I asked ChatGPT what the academic years are like in the countries participating in the SMILE project. Apparently, it’s something like this. It could be useful for matching. Country / Region Academic Year Term System Major Exams / Test Periods Notes Japan Early Apr – Mid Mar Three terms End of terms: Jul / Dec…
At the Kagoshima Prefecture Private School Education Training Seminar held on Thursday, 20th November, 2025, Miwako Yoshida, a teacher at Kagoshima Ikueikan Junior and Senior High School, introduced the online collaborative class with Taiwan supported by WILL, under the theme of “Practical Research on English Education through AI and International Exchange for Glocal Human Resource…
On 13th December 2025, WILL will provide an online briefing session on the SMILE project for Japanese schools that want to participate in the future. If you would like to join the event, do not hesitate to fill in the form. WILL will send an invitation message to the registered user. The briefing session will…
At the International Education Showcase hosted by the Taichung International Education Center, Mingdao High School presented its achievements from three years of participation in the SMILE Project. As Taiwan’s key partner promoting the SMILE Project, Mingdao highlighted English as a lingua franca and its role in creating authentic language-use situations for students. Coordinator Lee, Tsung-Che…
19th November 2025, Jun Iio, a board member of WILL, and two guys from Kirihara Shoten Co., Ltd, visited Churaronkon University located at Bangkok and Silpakorn University at Nakhon Pathom. Prof. Nattama at Churaronkon University, and Ajarn Toey and his colleagues at Demonstration School of Silpakorn University were kindly welcomed us; there were good discussions…
We received the PM Encouragement Award and gave a speech at the award ceremony. Using photos, I, Wakabayashi, explained that the SMILE Project is run primarily by school teachers, and that since 2020, more than 3,000 elementary, junior high, high school, and university students have participated in this international online collaborative program for small group…
Dialogbook version three (alpha version) is now released! The update includes following changes: The source code is available on my GitHub https://github.com/iiojun/dialogbook/
We would like to introduce the TV program entitled The Corridor of Knowledge, produced by JCOM and Chuo University. Here is the citation from the introduction written on Chuo University’s website. Chuo University is collaborating with JCOM Corporation to produce the educational program “Corridor of Knowledge” to contribute the university’s intellectual property to society. The…
Today, I would like to introduce the case of the SMILE project 2025 between SMP Islam Al Azhar 26 Yogyakarta (ID) and Kohkai Junior High School (JP). It is an intercultural communication class for junior high school students. The teachers in SMP Islam Al Azhar 26 created a nice poster. It is excellent, even though…
A one-page presentation slide has been created to show the typical image of the SMILE project. We currently only have the Japanese version available. However, it will be translated into English, Korean, and other languages shortly.
