from remembering and using grammar knowledge and vocabulary to actually listening to, speaking, and writing something in English and finally arranging and communicating what they have obtained.

International exchange is thus a project most suitable for comprehensive studies. by using commutation tools like internet.

The first World Youth Meeting was held at the Nagoya International Center in 1999. Since this first meeting, the steering committee has been constituted of 20 senior high school, and college teachers. We have had seven meetings so far, and not only the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology but also the Boards of Education in local communities, the Japan Association for Promotion of Educational Technology, etc., have supported us. The three stages of pre-event communication and collaboration, interaction and collaboration in the event, and post-event communication give students opportunity to study ITC, international understanding, and English.

Presentations on experiences of home stay in Japan and topics such as welfare and internationalization have been given, and the files and scripts used in the presentations have been put on the WWW for the use as valuable English educational materials after they have returned to their home countries.

The participating countries so far have been Germany, the U.K., Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Australia, the U.S., Nepal, Korea, Taiwan, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia , Philippines etc.