SEOUL, KOREA - With the advancement of technology, smart learning has enabled people to study at their leisure anytime and anywhere. Individuals can now download abundant resources online and utilize them with their smart devices at their own level and pace. As technology is making huge headway into education, smart learning has become the key word for educators worldwide.
Smart Learning for Kids - “i-Scream Home-Learn,”
Korean kids today are able to seek education beyond conventional classrooms with smart devices, digital contents, and advanced ICT infrastructure. “i-Scream Home-Learn,” recently developed by Sigongmedia is the best example of smart learning in Korea. It consists of a smart device designed to promote primary schoolkids’ tailored and voluntary learning.
Through the tablet PC, children can download a multitude of digital resources from the i-Scream website to help them prepare for their schoolwork, tests, and homework. The multimedia contents are designed to stimulate children’s interest in learning. Working with an online system offers more advantages. Kids can study at their own level and also repeat lessons until they master them, which is not possible in conventional classrooms. Although it is online, they are also assigned teachers who supervise their learning activities and progress each day.
Smart Lesson for Teachers - i-Scream
Prior to developing i-Scream Home-Learn, Sigongmedia was originally best known for the i-Scream service, digital teaching aids designed for primary school teachers. The service, used by 99% of Korea’s elementary school teachers, provides a multimedia approach to learning aimed at promoting learning while simultaneously generating student interest and enthusiasm. The service offers a variety of teaching materials including video, flash, and images aiming to effectively teach the principles found in textbooks and also to raise the students’ concentration on the class. Resources include a multitude of resources for textbooks, tests, creative activities, as well as leisure activities.
A recent poll amongst 6,000 elementary school teachers by Sigongmedia has found that using i-Scream’s contents for teaching has improved a monumental 92% of students’ understanding of textbooks, interests and motivation for learning. i-Scream received Platinum Awards from IMS Learning Impact Awards in 2010, as the most impactful use of technology worldwide in support of learning.
Sigongmedia, Korea’s Largest Smart Content Provider
Sigongmedia originally started from its parent company, Sigongtech. How did the exhibition turn their attention towards the education business As the company designed and built exhibition projects such as science museums, natural history museums, and theme parks, they were able to hold a number of videos and images. Exhibition companies usually discarded them after the projects’ end, but Sigongtech saved each of them and through this came up the idea of providing education contents. Quality contents purchased from BBC and Britannica also added to the digital assets and Sigongmedia now possesses over 3 million various types of images, 150,000 videos and 250,000 CG/3D & Flash.
Kwak Duk-Hoon, vice chairman of Sigongmedia and former president of Education Broadcasting System (EBS), recently joined the company, hoping to contribute his decades-long education expertise. “When I served as the president of the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS) in 2008, I had heard that there was an outstanding education service called i-Scream in the private sector. After benchmarking the service, we discovered that the results were impressive and well-received by schools,” Kwak said in an interview with Korea IT Times.
“When I had a chance to see Park Ki-suk, chairman of Sigongmedia soon after, I discovered why. He was so passionate about Korea’s education and spared no efforts to improve it. The company has invested around 60 billion won (53 million dollars) to date in the education business. Not even the public sector can claim to have made an equal contribution.”
Toward Creative Education
Kwak has always placed an emphasis on creative education. He said that it is time for Korea to move away from conventional “Navigation-type education”. “When you turn on a navigation system, it conveniently leads you in the right direction. However, you will not be able to find the way yourself the next time without the aid of the navigation system. Korean students are so used to learning based on cramming education, but they should be trained to find ways to think for themselves even if this causes the pace of learning to reduce. Sigongmedia’s smart learning programs can provide a good stepping-stone to move toward creative education,” he said.
“Sigongmedia is now dominating the preschool content business. However, we are not complacent but desire to move forward. Instead of simply entertaining users, we want to design technologies that will stimulate their emotion. I believe that the age of Emotion Network Service (ENS), the convergence of digital technology and emotion, will soon be upon us. Sigongmedia will continue to heighten its effort to develop our services. This will allow us to improve Korea’s education by becoming more creative and smarter.”
