SIS officially announces to extend virtual learning until May
With the continued reported cases of the coronavirus in Korea, SIS officially announced that they will extend virtual learning until May 29. Students will continue their e-learning on platforms such as Zoom and Google meets with their teachers, completing formative work and projects, along with taking summative assessments for their classes.
The school also stated that with extending virtual learning until May 29, school will end early this year as well. While summer break always started during the first week of June for students, this year, amid the coronavirus and extended e-learning, SIS decided that school will end early and break will start also on May 29. As usual, students will be taking their final exams during that week, as well as taking their AP exams starting from May 11.
The “Nth room case” infuriates the Korean public
South Korea has been in shock after the reveal of the Nth room case, where numerous young girls were threatened and forced into sexual slavery on a messaging app called Telegram. Cho Joo-bin, the main host of the online rooms on Telegram, made users pay a certain amount of money if they wanted to see videos and pictures of young girls performing sexual acts. According to officials, they suspect that at least 16 victims were girls who are minors. Through blackmailing around 74 girls in total, Cho drove them into sending pornography and images to post on the group chats on Telegram, along with illegally distributing private information of victims on the chats. Furthermore, users part of the group chat paid to see such illegal videos and images of young girls; officials currently estimate that a total of 260,000 users were involved in Cho’s group chats.
The public was infuriated after this crime was reported and spread rapidly across the news and many platforms of social media. Angering many people as they found out about sexual crimes young girls had to be victims of and child pornography involved in this scandal, over two million people signed a petition to advocate for revealing all the names and faces of the participants in the group chats on Telegram, along with imposing the harshest punishment on the main operators of this chat.
College Board releases information on the changed AP exam for 2020
The College Board has released official information on each of their AP exams for 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic rapidly spreading across countries, College Board decided to change this year’s AP exams. The majority of the exams originally consisted of both a multiple choice section and a free response section; however, for the 2020 exam, they decided to remove all multiple choice sections, testing students only on free response questions.
While AP exams have always been on paper, this year, students will be instructed to take it on their computers, smartphones, or any electronic device. The entire exam will range from 40 to 45 minutes, along with giving students five minutes to upload their tests on to the online testing system. Furthermore, largely differing from the original exam, the 2020 AP exam will be open book and notes; however, College Board will implement a security system to secure academic integrity. They have also announced that students worldwide will be taking each AP exam on the same scheduled day and time together.