MCEL

About MCEL

The mission of the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning (MCEL) is to encourage the development and utilization of electronic materials in the field of Asian Studies for teachers and students, primarily, but not solely, at the Kindergarten through High School levels.

Housed at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, and funded by the Matsushita Corporation, the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning works in cooperation with foundations, educational institutions, and individuals to make quality materials and new learning technologies available to a world-wide audience.

Demonstrations

In the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning will be happy to provide school visits to demonstrate to interested teachers and administrators the nature and utility of our electronic materials. We can also provide speakers and demonstrations on the broad issue of electronic learning or the educational uses of the Internet. We can do these demonstrations either "live" on the internet if proper facilities and links are available, or "locally" on our own computer with a projector screen. If you would like such a demonstration and site visit, please send us your feedback.

Summer Workshops

This June, The Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning held its first summer workshop. The workshop, starting the 21st of June and continuing for five days, invited educators from the community to build small, internet-based educational programs that could be used in a classroom. The workshop produced a wide variety of programs and was a great success.

Here is an index of the projects created

• Japanese Particle Practice
  Developed by software designer Shinichi Mine and Japanese professor Naoya Fujita, this Hypercard stack is designed to help students of Japanese learn the basic language particles.
• The Buddhist Palace
  Using the Palace chat software, student Patty Im and former student Suzanne Brown began developing a graphical environment for teaching Buddhist history and philosophy.
• Model United Nations
  Salem educator Christine Allen worked with Claris' File Maker Pro software to automate the addition of delegates to the Model United Nations program.
• Basic Japanese Descriptors
  This Macromedia Shockwave program teaches beginning students of Japanese basic words for describing the location of objects. It was created by Japanese teacher Chieko Takezawa.
• Understanding Foreign Currency
  Several pages devoted to foreign currency exchange economics, specificly in respect to Japan and America. The pages were developed by educators Ken Stewart and Christine Richardson.