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Introduction

   The fast change of Information and Communication Technology drives paradigm shift of most area of our society. In order to accommodate and even lead to this change, human resources development emerges as one of the national core projects.  The Korean government finished the information literacy training for all K-12 teachers successfully owing to the accomplishment of the 1st stage of the National Educational Informatization Master Plan.

   Today, there is a consensus in Korea that it is the time to introduce new instructional system in order to educate and nurture creative human resources who can lead the knowledge-based society, by utilizing the educational information infrastructure of the schools systematically and efficiently. The ministry of education and human resources development launched the 2nd stage of the training to enhance teachers' ability of information utilization and the educational contents development project in 2001.

   This paper introduces the current activities and the near-future ICT application projects in the Korean school systems. It can be summarized three parts : development of teachers' ICT application ability, development of educational contents using ICT, support for education for ICT utilization.

1. Development of Teachers' ICT Application Ability

   This project is designed to strengthen various supports for the development of teachers' ICT application ability, leading to the effective instruction using ICT and to the efficient progress of educational informatization.

1) Teacher Training for Informatization

   Since 2001, the teacher training programs for informatization have attempted to transform the training contents from ICT literacy to ICT application for instruction improvement. Several training institutes and organizations take roles in the training, including universities, research centers and business training centers. The training curriculum are diversified reflecting teachers' needs and demands. The training opportunities are enhanced to train 90,000(26%) teachers every year by increasing the budget. Distance and cyber training systems will be also introduced to provide 'anytime and anywhere' training systems. For the excellent teachers who contribute to the instructional improvement of ICT application, incentives such as promotion point and oversea training fund are provided. Special training programs are added, including the school CEO(Chief Executive Office) management, the instruction encouragement method, and the information ethics. Autonomous and self-regulated training systems are recommended and activated at every school.

2) Support for ICT Application Research Community

  There are hundreds of research communities of teachers related with the ICT application to education. The government provide 200 communities with $2,000 each for their good research outcomes. Sixteen communities are awarded by the Minister of Education and Human Resources Development. Some of the community members are recommended to be enrolled in the oversea training programs funded by the government. The communities try to join the nation-wide online networks to share the information, to perform the collaborative projects, and to establish visions for the ICT utilization together.

3) Enhancement of ICT Application Competition

   The government hosts some of ICT application competition conventions for teachers. Now they are open to the pre-teachers. One of the trends in the competition is, nothing strange, that the numbers of the CD-ROM titles decrease and those of the Web-based applications increase. Most of them are recommended to be related with K-12 school curriculum. The government-hosted competitions aim at the classroom innovation using ICT. A variety of rewards and incentives, including commendation by the MOE, promotion point, oversea research and training, are provided for the selected teachers developed good programs and software. These works are spread out nation-widely through the EDUNET Korea which is a government-funded online service for education.

4) Introduction of the Information Literacy Certification for Teacher(ILCT)

In 2001, 73,430(21.6%) K-12 teachers applied for the ILCT. Most of the educational committees and the local school districts used the outcomes of the certification tests for new employment, promotion, transfer, and position assignment. The certification system was developed based on the ICT Skill Standard for Teacher of Korea. The ISST consists of different duty-levels such as teacher, manager, vice-principle and administrator, and principal. The MOE tries to apply the ILCT to the pre-teacher training. They want the certification system to spread out for the citizens outside school.

2. Development of Educational Content Using ICT

   The application of the seventh curriculum for K-10th grade is in progress, form 2000 to 2003. The activities for the development of educational content using ICT aim at supporting the new curriculum efficiently by developing educational multimedia content for the whole school subjects.

1) Development of Educational Multimedia Materials

More than 73,000 instructional multimedia materials for the elementary and the secondary school level (K-10th grade) will be developed until 2005. Every year new materials(10%) will be developed additionally to the existing materials. The material development involves the whole subjects of the schools.

2) Development of Instructional Plans for ICT Application to Class

   Tens of schools carry out and demonstrate experimental research regarding how to utilize and to apply ICT for education. Most of their research activities are related to development of instructional plans for ICT applications. The nation-wide educational software competition, the supports for the research communities and study groups of ICT application, the research-teacher systems of the local educational committees have conjunction with this development program. The development guidelines and models for instructional planning and meta-data are also the outcomes of the program.

