KomaKids: Promoting Global Competence Through Media Creation

in Elementary School

Komkid Topoklang, Marcos Sadao Maekawa and Keiko Okawa

Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

Keywords: Elementary School, Global Competence, Media Creation, Cross-Cultural Program, 21

Century Skills.

Abstract: This research proposes a cross-cultural program in elementary school aiming at fostering global citizenship

education in a classroom through media creation in a program called “KomaKids” In this program, the

students' global competence is expected to be developed in four main steps: (1) through learning about foreign

culture; (2) by reflecting on their own culture through the production of stop-motion animation; (3) by sharing

their impressions through “pen-pals” letter; and, (4) through connecting in real-time with peers from foreign

cultures. Since March 2015, 23 workshops were periodically conducted at Japanese, Thai, Brazilian and USA

elementary schools. However, the focus of this paper will be on the 2017 academic year program with

Japanese, Thai, and Brazilian schools. The result according to the observation shows that the implementation

of “KomaKids” program produced noticeable changes in students' global competence of their age.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

This study was undertaken to foster elementary

school students’ Global competence through the

production of creative media works. In today’s world

of globalization, the disposition and capacity to

understand and act on issues of global significance,

so-called “Global Competence,” is considered an

essential skill for the future. The next generation of

children is expected to live, learn and work with

anyone regardless of their nationalities and cultural

backgrounds.

According to the research from Institute of Future,

global competence ranked on the essential skills for

all workers over the next decade. The idea of

promoting global competence has evolved over

decades. Tye suggests that Global Education should

be implemented into school, where children spend

most of their time during their younger age, to create

quality human resources for the future (Tye 1990).

During the past century, many organizations such

as UNESCO and The Partnership for 21st Century

Learning released global education frameworks for

promoting global competence in school with an aim

to stimulate students' awareness, curiosity and

interest in the world and how it works.

The challenge lies in how to implement this into

today's classroom. Still today, the effort to promote

this skill in the school is still hindered. Most schools'

curriculums only focus on improving academic skills

through lecture style teaching method, which is no

longer competent. Although many schools around the

world have started their action to revise the

curriculum for global education, there is still a lack of

supporting research and evaluation (Mundy and

Mundy,2007).

To succeed in this challenge, schools and other

stakeholders should work closely together. As each

school may encounter different problems, such as

lack of budget, technology resources, and human

resources. The curriculum should be tailor-made, to

provide students an experience to connect with the

world and develop their global competence. In hopes

of equipping them with a tool to survive in the diverse

society.

This research began its roots in March 2015 under

the “KomaKids Program” in Global Education

Project, Graduate School of Media Design, Keio

University, Japan. The cross-cultural program was

designed and implemented based on fieldwork

experiments in classrooms. This was with the aim of

developing a program that could provide an

opportunity for students to learn about the world

outside the classroom in a playful way. The program

’s name, KomaKids, came from the word ‘Koma

Topoklang, K., Maekawa, M. and Okawa, K.

KomaKids: Promoting Global Competence Through Media Creation in Elementary School.

DOI: 10.5220/0006761704430448

In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2018), pages 443-448

ISBN: 978-989-758-291-2

443

’ in Komadori anime (コマ撮りアニメ ), in

Japanese, which means stop-motion animation that is

the main media used in this program, and the word

‘Kids.’

This paper will describe the implementation of

this cross-cultural program over the last academic

year 2017 in the Japanese, Thai and Brazilian

elementary school using media creation. This paper

will discuss the plan, operation, and evaluation of a

diversity experience program and go into further

detail about the program and suggest the new future

of preschool education for a global society.

1.2 Research Goal

The objective of this study is to design a program to

foster global competence in elementary school

through the approach of media creation in a hybrid of

physical and digital media. Through this approach,

the goal is that this program will bridge classroom

students in two countries together through their

creative media works. It is also expected to create a

bound and an opportunity for them to interact with

foreign peers and learn about each other's culture

without requiring them to go aboard.

Based on this research objective, following

research questions are posed with respect to the

current process:

1. Can media creation activities help cultivate

students' global competence at their age?

2. What are key elements in creating a school

program that can promote global competence in

elementary school level?

