Mr. Kim is a Math teacher in a public high school in Seoul, Korea.  He has been interested in his teaching subject, Math, Instructional Technology and international communication.  One day, Ms. Lee, a principal of his school introduced ‘APEC Learning Community Builder (ALCoB)’ to him.  When he visited the ALCob web page (www.alcob.com) he realized that the program “ALCoB” was what he was looking for because there were a lot of chances to learn, co-work, research and serve the International society as well as his school and students in terms of education, his teaching subject and international communication.

He did not hesitate to apply to the ‘ALCoB’ program through online application at ALCob.com. After two weeks, he received an ‘acceptance message’ from the ALCoB Administration Team (Institute of APEC Cyber Education-IACE). 

He participated in a two-day workshop for ALCoB beginners. In the workshop, Mr. Kim learned basic knowledge of APEC Learning Community (ALCom) such as overview about APEC, the roles of ALCoB and prototype of activities.

He logged on www.ALCoB.com and reviewed posted project topics.  He could not find the appropriate topic for himself.  He proposed a new topic for an ALCoB project which was “technology use for Geometry class in secondary schools.”  Under this topic he simply posted his general ideas about the topic.  Three ALCoBs, one teacher from New Zealand, and two Chinese teachers expressed their interests in this topic. Through synchronous discussion forum in the ALCoB web-portal (ALCoBzine), they agreed to form a cell to conduct this project. They named their cell “Geo-tech.” and specified their project topic and procedure.

Specified project ideas are below

Topic: Principles for technology use in Geometry and their applications.

Procedure:

1. Sharing their personal experiences about technology use for teaching Geometry.

2. Extracting general principles for teaching Geometry based on shared experiences.

3. Applying the general principles to their own educational settings.

4. Sharing the results of applications.

5. Evaluating and revising general principles.

6. Reporting their project to ALCoBzine.

“Geo-tech” successfully carried out the project and reported the results on ALCoBzine. Fortunately, this project was selected as “Project of This Month,” and automatically all members were invited at an International ALCoB Workshop in Seoul, Korea to present our project in December 2003.

It was really valuable experience to all “Geo-Tech” members because they learned a great deal, built international fellowship, and consequently contributed to the international society.  They are now very exited in visiting Korea to present the project, and seeing each other.