The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday launched a new initiative called the “Mobile American Corner” to facilitate interaction between students in the US and remote areas in Taiwan using technology.
At the square outside Taipei Railway Station, a truck equipped with a 60-inch television, e-books on touchscreen computers and iPads, and a youth-oriented collection of US literature was opened to students, marking the beginning of a two-month journey that will see the bus travel to Greater Tainan, Pingtung, Taitung and Hualien County.
“This Mobile American Corner is not just a car, but also a bridge, a bridge between Taiwan and the US,” said Ryan Roberts, director of the AIT American Cultural Center, when he introduced students at Yuomu Elementary School in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Sansia District (三峽) to their counterparts at Punahou School in Hawaii.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Using video-conferencing made possible by fiber-optic cable networks going from Taiwan to Japan, to the west coast of the US and then to Hawaii, students exchanged words of welcome in each others’ languages.
Currently, there are 465 cities around the world hosting the growing network of American Corners, a project run by US overseas missions in collaboration with local libraries to provide information about the US, the AIT said.
However, “this [Mobile American Corner] will be the first mobile, digital American Corner,” AIT Director Christopher Marut said at the opening ceremony yesterday.
Marut said the Mobile American Corner provides an innovative platform for young people and the general public in Taiwan to reach out to the rest of the world, allowing the AIT and its partners to expand our reach to more people.
“I hope the American Corner can play an important role in making sure that we continue to stay close and connected — and most importantly, listen to each other and understand each other better,” Marut said.
The Mobile American Corner project is part of the “Read for the Future,” a program launched by the CommonWealth Magazine Education Foundation in 2004 to provide reading materials to children with limited access to educational resources to help them develop an interest in reading.
The AIT has contributed to the program since 2008 by supplying books.
Now, by combining books and technology, the program can further foster children’s interest in reading and bridge the gap between rural and urban schools in terms of educational resources, CommonWealth Magazine founder and chairwoman Diane Ying (殷允芃) said.
The project was the latest in a series of AIT outreach campaigns, which range from a high-profile initiative in which AIT officers went to night markets to explain the US Visa Waiver Program, to a recent countrywide bike tour with AIT Kaohsiung Branch director Gary Oba.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,