1.3 Related Work

1.3.1 Global Citizenship Education in

School

Education to promote global competence is a topic,

which has been discussed in the education field for

over a decade. Although this term is becoming more

widely used, its meaning is not always clear (Mundy

and Mundy 2007).

Mansilla and Jackson defined Global competence

"as the capacity and disposition to understand and act

on issues of global significance" (Mansilla and

Jackson 2011). Moreover, Downey et al. also discuss

that globally competent individual has the ability to

work effectively with others who have a different

cultural background. They develop and deploy this

expertise when facing such issues and try to figure out

the solution to improve conditions (Downey et al.

2006).

The UK is one of the pioneering countries in

developing global education curriculum into school

(Maekawa 2015). In the UK, teachers considered

global citizenship and human rights as essential

values to put in the curriculum and teach in the

elementary classroom. They aim at cooperation and

caring rather than contentious issues (Davies 2006).

The USA has been working on implementing

global citizenship-oriented education in their

systems. In recent year, there are many organizations

and NPOs in the USA, which propose frameworks as

well as support for global education. Examples range

from The Partnership for 21st-century learning,

Partnership for Global learning, and NPOs World

Savvy.

In Japan, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,

Science, and Technology recently launched many

policies to promote global education in school. One

example is the World Friendship Project under the

Olympics and Paralympics education program, which

aim to cultivate the global mindset and global

perspective in Japanese youth in order to be ready to

host Olympics and Paralympics games in 2020.

In Thailand, the government aims to foster the

education system for children from every

background, including migrant. In Thai schools,

social studies is no longer a stand-alone subject but

now covers a larger presence through various subjects

such as “Society and Humanity”, “Life Skill and the

World of Work” and “ASEAN, Region and the

World” (Thailand MOE 2008).

1.3.2 Media Creation in Education

One of the principal ways in which schools seek to

develop students' global competence is through a

media creation approach. The New Media

Consortium defines 21st-century literacy as the set of

abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital

literacy overlap. (Consortium et al. 2005).

Lenhart and Madden point out that children who

create their media are more likely to respect the

intellectual property rights of others because they feel

a greater stake in the cultural economy (Lenhart and

Madden 2005).

Media resources such as photographs, mass

media, and digital learning experience helping

children to develop their understanding of

multicultural society. Children naturally see their

school as a place to discover. When digital media is

used in classrooms, it can help to broaden students'

point of view (Hobbs and Moore 2013). New media-

related activities such as production activities, blogs,

and wikis, augmented reality games can be used in

CSEDU 2018 - 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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classrooms to help students to engage in real-world.

(Clinton et al. 2006).

Loveless suggests that in order to implement

digital media into classrooms, teachers need to plan

and understand how to use digital media effectively.

The use of ICT in this activity gives children

opportunities to look, think, refine and evaluate their

works. It results in a unique contribution and

collaboration between two classrooms (Loveless

2000).

2 RESEARCH DESIGN

2.1 Summary of the Program

“KomaKids” program is a cross-cultural program

aiming at fostering Global Competence in elementary

school students, through the production of creative

media works. Through the creation of media, such as

stop-motion animation, “pen-pals" letter and real-

time show and tell, students are encouraged to think

critically, create media works from their point of view

and learn from each other. The students' global

competence is expected to be developed in four main

ways: (1) through learning about foreign culture from

gameplay; (2) by reflecting on their own culture

through the production of stop-motion animation; (3)

by sharing their impressions through “pen-pal"

letters; and, (4) through connecting in real-time with

peers from foreign cultures.

2.2 Subjects of Research

The subjects of this study are students aged 10-12

years old in Yanagida elementary school in Japan,

Colégio Latino a Brazilian school in Japan and Saint

Mary's Uttaradit School in Thailand. The number of

participants for each session is around 25 children.

Children in elementary school level are selected

as a target group of this program for three reasons.

First, regarding the cognitive development theory,

children in this age (approximately age 7-12) are in

the concrete operations stage. Their physical skills

have been developed and they are more mature in

their thinking and reasoning. (Siegler 1991).

Second, elementary school students are at the

age of being a “ creative doers." They have a

potential to create creative works and to be capable of

creative expression. Tylor argues that children in

elementary school level tend to produce more creative

works, compared with those who are in higher levels

of education, where academics become more

prominent (Tylor 2015).

