REPORT Artmile International Collaborative Learning 2021
Country/Region [ Taiwan ]School[ Hsin Chuang Senior High School ] Teacher [ Ya-Fen Chen ] Grade ( 10 ) Member ( 35 )JP School [ Ube High School ] Teacher [ Mayumi Arima ]# Subjects, Activities and Hours of the lessons
SubjectConception of the lesson*Searching on the Internet for related references
ICT*Editing the forms or spreadsheet for group reports during online meetings*Brainstorming possible solutions to current global problems*Learning English terms about the targeted SDGs, like sustainable energies
Englishand LGBTQ*Oral presentation practice*Creating images by groups
Art*Integrating all the group images into the mural*Drawing and painting
IntegrativeActivities*Scheduling the time and date for Google Meet
*Appreciation and reflection on the AICL project

Hours
99165

# Theme and Message of the mural
Theme

Message
United thoughts toshare with the world

Promise to the Future"Promise to the future" was created by integrating the images and ideas that wenarrowed down in the learning process. The balloons floating in the sky show the 17SDGs. The issues facing modern society are portrayed on the right side in thebackground of the mural. As for the left background, it’s a bright future full of hope:clean water, clear sky, lively marine creatures and abundant food. Down on the corners,
the rainbow indicates that people of different sexual tendency deserve the same humanrights; the dove is for hope and the black-faced spoonbill is to conserve endangered
species. With people of different races and religions standing side by side, we cancooperate and solve problems across national borders. Making a "promise to the future,"
students pass the baton onto the next generation and hold the precious earth in thepalms of their hands with love.

# Effects and Problems
Effects your students have gained
They used to have rough ideas about the SDGs, but now
they know them much better and even studied some ofthem. In the process, they learn to raise questions, tosearch for practical and possible solutions to theproblems, and to brainstorm for creative measurements
to make a difference now and in the future.

Points for further improvement
On account of the limitations of Internet bandwidth,class size and meeting time, students can only do oralpresentations by groups. If possible, it would be nice if
sometimes students have chances to do one- on-one
idea exchange or in-depth group discussions with theircounterpart groups.

# How has your impression toward your partner’s country/region and the world changed?
Changes in the students
Changes in the teachers
Judging from the uniforms and Japanese students’attitude toward each task, my students noticed that theJapanese are well-disciplined and take every mission
seriously, which prompted them to improve theirperformance and think more deeply about every issue.

# Flow of the ActivityContentMonthMEET
Selfintroduction

Aug.
Sep.

What you did

Your students’ attitude/reflection

During the summer vacation,
we asked students of bothschools to briefly introduce
themselves in videos andthen exchange the videos forstudents to get to know one
another.

At that time, during the lockdown ofCovid-19, as high school freshmen,even though students were very shy,they were happy to make new friends
through self-introduction videos.

At the beginning of the newsemester, teachers let themexchange hand-madegreeting cards with appointed
counterparts.

SHAREResearch on
the theme

Sep.
Oct.

Not much changed from my perspective. I always thinkthat the Japanese are well-mannered and selfdisciplined people. From this valuable collaborative
learning experience, my impression about the Japaneseis confirmed.

Some of my students found it very
difficult to make a card. After all, it
takes creativity and art skills to make aunique card. When they received cards
from Japan, they were overjoyed andimpressed by the delicacy of the cards.

Teachers briefly introduced
the 17 SDGs and asked
students to study goals thatthey are interested in anddivided students into fivegroups according to theirinterest.

They used to know little about the 17SDGs. Some of them even never heardof them before this project. After theteachers’ lecture, they got to know
the real world outside their textbooks
and had chances to look beyond
schoolwork.

Students were required by
the teachers to develop twoquestion maps so as toillustrate problems andpossible reasons in somecountries.

Working on the question maps enabled
them to take a closer look at troubles
home and abroad. Furthermore, they
tried to think about and search forpossible reasons that contributed tothe existing problems.

Subject

EnglishICTArtEnglishICTContentUNITE
Message ofMonthNov.

united thoughts

CREATE
Mural painting

Dec.
Jan.

What you did
To begin with, we asked
students to finish afeedback sheet to provide
their counterparts withsuggestions and feedback
to their question maps.

Your students’ attitude/reflection
At first, my students’ feedback totheir counterpart groups was very
simple and plain. After reviewing
feedback sheets from Ube HighSchool, they were inspired to think
more deeply later on.

After reviewing thefeedback sheet, students
were required to search foror come up with global
solutions that can be put
into practice now and tenyears later.

To have more concrete and practicalglobal solutions that they can do now
and ten years later, my students had
further discussion, read lots ofmaterials online, and spent lots oftime sorting out the information andshowing it to their Japanese buddies.

Each group was required toput their messages to theworld into images andcondensed their ideas into
key words. Afterwards, eachgroup displayed theirpaintings and key words
online.

They enjoyed the process oftransforming their messages intoimages. Through brainstorming andusing their imagination, they literallyexperienced the famous saying, “Apicture is worth a thousand words.”

