What is #ASEFClassNet?
For over two decades, the ASEF Classroom Network (#ASEFClassNet) has been providing capacity-building opportunities for collaborative teaching and learning and a platform to explore the potential of cutting-edge EdTech tools and the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in secondary, high, and vocational schools in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Partner countries. Its target group is broad, given its intergenerational & multi-stakeholder outreach. It ranges from students, teachers, school leaders, teacher trainers, researchers, policymakers, and to EdTech experts. Since its inception, about 1,900 teachers from all 51 ASEM Partner countries have participated in and become members of the ASEF Classroom Network. As a result, about 35,000 students have been engaged in over 430 Asia-Europe School Collaborations and local spin-off activities.
1st ASEF Classroom Network Conference (#ASEFClassNet01)
At the inaugural conference on 2-5 September 2001 in Singapore, ASEF brought together teachers from across Asia and Europe who shared the desire to develop cross-cultural exchanges and ways of using the Internet as an education tool; the ASEF Classroom Network was born and its first School Collaborations were proposed.
63 like-minded high school teachers from 18 ASEM partner countries with a desire to develop cross-cultural exchanges and ways of using the Internet as an education tool convened at the 1st ASEF Classroom Network Conference.
Introduced by the Asia-Europe Foundation, this new network participated in an interactive conference which combined plenary sessions, working groups and presentations. As well as forging new friendships, participants formally agreed the aims of the ASEF Classroom Network. Finally, they sprang into action by proposing the inaugural ASEF ClassNet School Collaborations. These seek to facilitate better intercultural understanding and use of ICT in education, and were titled:
- The Effects of Modernisation on Agriculture:
- Nuclear Energy o Cultural Fusion o Water is Life
- 1st Asia-Europe Classroom Meeting Point o Halo-Halo to Mooncake
- O.F.U (TransOceanic Forum United)
Invigorated by the conference, members of the ASEF Classroom Network dispersed to set about their work of:
- promoting greater mutual understanding among teachers and educators from Asia and Europe through cross-cultural exchanges
- encouraging the advancement of education through the use of ICT
- developing an on-line forum to facilitate joint development of innovative and mutually-beneficial education among teachers and pupils of high schools in Asia and Europe.