Lastly, as noted by Mundy, global citizenship

education in school, particularly at the elementary

level, can produce noticeable results, and therefore

need to be strengthened (Mundy and Mundy 2007).

2.3 Design Methodology

2.3.1 Flow of the Program

The “KomaKids” program is divided into four

phases: 1. learning; 2. creating; 3. sharing; 4.

connecting. Throughout the school semester, four

phases of workshops were periodically conducted in

the Japanese, Thai and Brazilian elementary schools.

Details of each phase is below. [Figure 1]

Figure 1: Program flow.

Learning: In the first phase, Students are

introduced to their partner school’s information and

cultural content through a presentation and quiz

game. Next, they learn how to produce an easy stop-

motion animation using iPads, and try to create a

sample work. Creating the stop-motion animation

involved four main steps: 1. writing storyboard; 2.

creating a background; 3. creating characters, and 4.

shooting using iPad application.

The application used in this program is called

“KOMA KOMA for iPad.” With the simple four-

button user interface of ‘Shoot,’ ‘Erase,’ ‘Play’ and

‘Save,’ it allows the students to run all of the

production processes without help from adults. For

sound recording, students use “iMovie” application to

record their sound and edit the video.

Creating: In this phase, Students create a longer

version of stop-motion animation to present their

cultural story to their foreign friends. Before this

session, students have the storyboard and characters

created. Then they use iPad to produce the stop-

motion animation. The videos range from 1-1.5

minutes. To prevent shaking while holding iPads in

their hands, an iPad stand is prepared for them to use.

After shooting, students add sound to their story.

Musical instruments from music class are used to

produce some background music and sound effects.

After, all the works are uploaded to the

“KomaKids” project website, which the students,

teachers, and parents can access to watch and

KomaKids: Promoting Global Competence Through Media Creation in Elementary School

445

comment on the videos, after the session [URL:

www.komakids.com].

Sharing: There are two activities in this phase.

First, students access to the project website to watch

foreign students’ works. Then, in the group, they

discuss the similarities and differences between each

country’s cultures from the video.

In the second activity, students are asked to send

“pen-pal” letters to foreign students. To help them

communicate with each other directly without help

from adults to translate their letters, phrase cards

written in four languages; English, Japanese, Thai,

and Portuguese are provided for them to use. Using

these, students could simply cut out a message they

want to send to foreign student and paste it into the

letter.

They can also add a new word which would later

be translated and added to the list. Also, there is also

free space on the top of the letter for students to try

writing the greeting or short sentence in English, as

all students who join in the program are currently

studying English, as a second language.

Connecting: In the last phase, students are

connected for a real-time show and tell session.

Students bring things existing around them and make

presentations about their culture and daily life to

foreign students. Some example stories are school

lunch, traditional costumes, and traditional music.

Students first complete worksheet in English to

prepare to present their story. Then, they are

connected to a foreign classroom and each present

story one by one using English. Facilitators on each

side help to deliver messages they presented to the

other side.

3 EXPERIMENT

3.1 Program Schedule

From March 2017 to January 2018, the workshops

have been conducting periodically at Japanese, Thai

and Brazilian elementary schools to develop an

effective program to promote global competence in

school. Below is the summary of the whole

workshops in this study. [Table 1]

Table 1: Program schedule.

Date

Venue

Program

Jun 21, 2017

Japan

Learning session

Jul 14/18, 2017

Japan

Creating session

Aug 16, 2017

Thailand

Learning session

Aug 17, 2017

Thailand

Creating session

Oct 18, 2017

Brazil

Learning session

Oct 19, 2017

Brazil

Creating session

Oct 24, 2017

Japan

Sharing session

Nov 24, 2017

Thailand

Sharing session

Nov 29, 2017

Brazil

Sharing session

Dec 5, 2017

Japan

Sharing session

Jan 23, 2018

Japan/Thailand/

Brazil

Connecting session

3.2 Classroom Environment

The activity takes place inside the classroom. The

present classroom format in Japan and Thailand are

similar to each other with the traditional lecture-style

arrangement. As this program focuses on hands-on

works, the classroom layout is rearranged to provide

the space that is best suited for creative content. The

tables are put together as a group. In the middle is a

resource center where students can get the materials

they want. There is a camera set at the back corner of

the classroom for recording students' behavior. The

program, also, requires the use of a projector and

computer with internet access for students to present

their work. These are already equipped in the

classroom as basic facilities.

