OVERVIEW
The 5th Asia-Europe Classroom (AEC) International Teacher’s Conference took place from 25 – 29 September 2005 in Beijing, China. This conference was co-organised with the Beijing Jingshan School, with the support of the Chinese Ministry of Education and the European Commission. Eighty-one teachers and educators (including observers) from 23 ASEM countries participated in the conference, including for the first time, representatives from five new ASEM members: Cambodia, Cyprus, Hungary, Laos and Poland.
During the conference, ASEF conferred the AEC Awards to three winning projects in recognition of their outstanding achievements in advancing the principal objectives of the AEC initiative. The winning AEC projects were
- Cultural Kaleidoscope 2005
- The World in a Book
- Utopia@VirtuaIHomestay
These three projects involved five, four, and nine high schools from Asia and Europe respectively, which mobilised close to 320 Asian and European students, under the guidance of their teachers.
The majority of the students found the process of working together via the Internet to be a very educational and interesting experience. Most of them enjoyed learning all about one another’s culture and lifestyle through their email exchanges.
At the end of the discussion in Beijing, endorsement was given to nine new AEC projects and three existing projects to be continued, covering various topics and themes, potentially involving about 50 schools from the 23 countries.
