Educational Organizations (Teach-Now Module 2: Activity 2)

Groups Within Korea

KOTESOL, Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, is a group that specifically caters to teachers of English within Korea. The group holds frequent conferences and has numerous publications to promote further education among its members. KOTESOL has numerous chapters around the country including one in Seoul  as well as an active Facebook group. 

The Korean Federation of Teachers Association (KFTA), with sites in both Korean and English boasts on it site as being "as the largest and most important organization for teachers, by contributing to the advancement of teachers' rights and the enhancement of education in Korea." While he site has limited information in English, it does provide an excellent list of websites concerning education in Korea as well as an aggregator for news about the group and education issues within Korea

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, or KTU, (sites in Korean & English) offers information to teachers across the country. While the English site is clearly a result of a poor translation attempt it does provide contact information to the group that boasts 70,000 members, 20% of all teachers in South Korea.  The KTU became of member of Education international in 1993. Events in the past year, however, have seen the legal status of the KTU revoked and there has been a subsequent fight to have it reinstated.  

The Korean Education and Research Service (KERIS) is a group and works with public schools and administrations to provides e-learning technologies and education Koreans. They stress the importance of ITC, information and communication technologies, to facilitate learning.

In September e-Learning Korea will be holding its annual conference at COEX in Seoul. The group, as their name suggests, promotes education through Korea's advanced technology infrastructure. While the speakers have not yet been announced for the 2014 conference, international speakers from previous years suggests that this event will accommodate both Korean and English speakers alike

International Groups

The Education Resources Information Center is a database of journal articles and other resources on research done on the field of education. The searchable database is pretty extensive and should prove to be pretty useful to me personal as my current studies move along.

Education International is a group that represents teachers and teachers unions around the world. I found this group's site to be a great resource for up to date news on education issues around the world. The group its self seems very involved in issues concerning the rights of children especially dealing with child labor and the right to education.

The Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE) seems to be a net working group that holds annual conferences and training programs.  I would definitely be interested to learn more about this group as it seems to be related to where I would like to be teaching in the future.