JEONNAM-GWANGJU — The Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City Office of Education is opening its 2030 Classrooms to visitors, sharing on-site how lessons are shifting toward a format in which students ask questions, investigate and work together.
The office said on the 16th that it will open kindergarten, elementary and middle school 2030 Classrooms through Nov. 6 and hold lesson-sharing sessions among teachers. Of the 252 2030 Classrooms in the Jeonnam area, the 119 newly selected this year will take part.
Kindergarten children express the nature around their village through movement, while elementary students examine the world's climates and ways of life. Middle school students take on project-based lessons in which they compare local policies and set priorities themselves.
The 2030 Classroom is a policy aimed at transforming lessons so that students question, investigate and collaborate across the barriers of time and space. At its core is student-led instruction built on remote video systems, real-time translation tools, AI-generated materials and digital devices.
In the kindergarten 2030 Classrooms, small kindergartens run a joint curriculum. Children draw on photos and videos taken in their villages to express nature through gestures and play.
The elementary 2030 Classroom is a glocal lesson that expands from the local to the global. Students use AI materials and textbooks to study tropical and arid climates, then connect by video with teachers in Indonesia, South Africa and Botswana to ask about life there.
In the middle school 2030 Classrooms, three small schools meet online. Students debate the necessity and feasibility of policies under the theme of sustainable local development. They also incorporate questions and opinions from peers at other schools to refine the rationale for their policy choices.
The open lessons are linked to the inaugural lesson-sharing festival for the region's "K-Education Special City" initiative, to be held on Nov. 28 at the Suncheonman Ecological and Cultural Education Center. The festival will also unveil a "lesson hot-spot map" compiling the distinctive teaching brands created by schools and teachers.
"The 2030 Classroom is not a project for installing equipment but a policy for changing lessons so that students become the agents of their own learning," said Park Cheol-wan, director general of the talent and education bureau at the Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City Office of Education. "We hope the lesson-sharing that began in schools spreads across kindergarten, elementary and middle school levels and carries through to the K-Education Special City Lesson-Sharing Festa, becoming an occasion to find the direction of change in teaching together."