Taiwanese students visit MU
Published July 11, 2007
Although fireworks were invented in mainland China, nearly 75 miles from high school student June Wang's home in North Taiwan, she said displays back home didn't hold a candle to the ones she saw while in the United States last week during Independence Day celebrations.
The chance for Wang and 28 other Taiwanese high school students to witness the festivities came as part of the Show Me The World program, a weeklong exchange in which high school students from two different schools in Taiwan and 12 students from Hannibal High School in Hannibal, Mo., participated.
The program is now in its seventh year. John Wedman, the information sciences and learning technologies professor at MU, who organized a visit to the MU campus by the multinational group, said the program is helping to forge international relationships and spread MU's reputation past America's shores.
"One of our goals is for MU to be known not just in-state and in-nation, but around the world," Wedman said.
During the students' July 6 visit to campus, sponsored in association with Hannibal-LaGrange College, students toured MU and were then split into groups and given digital cameras. They were assigned to collect images from around campus for a video presentation that each group created at the end of the day in Townsend Hall.
"I was really excited," Wedman said. "I really liked the way they ended the program."
The program has relied heavily on high-tech communication since its 2001 inception. The American and Taiwanese students who participated in the program were in contact with each other via e-mail and videoconferencing throughout the school year before they met last week.
Kurt Hader, a business instructor at Hannibal High School, said the program began as an online learning environment between students from the two countries. In the early stages of the program, conducted largely by videoconference, there was scant participation from students. The number of students involved in the program has since grown, and other grade levels in the Hannibal school district now have similar programs. Even adults in the community are utilizing the technology. A weeklong class in Asian culture is held by the high school for adults, and brief lessons in everything from basic Mandarin Chinese to cooking are taught.
"It's really grown to more than I imagined," Hader said.
Teddy Perry, a social studies instructor at Hannibal High School, said students who participate in the program typically stay in contact after the conclusion of the summer program through e-mail and occasional videoconferences in which students will perform music or martial arts demonstrations for their new electronic pen pals.
Hannibal High School senior Grace Meyer said she still keeps up with the host family she stayed with last year when she was sent to Taiwan for the exchange.
"It makes the world a little bit smaller having such great friends on the other side of the world," Meyer said.