4 EVALUATION

4.1 Evaluation Criteria

A benchmark for program assessment is designed

based on two frameworks, targeted at students aged

10-12 years old: The Teacher Guide K-12 Global

Competence Grade-Level Indicators of the

Partnership for 21st Century Learning [Table 2] and

the Global Citizenship Education Topics and

Learning objective of UNESCO [Table 3]. The

checkpoints used are shown below:

Table 2: Global Competence Grade-Level Indicators.

Domain

Indicators

Understanding

Students can see how culture shapes

individual and community

perspectives and points of view

Investigating

Students can demonstrate multiple literacy

skills

Connecting

Students can present their research findings

and projects to audiences using multiple

technology tools and formats

Integrating

Students can communicate what they have

learned to diverse audiences, and craft

specific presentations tailored to those

audiences (in face-to-face settings and

through online publishing)

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446

Table 3: Global Citizenship Education Topics and Learning

objective.

Domain

Indicators

Cognitive

B3: Media literacy and social media

skills (different forms of media,

including social media)

Socio-Emotional

B6: Understanding the similarities

and differences between societies and

cultures

Behavioral

B9: Engaging in projects and

written work

B9: Participating in decision-making

at school

4.2 Evaluation Result

During the program, children were observed their

behavior to evaluate the result based on the domains

presented in Table 2 and 3.

Children were able to think back about their

culture and demonstrate those cultural stories to

foreigner from their point of view.

Figure 2: Student’s letter.

By watching animation from different countries and

discussing in a group, children were able to see the

similarities and differences between cultures. For

example, there were stories about New Year day

created by three groups of students from three

countries. After watching those three stories, students

were able to point out different traditions in each

country in discussion time. The student mentioned

that they were impressed with the cultural differences

in their “pen-pal” letter to foreign students. [Figure 2]

Through this activity, students learned to

collaborate with each other. This time, we mixed girls

and boys in one group. At first, many groups had

some arguments between girl students and boy

students since they rarely have a chance to work

together. But with help from facilitators, they

eventually started communicating and were able to

work as a team. [Figure 3]

Figure 3: Students creating stop motion animation.

Stop motion animation which is an optimal

balance between craftwork and digital media creation

could help students foster their creativity, storytelling

skills and also digital literacy. According to the

teacher's interview, they mentioned that those skills

are rarely tough in school. It could be seen in many

groups of students as they were struggling at the

beginning of the activity of how to deliver a message

to audiences. For this stage, worksheet and help from

facilitators played an important role to guide them to

shape their idea and story.

Almost all of the students were quick to learn how

to use the application. Regarding the teachers’

interview, many of them have a chance to use digital

devices at home. Still, it is important to teach them

about digital literacy to help them use technology

wisely.

Time management is another big challenge for

this activity. It is needed at least 3-4 hours to run the

activity. In Japanese elementary school session, many

groups of students were unable to finish their task due

to time constraints. One way to solve this problem is

that the school can integrate this activity into general

school class, for example, using some time in a

language class to let the student write a storyboard, or

let the students spend time in social class to do

research and find information for their story.

5 CONCLUSION

According to the result from several times of the

practice, it can be said that this program can provide

an opportunity for students to realize and learn abouta

diversity of the world in a playful way that suits with

their age.

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447

The program is also easy to adapt to curriculum

and resources that school already have. By using stop

motion animation as a tool, it helps promote students

to work with hands and also use digital media to

create a story.

However, it is needed to observe and evaluate the

result more to see this change in students’ interest and

behavior. Thus, at the end of the program in February

2018, the questionnaire is planned to distribute to

students and teacher to evaluate a more concrete

result of the program. The questionnaire is designed

based on the evaluation criteria mentioned in Table 2

and 3.

In the long run, to maintain the program,

developing a platform for this program is considered

an important tool to help bridging and create a

network between the classrooms in different

countries. This platform will contain a guideline of

this program which is developed based on the insight

from the practices of this program. It is hoped that it

will help connecting school around the world and

create bound and foster students’ global awareness.

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