On Friday November 25th, the Board of Directors and the General Meeting of Non-profit organization Pangaea were held, where fiscal year 2010 activities were reported.
In fiscal year 2010, 70 Pangaea activities were held as the international exchange program among children worldwide, to make the total number of activities to date 480, registered children as of the end of September 2011 533, and the total number of activity participants to date 5,233.


In research and development, "Field Test of Youth-Mediated Agriculture Support System Service Model in Vietnam (YMC-Viet Project)" was held between February and March 2011 in Trà Ôn District, Vĩnh Long Province, Vietnam, to confirm the positive results for the improvement of the agricultural productivity, which was discussed in the academic workshop held in HCMC, Vietnam in May 2011, to initiate the Vietnam-Japan interdisciplinary academic group to promote rural development in Vietnam.

Please see more detail about Pangaea activities in fiscal year 2010 (from Oct 2010 to Sep 2011) in "Activity Report 2010" (PDF).

In fiscal year 2011 that started in October 2011, Pangaea will further enhance and expand its activities based on its past achievements.
Thank you for your continued support to Pangaea.

At Kyodai Village activity held on Saturday November 19th, children discussed their plan to prepare animations by group with the theme of "Winter and Fall at Kyodai Village".



Then they split the works to draw the background, animals, people and other things that appears in the animation. Looking forward to the completion!

At Mie activity held on Saturday November 12th, participants worked on ones' own artwork. They started working on animation for the first time this year, and many of they prepared the material for it.


There were many artworks presented at the reflection time at the end.

At Kyoto International School (KIS), new KIS village has completed.

The result of the survey took at the Webcam activity connecting Miedai (Mie Univ) Village, Japan and MIZY Village in Seoul, Korea was as below:


Before the activity, about 30% of Mie children answered that they either "strongly like" or "like" Korean kids. The same rate went up to almost 70% after the activity.


Looking at the comments, a Mie child who answered that Korean children are "scary" before the activity answered "they seemed to be a lot of fun and cheerful people". The ones who answered "I do not know about Korea or Korean kids" before the activity said "It was fun" or "They were similar to us although their language was different" afterwards.

On the other hand, about 50% of Korean children answered they either "like" or "strongly like" Mie ones before the activity. The same rate went up exceeding 80% after the event.


Before the activity, there were Korean children who said "Japan is close but far country to Korea" or "I hate Japanese government". This has changed after the activity, and they commented: "Even though Japanese government might be bad, the people are not the same", "Japanese people are funny / kind", and "They are very similar to us but some of they seemed to be unique".

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INDEX
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+ "The Language Grid" Toshiyuki Takasaki, Vice Chairman
+ Activity Report in October 2011


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"The Language Grid" Toshiyuki Takasaki, Vice Chairman
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Hello, everyone. Thing has gradually been sorted out in the new office in October and it became a comfortable place. We have also completed the tech works such as setting up of the network and server moves, on which we needed to work outside of the office hours at night or on holidays. But thanks to the help from the tech staffs like Shin and Kadoppe, we could safely complete them!

I have recently received the book that was published in summer,
"The Language Grid:
Service-Oriented Collective Intelligence for Language Resource Interoperability".
http://www.amazon.com/dp/3642211771

This is an academic book of research articles about Language Grid project edited by Prof. Toru Ishida in Kyoto University, and was published by Springer, the renowned academic publisher. Prof. Alvin at UNIMAS who supports Pangaea in Malaysia, Yumi and I wrote the chapter "Intercultural Community Development for Kids around the World". As I read through, it reminded me of the old times with the description of the Langrid communication software that used to be used by Pangaea and with the article of Dr. Cho, who took her doctorate with her research of Picton, or the pictograms used by Pangaea.

I personally am interested in two keywords in the subtitle: "service" and "collective intelligence". The word "service" may be used in a general sense at various occasions but the "service" here refers to the one in the computer world. These days individuals can display latest world news or "tweets" on one's own homepage, as far as they abide by the terms of use. This became possible because of the technically common rules adopted by organizations and individuals who provide real-time information, so those communications can be understood among computers. Roughly speaking, "service" is something that is provided on these bases. People can exchange various information on the Web, not just with personal computer but with smart phones and portable game console as well, often with the use of "service" technology. Multiple "services" can be combined, just like dictionaries and machine translations are combined in the Language Grid. On the other hand, "collective intelligence" refers to the knowledge created by general public, such as Wikipedia or book review on Amazon. Pangaea has Pangaea Community Dictionary that is compiled by all volunteers online, where specific knowledge and information of the own community can be cumulated using the mechanism of "collective intelligence".

As "collective intelligence" is provided as "service", it can be more conveniently used by individual users or by the community including the cases where articles of Wikipedia being edited not just from personal computer but also from the applications on the smart phone, or Pangaea Community Dictionary interoperating with machine translation. As "services" are combined, there is a benefit such as Web system being developed in the shorter period (and hence it becomes cheaper). Pangaea Charter dictates to have "a strong interest in new technologies, and actively employ them in cooperation with researchers and associations both inside and outside of Japan." I would like to continue to get latest information on "service" and "collective intelligence" to utilize them.

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Activity Report in October 2011
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On Saturday October 29th, Webcam activity was held connecting Miedai (Mie Univ.) village, Japan and MIZY village in Seoul, Korea.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/mieseoul_webcam.html

At Kyoto International School (KIS) Activity on Monday October 24th, children started the drawing of KIS Village.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/kyoto_internati_5.html

Pangaea activity was held at OK Village in Tokyo, Japan on Saturday, October 22nd. Children went out to take photos for their preparation of Pangaea Playing Cards.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/ok_village_octo.html

Pangaea activity was also held at Kyodai (Kyoto Uinv.) Village in Kyoto, Japan on Saturday, October 22nd.Children created animation with Viscuit and sang "Maru-take-ebisu",the song of street names in Kyoto to record it as Kyodai village song.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/kyodai_village.html

Yumiko Mori, Chairman of Pangaea talked at the 2nd International Conference on Culture and Computing 2011 held at Kyoto University on Saturday October 22nd.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/fieldwork_of_mu.html

At Kyoto International School Activity on Monday October 17th, children took a look at the houses and rooms and sent Picton messages.
http://www.pangaean.org/blog/english/archives/2011/10/kyoto_internati_4.html