A group of 6 students and 2 teachers from I.T.S Deledda-Fabiani, Trieste have just come back from our second visit to St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School, New Delhi from 8-16 April 2015. This was a reciprocal exchange after hosting 12 Indian students last September. It was an unforgettable experience for my students and me. The visit to India gave us the opportunity to learn about the Indian school system, get in touch with a culture so different from ours and create new interpersonal relationships.
Lycée Elie Cartan in La Tour du Pin, France, was thrilled to welcome 15 students and 2 teachers from St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School (SMGS), Meera Bagh, New Delhi, India, from 25 September to 2 October 2016.
This was the first meeting after Mrs Anjali HANDA and I met at the 2015 conference in Sofia and started collaborating, initially on her ‘Language – A Mantle of Communication”, an online collaboration under the ASEF Classroom Network.
As a follow-up of the Online Collaborations (ASEF ClassNet), ITS G. Deledda in Triest hosted 11 students and their teacher, Ms Anjali Handa from St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School. It is the second time we took part in a student homestay exchange with the Indian school from New Delhi. They arrived on 27 September and left on 1 October 2014 to continue their Italian tour to Benevento and Rome, hosted by two other Italian schools. It was a wonderful experience which gave our school the chance to get in direct touch with a completely different culture and a school system, in addition to opening up new horizons.
In May 2014, a group of 11 Indian students and their teacher Ms Anjali Handa from St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School visited the Netherlands. They were staying with students from the Christelijk College Nassau-Veluwe in Harderwijk. During the visit, the Indian and Dutch students carried out a variety of cultural and social activities together. They visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, cooked Dutch pancakes and Indian food together, went to one of the royal palaces, and enjoyed a boat tour in Giethoorn (called ‘Venice of the North’).
The Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta considered experience gained through travels to be a more important source of knowledge than books. To gain knowledge about other cultures and to share one’s own, makes you more dynamic.
To achieve this very end, a delegation of 10 students and 2 teachers from St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School (India) visited the Nordskov School, Haslev, Denmark from 13 to 21 May 2016 for a Student Homestay Programme. The main purpose of this exchange programme was the promotion of cultural knowledge, creativity and intercultural understanding amongst the students by creating awareness on the similarities and differences between the Asian and European culture.
For me, the 11th ASEF Classroom Network (ASEF ClassNet) Conference at Bali was like a packet full of surprises. Of course, the first surprise was being selected as the student representative from St. Mark’s by our Principal Ma’am. Each day I learnt something new – whether it be about fostering global collaboration or promoting friendship with other schools. And that was what made me happy the most. Every single moment, be it watching the Kecak Dance Performance or giving the presentation for my Online Collaboration, “iMagz – Making Myself Heard”, will be etched forever in my mind.
According to me, ASEF Classroom Network (ASEF ClassNet) is a platform which helps me to see education in a different way. It makes me realise that education can, indeed, be fun. Education need not be confined to the four walls of the classrooms. Education goes beyond classrooms and as the name suggests ASEF Classroom Network connects classrooms from across the two regions.
AMAZING! That one word would be enough to describe the experience students and teachers from Lycée Elie Cartan, France, have just lived! The mere fact of meeting up with our Indian friends was a great pleasure! But the 10 days we spent at St. Mark’s Girls Senior Secondary School, India, from April 6 to 16, were also filled with discoveries, activities, emotions, laughter and happiness.
I first engaged in the ASEF ClassNet Online Collaboration when I was a first-year student in my senior high school. Working with others on the Internet in English has been instructive, and has improved my language skills significantly. I have also learned things about different cultures that I never knew before. What’s more, during the Online Collaboration I have also acquired new ICT skills.
I visited Finland from 9 to 18 February 2011 to observe the environmental education and climate change programs sponsored by Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity (KOFAC) and the Korean Environmental Education Program, Evaluation, and Research. When I asked Sinikka Lakkio-Whybrow, who belongs to the ASEF Classroom Network and teaches at Kaarina Senior High School in Finland, to coordinate my team’s environmental Online Collaboration, she was willing to accept my request. Thanks to her sincere efforts, four Korean teachers were able to visit Eco Viiki Ecological Housing Area, the Finnish Environment Institute in Helsinki, Piispanlähteen combined school and Kotimäki combined school, Kaarina Senior High School, and the Archipelago Ecological Park. At that time I was able to gain meaningful and practical insights. Based on the observations of various Eco schools and institutions, I would like to mention some impressive things