December 14, 2007

Empower Peace and King’s Academy launch EP World Classroom series

King’s Academy, Dec. 14, 2007—It turns out that King’s Academy 9th and 10th graders listen to the same music, wear the same clothing brands and play the same video games as teenagers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Students who previously did not realize these cross-cultural similarities learned a lot on Thursday, December 13, when a group from King’s participated in a one-way video-conference with about 500 American high schoolers.

Organized by the Empower Peace Foundation, the webcast was the first in the Empower Peace World Classroom series. Empower Peace is a non-profit organization that uses technology to connect young people across the world.

The nine participating King’s Academy students gathered in the rotunda room of the HRH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Library and directed their presentation through a video camera to a live U.S. audience. Sophomores Leen Sinokrot and Ghassan Gammoh served as moderators, while their fellow students provided a Jordanian perspective on popular culture, religion, school life, sports and stereotypes.

According to Asad Butt, director of media and advance at Empower Peace, classes from at least 30 American schools logged on to watch. Butt leads the way on a new Empower Peace project that uses the communication tool VB Presenter to facilitate presentations in which one group speaks to an online audience of limitless size. While the students from King’s could not see or talk to their viewers, they received hundreds of questions through an online forum on the Empower Peace website. Butt, who acted as master of ceremonies, read the questions aloud from his computer.

During the hour-long session, the King’s students split time between delivering their prepared presentations and answering questions. While the scripted segments covered serious subject matter with which American viewers might have been unfamiliar (the hajj, for example), the submitted questions dealt with more lighthearted, universal topics. As they gave their answers, King’s students revealed elements of the Jordanian youth culture that mirror the experience of young Americans. At one point, Butt asked for a show of hands in response to a series of prompts. All nine panelists indicated that they carry cell phones, use Facebook and eat at McDonald’s.

According to Butt, Empower Peace seeks to expose these sorts of similarities: “We want kids to talk about what matters most to them in order to see what they have in common. It’s so important to get young people talking to each other.”

Headmaster Dr. Eric Widmer echoed this sentiment when he spoke to the American audience at the end of the broadcast: “I hope people have benefited in the discovery that we are human here too. If that discovery replicates itself around the world in the years ahead and we discover that we all have our humanity in common, perhaps peace will indeed have been achieved.”

Empower Peace was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2003 by Rick Rendon, who hoped to connect American students with Arab Muslim youth. According to the organization’s website, Empower Peace “seeks to break down cultural barriers and misperceptions through open dialogue using video-conferencing and the internet.” While Empower Peace had already facilitated seven multi-school exchanges, the broadcast from King’s marked the beginning of the VB Presenter initiative.