3) Development of Teaching Materials of ICT Application

   This program tries to develop software for teachers in order to help them to use ICT in their teaching. Software will be developed by all the local school districts, assigned with school subjects respectively. The teaching materials are developed according to the curriculum structure of the subjects, consisting of subject, unity, and learning theme. They expect 7,700 software during 2001 - 2005, including 80 this year.

4) Diffusion of Commercial Educational Software

  Besides the educational software developed by the government fund, a great deal of commercial software related with education are developed every year. There is a program to activate commercial markets for educational software. Almost 10,000 K-12 schools are supported $1,800/year ('01-'02) or $3,000 ('03-'05) every year for purchasing commercial software to educational purpose. In accordance with this funding, the authentication of educational software is performed by the Korea Educational Research and Information Service, a government-funded organization. During '01-'05, 1,800 software related to education will be evaluated and authenticated. Also nation-wide educational software exhibitions are held 4 times a year. Software supply systems are also diversified and arranged in good order, using e-commerce, operating permanent exhibition centers, and providing the state-of -the-art software list and status.

3. Support for Education for ICT Utilization

   Education for ICT utilization has been underway since 2001. But its activities in the field are carried out without a clear understanding of its necessity or merit. Teachers understand it as the current educational trend and just simply use ICT equipment in their teaching with a vague conception of ICT utilization. The main form of current ICT utilization is the production and use of multimedia content and presentation materials as auxiliary educational instruments that help students learn various subjects in class. Several systematic supports are provided for this program.

1) Educational Encouragement for ICT Utilization

  As an example, 3,700 encouragement supporters work for 10,000 elementary and secondary schools in 2002. The support teams focus on the instructional activities and the self-training of the schools. Guidelines and newsletters for the encouragement are provided and cyber encouragement support systems are used and going to be updated.

2) Establishment of Standard for Educational Content

  A standardization for developing method is necessary for the efficient educational content development. This includes concepts, production methods, management guidelines of educational multimedia materials, instructional plans, courseware for self-learning, and other types of teaching/learning content. The completion of educational content classification system is essential for the efficient content management. The standard includes meta-data development for  content service. This defines categories and kinds of every data and techniques necessary for content service. The integrated searching system and the statistic system will developed using the integrated meta-data database. The guideline for application of copyright protect techniques is going to be developed.

3) Parents Informatization

   There is a consideration that the more the knowledge-based society goes on, the wider become the gaps between the high- and the low-level groups in the possession of information and knowledge. That is true in the case of parents, specially between the cities and the rural areas. To reduce these kinds of Every year parents of 800 schools will have the opportunities to be trained for the general information literacy. The schools' and the teachers' web pages are used as the communication channels for the parents informatization. These activities also support for establishing sound cyber culture and solve the problems due to the reverse-function (or malfunction ??) of the informatization, such as cyber-violence, pornography exposure to children, indecency, hacking, addiction to PC, and language variation.

4) Publicity of Educational Informatization

Activities of the public relations are performed for both domestic and international purpose. Schools, school districts, and educational committees exchange and share almost all the information related with ICT education. This involves development of PR materials such as booklet, videotape, CD, and website, management of modeling school of ICT education, and development of PR sites such as schools, research centers, and business organizations. These activities are eventually shared with the whole people. The international exchange programs for educational informatization are going to be activated and enhanced together with APEC, OECD, and other NGO. They involves exchange of human resources and materials, and sharing of activities.

Conclusion

   Adapting education to the information age does not identify a specific activity, but it implies a total change in content, method, and objectives for the educational system. It is a reform of the educational system for the new society through ICT. Furthermore, it is a comprehensive and systematic activity to realize flexible, productive, and efficient education by changing related rules, institutions, and customs, and by changing people¡¯s attitudes to adapt to the information society. The goal for adapting information to the current society is to foster creative human resources through implementation of open education, lifelong learning, and a cyber learning system, ultimately making this country strong as far as knowledge is concerned.

   As the society changes, new types of people will be needed. The goal of education utilizing ICT in Korea is to help students who can meet the requirements of society. First, with the help of ICT, we want to stimulate students to actively participate in seeking and analyzing information.

Second, it is expected that education enhance students¡¯ability to carry out self-directed learning.

Third, ICT should be used as a tool in teaching and learning.

Fourth, ICT should be used to provide high quality education inexpensively to everyone.

Fifth, in every teaching-learning activity, information ethics must be considered. The main methods of information ethics education should be experience-oriented rather than knowledge-oriented.