Teachers recruited art
leaders and volunteers fromstudents. With all theimages from each group,
the Japanese art leadersincorporated them into themural by briefly sketching
the whole picture first andthen they finished the rightside.

Watching Japanese buddies start thepainting step by step, my students
found it kind of unreal to thembecause they have never painted amural before. They regarded the sizeof the mural as numbers only. Not
having a clue of how big the muralwas, they were unable to imagine
what it would look like.

When it was our turn towork on the left side of themural, with our art
teacher’s help andinstructions from the JAM
office, Taiwan students
added a few iconic images
about Taiwan onto themural.

Since it takes art skills to finish themural, at first, I only recruited fiveart-gifted Taiwan students to be art
leaders. Later, two more students
volunteered. Then, some students
would drop by to offer theiroccasional help. When I showed themural to the whole class, they were
thrilled to finally see it in person.

SubjectEnglish
ICTArtArt

Content

APPRECIATE
Reflection/Appreciation

MonthMar.

What you did
Teacher Mayumi shared
their news reports and thepresentation that herstudents made in a wellknown university with us.
Hence, the authorities ofHCHS issued a press
release to celebrate thecompletion of this mural.
Some news journalists
interviewed my students
and me about the AICL
2021.

Your students’ attitude/reflection
It was indeed a rare, fresh andspecial experience for us to beinterviewed by news journalists. At
first, we were very nervous and evenstuttered in front of the cameras.
With more chances of interviewing,
we gradually got accustomed to thecameras and could share ourthoughts more fluently and logically.
Even so, it’s still kind of strange toread or watch news with our images
or photos. After all, none of us is acelebrity.

In the opening remarks,
teacher Mayumi showed usa mural painted 3 years ago
by Japanese junior highschool students for peacein Ukraine, which wasfollowed by 30 seconds ofsilent prayer for peace.
Later, teachers asked eachgroup to give oral reports
about their reflection on
this AICL project.

The war in Ukraine showed us thecruelty of wars. There are people
suffering and dying every day. The
jeopardized peace and the hunger forno more wars echo our hope torealize all the SDGs. From their oralpresentation, we can see their
growth in both SDGs knowledge andspeaking skills. Students of bothsides feel satisfied with theachievement they accomplishedtogether.

Subject

EnglishArtIntegrativeActivities# Effect and evaluation gained through the collaborative learning
Evaluation: Rank 5 to 1 (5: very effective / 4: effective / 3: so- so / 2: not so effective / 1: not effective at all)

Expected effectCross-cultural
understanding

Critical thinking(objective, logical views)

Evaluation

54

Scenes and reasons that teachers felt the effects
In one online meeting, students of both sides displayed their group
images. To indicate that a plastic bag floating on the ocean is fromconvenience stores, one group of my students put down the words“Lawson” on the bag because the store name “Lawson” is common in
Japan. Yet, Teacher Mayumi raised a question about this and weclarified this idea in time. Luckily, she didn’t misunderstand us. From
this unforgettable exchange experience, they learned that they should
think twice before they make use of their creativity and a sense ofhumor. Otherwise, misunderstanding might arise due to culturaldifferences and their recklessness.
At early stages, my students were not used to thinking from a bigger
picture. They tend to offer subjective personal opinions, like theirfeelings. Nevertheless, as time went by, because they got more practicein searching for information and analyzing materials, now they could
think more objectively by viewing from outside. In my opinion, theirability of critical thinking is developing. This is beneficial to them in theirjourney of becoming an independent and free thinker.

Expected effect

Active learningand action

Collaborating withdifferent people

Expressing in words,
in shape

Evaluation

Scenes and reasons that teachers felt the effects

4At the stage of working on a feedback sheet in response to the question
map, my students didn’t think deeply enough about universal challengesof the world and only offered some superficial responses, like theirpersonal feelings. Seeing how well their Japanese counterparts had
done, they were encouraged to activate their interactive learning by
doing more research into practical solutions to current global problems,
like solar energy, biofuel, food bank, water filter system, etc. This was a
big breakthrough for them. As high school students, they learned tothink more independently, did more outside reading, and studied English
materials from websites rather than textbooks.

4

This project started last summer, when my students barely knew one
another. Therefore, they were divided into groups not on the basis offriendship, but their interest. However, as time went by, they graduallyfound the merits and demerits in everyone. Though some may not getalong well, they learned to distribute segments of each task among
teammates so that they could complete missions on time. It is a pitythat there were times that some lazy students, not many, would rather
be hitchhikers in the journey of AICL.

4

This is definitely an interesting and fun experience for them to express
their ideas in words, English, which is not our native language, and thento transform them into shapes. My students have been learning English
for many years and most of them have good academic performance inEnglish; yet, there is still a lot of room to be desired in terms of theirspeaking skills. They need more practice and courage to express theirideas freely in English. Even though most of them are not good at art,
they strove hard to create group images that can reveal their thoughts
about the SDGs to other people. Seeing the art leaders incorporate all
the elements that we’ve narrowed down into one big mural, they felt
amazed. Knowing that Ube High School had won the MEXT award inJapan due to the mural and our collaborative learning, we share thehonor with them and are excited about this achievement.