Today, the ninth graders talk about the so-called ‘Berlin Africa conference’ of 1884/85. The headline is “scramble for Africa” and the pupils take first the perspective of colonial powers and their respective interests. Afterwards they write a diary entry from the perspective of someone suppressed by the colonial powers.
History is one of the bilingual subjects of the school which means it is taught and learnt in English and in German.
The main building’s staircase is designed with elements of black, red and gold.
It is not only the ‘traffic hub’ for the many school actors hurrying from one lesson to the next, or going to the cafeteria or outside to the yard during lunch break. Like a gallery, it also displays pupils’ artwork.
Two paintings catch my eye. ‘Unity – Germany and South Korea’ was the title of an inter-year project: The teenagers worked in teams on aspects of cultural identity and/or life at a German School in Seoul. Many of them were born in Germany or Korea, have lived in both countries or have biographical ties to both and/or further cultural contexts.
Today in politics-class students from year 11 talk about societal opposites. The theme is ‘Young & old’. First, the students and their teacher talk about the German population pyramid. They then research the situation for South Korea. “How does the situation look like more than 10.00 km away from Germany?”, the teacher asks.
The teenagers do their research using German and largely Korean language websites. “What’s the Korean word for ‘Alterspyramide’ [population pyramid]?” is only one of the questions they need to clarify.
South Korea’s population pyramid looks like a pear, a girl contends, and she roughly sketches it on the Duraboard in front of the class. The class discusses possible reasons for this. Later, the teacher explains to me that by using such ‘German-South Korean’ comparisons he aims at engaging the pupils with examples from their own life world.
„And now let’s see what happens if we drop the ball“, the teacher encourages Alisa and smiles. The pupil just joined the extracurricular programming-group and works on her first game. At the desk across from her, two pupils work on a game that one of them has been tinkering on for some sessions.
At DSSI, all pupils learn about the basics of computers, cyber mobbing and the like. They can playfully deepen their knowledge in these afternoon activities.
Today, the sixth graders carry out their projects using different media: in pairs, they research illnesses like cholera and tuberculosis online and create posters.
Welcome at the Deutsche Schule Seoul International – I am curious to see what I will experience here!
The German School of Beverly Hills Cairo has joined our research project!
Today, students in 8th grade in their Ethics class started to work on a class-project they wish to submit to a competition organized by the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education) in Germany. They will shoot a 3-minute video based on research they’ve done collaboratively using google docs on their laptops.
The hand-held mobile-phone camera follows several students walking through campus while they answer 30 questions on fashion.
The result (which they all watch on the Smartboard) is dynamic, fun, and extremely creative!
A place for students to share their words of wisdom…
…. and exercise their multilingual skills…!
Students in 7th grade use the in-house developed e-learning platform (eschool21) to learn about programming variables and code a little program with the help of their IT teacher. Their task, incorporated within the e-learning platform (accessible from their laptops and also projected onto the Smartboard) is to write a program that “guesses” the number of legs a certain animal has.
It turns out that the snake has none, as one student playfully coded 🙂
