The PROSUMER

A Prosumer is somebody who is a knowledge provider and at the same time a consumer of the knowledge. This is the premise of Dr. Young-hwan Kim. He gave a lecture today on the Vision of APEC Future Education with eLearning for Asia-Pacific.

The Value-based Society
Developing countries are now moving to a knowledge-based society. But "knowledge is significant inly under the umbrella of the VALUE system" accdg. to Dr. Kim.

My ideas: Value is something an individual acquires through time. It is not simple to instill value or values to a person. Values will consist of beliefs, principles and even practices that an individual would adhere to even on occasions of moral dilemma. Values can also be based on culural traditions or religious beliefs. And we have to preserve the value-system. Value system is something that separates us from other living beings. More importantly, value system helps us to become better persons, better citizens of the nation.

The move to the "value-based society" will enable a "responsible knowledge=based society".

The Edutainment Park

The Edutainment Park is a grand, vigorous concept of mixing education and play. I wish the success of APEC and Korea in this endeavor.

My ideas: In the Phil setting, the Filipinos can make attempts to create such kind of edutainment park in a smaller scale like the children's museum. This can be a good alternate from the malls. In the Phils, people do not go anymore in the parks. They find the mall as the place to unwind with the possibility of endless consumption. This park can be a good vehicle of the value system if planned, designed and constructed well..



Professor Young-hwan Kim is the founder of IACE and ALCoB. His research interests include constructing international learning communities, making healthy future education systems, development of AI-applied learning management systems and running APEC-wide edutainment park. He is a very inspiring man, passionate and animated on how eLearning can make a better world.

A Free Sunday

The group had a good breakfast of Korean coffee, egg, bread, butter and jams, and cereals. The group also met for the first time Professor Young-hwan Kim, President/Director of the APEC eLearning Program. It is his second term as the head.

Prof Young-hwan is able to express right away informally the intentions of the program. He sounded passionate to this volunteer work and is rich with ideas on identity preservationa and anti-development concepts. (This is the first eLearning encounter.)

The group went to a Catholic church to hear mass, a 5 minute walk from the training center. The mass seemed to take so long. Maybe because all the prayers and songs were in Korean, and the priest had a long homily. Mass attendees wear Sunday dress and the women wear veil. This is another Cul-enc (cultural encounter).

Lunch was in another Korean restaurant. The delegates are now used to leaving their shoes infront of the resto entrance, using low tables and no chair in dining, and lots of side dishes, vegetables and bean-based sauce.

The group took the subway afterwards to head in Lotte dept store and Home Plus.

I had my share of green tea ice cream and Korean bbq. The bbq was tender and worth tasting again.

Going to dept stores along Busan Road after dinner is quite interesting. The Korean salespersons are very corteous, mostly trying their best to communicate. Popular brands I saw--Aasics, Adidas, Nike, Tommy Hilgifer, Elle, Kswiss. ABC Mart has cheap shoes. Art Work has lots of nice items. This store should be recommended to tourists and visitors.

The side streets are filled with good and cheaper items. The mixed rolls in long sticks with hot and spicy dip are also intriguing. I just ate them not knowing what they really are.

Last stop. Starbucks. Tall hot americano is W3800 and Cinnamon roll is W1600. It's good Robbie, Gio and Mars were around to share me company.

No training for the day, just window shopping around. Training will start Monday afternoon.

Arrival in Busan

It's Nov 11, 2006, 7:30pm, Korean time. The pilot of PR 416 announced the arrival at Busan and it's 12 degrees. The Philippine delegates headed by Robbie Macalde were warmly greeted by Jade Kim and two other university students who volunteered to assist in the training program.


The delegates consists of Robbie Macalde of AIM, Andre Dacanay of UST, Maritess Ramos of TESDA, Laury Arca of UPLB, Marcelo Robosa of EACOMM, Gio Candelaria of AIM and Mavic Pineda of DLSU. The accommodation is in Sang Nam International House located inside Pusan National University.

The group had their first experience of the Korean early winter chill and Bulgogi dinner. The kimchi is fabulous.

This is the first cultural encounter of the group.