Organizer and Chair: Namji Kim Steinemann, Asia Society
Discussants: Jerry Bently, University of Hawaii; Jan Hawkins, Center for Children and Technology; Jean Elliott Johnson, New York University; Morris Rossabi, Columbia University; Caron Smith, Asia Society; Lorne Swarthout, Berkeley Carrol School
Recognizing that technology tends to surge ahead, often without the strong application of good, accurate scholarship, the Asia Society is presently engaged in several projects to address this issue. One such work-in-progress is an NEH-supported CD-ROM, Journeys Along the Silk Roads: Cross-Cultural Encounter and Exchange. Intended to be a prototype, the CD-ROM allows the teaching about Asia from a multidisciplinary perspective, with its themes permitting the interlocking of the various Asian civilizations without minimizing each culture’s distinctiveness. Importantly, Journeys involves what is often a challenging collaboration of scholars, secondary school teachers, and technologists, working to create a CD-ROM that is rich in its academic content, appropriate in its pedagogical approach, and effective in its use of technology.
This roundtable brings together scholars, educators, and technologists in the Journeys project as well as others whose discussions will focus on the broader issue of collaboration to meet the need for appropriate content, pedagogy, and technology in teaching about Asia at the precollegiate level and beyond. Various models of collaboration will be explored and examples of CD-ROMs and related websites will be shown.