TCC Taiwan Trip 2016: Week Two: Teaching about Technology, Social Media, and Other Cool Stuff

Week Two started off with a field trip to the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum located in Chiayi, more than an hour away from Kaohsiung. This museum is the new counterpart to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and was built to "achieve cultural equity between the Northern and Southern regions of Taiwan."

The teachers and students toured through the rich collections of Asian Textiles, The Art and Culture of Tea in Asia, A History of Chiayi, Islamic Jades, Ming Dynasty Blue-and-White Porcelains, and Japanese Porcelains. The museum provides an educational opportunity to explore the richness of Chinese and Taiwanese history and the many artifacts, as well as providing a venue for research and conservation.

The remaining days of the week were spent covering a unit on Technology and its many effects upon human life! The newly-learned English vocabulary words included: invention, hardware, software, online, Internet, program, download, upload, cyberspace, and hacker, to name only a few. The students practiced oral dialogues and played competitive games as they learned more English!

Each American teacher has a Teaching Assistant in the classroom every day. These "TAs" are college students who have already graduated from the San Sin English Program. They are very capable English speakers, and they provide translation and assistance to both teachers and students! Without them, this type of English instruction would be very difficult. The American teachers appreciate the "TAs" and their many contributions!