Pangaea Programme : A Collaboration with NPO Pangaea Japan
Pangaea programme is a collaboration project between Centre of Excellence for Rural Informatics and Pangaea, a non-profit organization from Japan. The project provides young children, aged between 9 and 15 years old from three schools in Kota Samarahan with a Universal Playground concept, a place where children can express themselves straightforwardly; share their thoughts, encounters and experiences with others by overcoming language barriers and cultural differences, cultivate sympathy toward others, and develop personal bonds with other children. This programme utilise information and communication technology as a way to connect to multiple global locations without difficulties. It is also a tool for fostering spontaneous and productive interaction among children, regardless of geographical distance.
The Pangaea programme has been successfully implemented in various sites in Japan, Austria, Korea, Nairobi and Kenya. This is the first time it is introduced in South East Asia, and UNIMAS is privileged to be selected as the first site in Malaysia to run this multi-cultural programme for our school children in Kota Samarahan. Pangaea activities are operated year round, once every month. There are two types of activities; local activities and webcam activities. Local activities offer face-to-face interaction among children at each activity site. During the local activity sessions, children are allowed to utilize PangaeaNet, a safe and secure internet environment for children, and it provides an effective communication tool for children who are in different countries and time zones. Children share their artwork, including animations, pictures, and drawings, with their peers in other Pangaea sites through PangaeaNet. Children are also encouraged to exchange feedback using pictograms, which are called Pictons. One of the key goals for these local Activity Days is to encourage children to improve their communication skills, and simultaneously cultivate empathy and sensitivity toward other children.
Twenty-three children have volunteered to be in the first cohort, and to date, they have attended four local Activity Days at the UNIMAS campus. Facilitators of the UNIMAS Pangaea programme are made up of research assistants at FCSIT and undergraduates who have shown keen interest in working with children to use digital technologies for interacting and playing.
The second type of Pangaea activity is the Webcam sessions. These sessions offer real-time interaction among children by networking multiple activity sites both locally and globally. These webcam activities have currently taken place a few times a year. Children who have already known each other through local activities can develop a deeper sense of "bonding" by experiencing face-to-face communication and playing original online multi-player games via webcams. According to a research conducted by the Pangaea team in Japan, the webcam activities enable children to develop positive attitudes toward other children. This is because children can hear voices and see facial expressions of other children using webcams, and these stimuli can encourage them to bond with other children as playmates, regardless of geographical distance and language and cultural differences.
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