The Authors
Jessica Yun is a Korean-American high school student. She lived in California for 14 years before moving to Korea in 2006. In the future, she wants to be involved in interior design or journalism. She is an animal-lover, a tree-hugger, and a movie-goer. Jessica is a fanatic of the life-simulation computer game, Sims. She loves all kinds of music, food, and art. Her friends often say she runs like a chicken, with which she agrees whole-heartedly. Jessica’s thoughts about global classroom collaboration on the 1001 Flat World Tales writing project:
“As an individual, you can only do so much. But with a worldwide network of students, you can do so much more. Sure, we could have just done this all on paper. But a student story on paper usually doesn’t go far — especially a story with dull sentences, poor sentence fluency, exasperating passive verbs, and grammatical errors (aka, my first draft). By receiving feedback from students around the world, I was able to improve my own writing and see many different perspectives in approaching this project. This workshop connects all these students and their ideas. It’s pretty cool.”
Read or listen to Jessica’s story here. And visit Jessica’s blog, “Just Yell,” for more of her world-class writing.
Lynn Hong is a high school student who just escaped the bottom of the food chain (a.k.a freshman year) this fall. She was born in Ohio, and moved to Korea after finishing kindergarden. She attended a Korean elementary school, a Korean middle school, and an American high school in Ohio for a year. She is currently attending an international school in Korea. Her interests range from fashion, photography, modern arts, foreign languages, and literature, in which fashion is her best interest. Her latest obsession has been Muse, an English rock band whose aura is currently her inspiration for her own clothing designs. She plans on pursuing journalism or marketing, which she intends to use as the basis for her “very chic” career in the fashion industry.
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Lynn’s thoughts about global classroom collaboration on the 1001 Flat World Tales writing project:
”To be quite honest, this workshop has been both demanding and incredible. The fact we were able to go beyond collaborating with our own schoolmates and interact with various students from different nations has certainly renewed my definition of true globalization. Of course, weekly revisions were exhausting; I was often left uninspired by what seemed like the six-thousandth revision of my story. Then I found my break-through: the feedback and the flavorful stories from other students of this global community. Ultimately, it was this interaction that became my muse for my story. I hope this “muse” can inspire other students around the globe, too.”
Read or listen to Lynn’s story here. And visit Lynn’s blog, “Fashion Freak,” for more of her world-class writing.
Pola Shim is a student at a Korean international school in her sophomore year. She was born in Ohio and lived in the States for 10 years before moving to Korea. She went to a Korean public elementary and middle school before transferring to her current international school. What are her future dreams? She hopes to do something that she wants to do. More than anything else, because she likes studying other languages, she dreams of being an interpreter. She is also interested in becoming a designer, though of what sort — fashion, buildings, home interior, and so on — she’s undecided. Pola’s interests? Music, sports, animals, movies, and writing and drawing..
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Pola’s thoughts about global classroom collaboration on the 1001 Flat World Tales writing project:
“It was actually my first time writing a full story. For the first story I ever wrote it was a great experience to share with other students on the other side of the globe. My writing was not “good” at all in grammar — bad sentence structure, and vocabulary — but by the help of other students commenting on my ideas and grammar, I think I was able to bring the story out to right now. Receiving the feedback from other students, I think, was more effective for me to make my ideas more creative and how to use certain words. Not only getting feedback was an experience, but reading other’s stories was fantastic. I could see some that have fabulous ideas and others that I could help by giving them feedback. It was a great experience and the workshop is a great source, too.”
Read or listen to Pola’s story. And visit Pola’s blog for more or her world-class writing.
Sharon Choi is a Korea International School student who was born in New York. She spent more than half of her life in Korea and few years in US. She loves spending time with her friends and families, watching movies, listening to music, and sleeping. She is very sociable and easily gets to know anyone she meets. Sharon is not so sure what she wishes to do, but she definitely wants to do something that she would enjoy. Sharon’s thoughts about global classroom collaboration on the 1001 Flat World Tales writing project:
It was interesting to work with students in other half of the world. The fact that we were able to give feedback and read others’ stories was fascinating. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy writing because I had no confidence. But getting feedback from different point of views helped me learn what I had to work on. Not only did the feedback help, but by reading other students’ stories, I was able to see examples of good writing and ideas. These stories were representing their own country so it was interesting to see how they saw and thought about their culture. I guess it was different from how I saw other’s culture. Reading some stories gave better understanding of interaction with people in different countries. I hope people who visit this site will feel the same interaction of culture as the students in this workshop felt. Read or listen to Sharon’s story
Patrick Nam is a Korean high school student. He has lived much of his life “Down Under” in Auckland, New Zealand, but came back to Korea in late 2006 to become more familiar with his roots. He is a rugby fanatic, loves the beaches and enjoys the countryside. A cellist with a taste for fine hard rock, ballad and rap, he pretty much listens to any genre while he is also interested in the world of music mixing and production. He wants to pursue a career in law, but has always considered the path towards teaching, even though he never has admitted openly in front of his own teachers. He has a very solid set of values that seems to have done a good job in steering him in a good path so far. All in all, he is a pretty cool person.
As an assistant editor in this project (and a published author), I had the opportunity to work with students in Denver and Honolulu in a writing workshop the world has never seen before. This project empowered high school students in an international scale to share their talents and depth as writers, but more importantly it empowered students to speak out of their own respective cultures and show us their happiness, wonder, inspiration, sorrow and so much more in their writing. I really consider myself lucky to have been a part of this project.
Read or listen to Patrick’s story here.
Noah is an eighth grader at Wydown Middle School in Clayton, Missouri. He is fourteen years old and has an older sister, Leah, a dog named Sadie, and a lizard, Lizzy. In his free time, Noah likes to read, hang out with friends, and play outside. Baseball is Noah’s favorite sport, but he also plays tennis and golf. Though he enjoys all of his classes, Noah’s favorite courses at Wydown are Literacy, Science, and Spanish. In Literacy class, Noah has enjoyed reading Of Mice And Men and To Kill A Mockingbird, and looks forward to reading The Miracle Worker. Noah has had lots of fun writing his story for the wiki as well, and is glad that you enjoyed it. “Jungle Fever” is his first, and hopefully not last, “published” piece.Read Noah’s story
