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INTRODUCTION
The Asia-Europe Classroom Network (AEC-NET) is an educational component of the
Asia-Europe Foundation's (ASEF) People-to-People Exchange programme (P2P@ASEF).
ASEF's founding was part of the series of initiatives generated by the inter-regional dialogue process known as the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). ASEM is an informal dialogue process that has been launched in 1996 by the governments of 15 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom), 10 Asian countries (Brunei, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), as well as the European Commission to forge a stronger partnership for mutual growth based on mutual respect between the two pivotal regions of the globe. ASEF was set up in February 1997 under the ASEM framework to build better mutual understanding among the peoples of ASEM countries through greater intellectual, cultural and people-to-people exchanges. With the EU enlargement in May 2004, ASEM now includes 10 new European countries (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia), and 3 new Asian countries (Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar).
The AEC was conceived at a brainstorming session attended by secondary/high school teachers and educators from Asia and Europe held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in May 1998. The original challenge was to harness the potential of Infocomm Technology (ICT) in connecting secondary/high schools of Asia and Europe and construct the framework for a "cyber classroom" that would promote intellectual and inter-cultural exchanges among secondary/high school teachers and students of Asia and Europe. The AEC has since evolved to encourage more active interactions between secondary/high schools in Asia and Europe. |
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