From the end of June to the beginning of July, I attended and presented at Educational Data-Mining (EDM), one of the conferences within the Festival of Learning, held in Seoul, South Korea. It had been a very long time since my last visit to Korea. I had been there ages ago, but I remembered absolutely nothing… I couldn’t read Hangul at all, and to make matters worse, I forgot my glasses, so I couldn’t read the small English captions unless I got right up close to them. I felt like I had arrived on another planet! (sweat)

However, I hear that Hangul is a language made of combinations, making it relatively easy to learn. I’ve also heard that the pronunciation isn’t as strict as English or Chinese, making it easier for Japanese speakers to acquire. At the conference venue, I ran into Mr. Nakamura, an assistant professor at Tokyo University of Science who is a student of Mr. Watanabe (a junior of mine from my graduate school days). Mr. Nakamura knows a little bit of Hangul, and when we had lunch together, he taught me how it works, which was quite enlightening.

By the way, I was surprised by a chance reunion at that very EDM conference. I met Ms. Nagae, who took my Educational Information Engineering course about 12 years ago when I was still teaching upper-level undergraduate classes! She approached me, and I remembered her because she was a very excellent student. I remembered talking to her about graduate school back then, and I recalled her mentioning that she wanted to go to the University of Tokyo for graduate studies, which made her even more memorable. Wow, it really brought back memories. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo and is now working hard on her research at a university in Stockholm, Sweden. I introduced her to Professor Shimada and Mr. Saeki, with whom I am currently working on research and other projects, and it turned out they shared common research interests, which was great.

However, I didn’t think Ms. Nagae’s undergraduate major was Educational Technology or Educational Methodology, so meeting her at a Festival of Learning focused on Educational Technology, Information Engineering, and Cognitive Psychology was quite a surprise… It makes me happy to hear that students who once took my classes are working hard and playing active roles on the global stage. I hope she continues to do great things.