By Dolores Luna Hogan
After he came back to
Japan, he used to work as a
teacher at a private school in Iwakuni for 5 years this gave him the light to
reconstructed my career to assimilate knowledge and skills in education and
technology at NTT (Nipon Telegraph and Telephone). Thanks this he received an endorsement from Educational
Board of Hiroshima City to work at Fujinoki Elementary School as an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) specialist
to help accomplish Japanese ICT educational policies including so called
“Future School Project” and “Learning Innovation Project” for 3 years
respectively.; with this background he established Learn For Japan to help
learners and educators with ICT educational policies of Japanese ministry of
Education and let us say that we are front a innovation leader.
LNDRC: Thank you so
much Mineshima for sharing so deeply information about you, our first question
is one we ask to every foreigner we met, how is Educational System in your country, Japan?
Mineshima: Japan is trying to getting out of
criticism about its legacy educational system in which more academic emphasis
is put on goal oriented approaches to accumulate knowledge, and now is trying
to develop towards process oriented approaches to nourish abilities and skills
such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration with
using the cutting edge use of technology for the 21st century
learning as a national educational policy.
This is exactly what is happening in Japan today and innovations in
learning are getting part of its big driving force to nourish global citizens
who are well adaptable to changing societies in the world, successful in
international contexts, and confident about where they should go.
On the contrary, geographically isolated
conditions have oddly allowed Japan to be committed to conservative tendencies
towards educational uniformity and Japanese as a dominant language in the
country has often lead to non-internationally educational systems resulting
only to struggle with poor communication with foreign people, clumsy
collaboration for building international understandings and consensus, and
embarrassment in solving worldwide problems in different languages. Japanese conservative educators tend to
prefer being part of their local communities and exclusive decision-making
trying not to contribute to advancement of globalization.
It is, however, true that Japan has become
more enthusiastic to give it a change to be part of the 21st century
society where global awareness plays a key role in learning from and working
collaboratively with individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and
lifestyles in a spirit of mutual respect and open dialogue in personal, work
and community context. Japan is looking
for a better way to a new educational system as technology finds new
possibilities in classrooms.
Mineshima: As shown in PISA test results,
Japanese Ministry of Education puts great importance on international academic
achievement to confirm effectiveness and reasonableness of its educational
system while making progress with remediation and improvement from a global
view point. This inspires Japanese
leading educators to be more confident about what new pedagogical approaches
and learning methods play a key role in breaking through difficulties and
limitations whose solutions were left unclear under existing learning
conditions and environment. As Japanese
educational policies of using technology in classrooms show evidences of their
effectiveness and usefulness, educators in the country gradually pays more
attention to technology and expects its growing possibilities to apply them to
development of the Japanese educational system.
On the other hand, conservative educators in Japan still don’t pay much attention to exploratory possibilities or advantageous options of technology use in classrooms along with their academic effects or pedagogical value in the advanced educational system. Many of them advocate traditional learning environment already include effective pedagogical philosophies which are good enough to meet conditions to build the 21st century educational system. They point out the small number of computers in classrooms and limited vindication to contradict the PISA test results so Japan should wait for more explanatory evidence for diffusion of technology use in Japanese classrooms.
This, however, doesn’t mean that Japanese
educators are insecure about where they should go, but there is room for both
sides of the educators to discuss and share ideas about what the essential
nature and definition of Japanese educational systems should be today and
tomorrow. To understand this situation
more clearly, one possible explanation could be the fact that the newest
knowledge and experiences harvested from the technology-based educational
policies are not well shared or understood to arrive at reasonable conclusions
for both of them. Today it is often seen
in Japan to discuss pros and cons over technology use in classrooms. Pros insist that learning in classroom with
technology should effectively enhance academic advancement and quality education
while cons maintain that technology should distort and mislead the intrinsic
nature of traditional Japanese education only to result in much more burden and
confusion left for teachers and students.
LNDRC: You designed an application, especially for
teachers to engage children with mathematics; this application is Digital
Block, why did you decide this application was necessary in Japanese
classrooms?
Mineshima: Digital Block actually has shown good
evidence in Japanese educational policies with technology in the 21st
century classrooms. As a
student-centered learning tool for knowledge building through communication and
collaboration with classmates, Digital Block is necessary for children to make mutual understandings and consensus
so they can arrive at mathematical conclusions while finding a way to grow
their learning skills by themselves.
In fact, Japanese educators put more
emphasis on learning than on teaching because they think it is highly important
for children to become aware of their own learning processes with consistency
and reasonableness so they can develop their own learning skills by themselves. Teachers play an important role in nourishing
their learning skills, as they grow intelligent in learning.
As often seen in Japanese classrooms, for
example, concrete materials are used to help children easily understand
abstract concepts of mathematics while assimilating their real experience and
simultaneous feeling through manipulating concrete materials. This makes a lot of sense as long as their
behavioral and cognitive development stages correspond to each other. Otherwise, children would use a lot of time
to find analog materials they may lose, find more space to put them back on
their untidy desks, and find friends to talk about their clumsiness.
One of the biggest roles of Digital Block
is help children to assimilate their instinctive sense and thinking processes
through simulated experience and intuitive cognition in a calculating area of
mathematics. They can correlate the
concrete and abstract concepts, bind them together, and make structured
knowledge and systematical understanding by providing them with a framework of
ideas they make without losing precious time to learn at higher stages of
mathematical processes they would consequently deserve. This makes their learning processes more efficient and exploratory in
understanding abstract concepts of mathematics and acquiring subordinate
procedural knowledge while they feel it is not easy to understand mathematical
logic through limited time, space, functions presented in the Japanese 20th
century classrooms as pictures below explain.
LNDRC: When you invite to teachers to use Digital
Blocks, what is the most important to you?
Mineshima: What matters most to me is see how children learn how to learn by themselves. It is not necessarily difficult for children to gather information, put up ideas, and build knowledge, but learning the way they learn is much more meaningful and important. Learning how to learn is one of the biggest goals children should accomplish as long as they are life-long learners. So I would like teachers to use Digital Block as a learning tool rather than a teaching tool to help children nourish their learning skills, which are flexible and useful for fluid problem solving in their entire life.
LNRC: Do you think new generations are less interesting on learning?
Mineshima:
I don’t think new generations are less interesting on learning because
children are bone with intellectual curiosity.
Children have intellectual appetite for extending the range of
their behavioral and cognitive application as they grow while absorbing
information
from environment that surrounds them. If
there is a concern about their willingness and interest to their learning, you
can find some aspects of the problem in educational systems and the way they
include children. In other words, educational systems define the way children learn. Well designed educational systems and curriculum, indeed, can be effective in improving the performance of children
learning. It is, however, true in a way
that the educational systems don’t always secure children their willingness or
motivation to learn. The educational
systems rather tend to restrict the range of the way they learn. So I think that is when educators need to
rethink about what results from the education systems involved if new
generations are less interesting on learning.
LNDRC: What is your perception about
New Technologies in the classrooms?
Minesima: Today we are living in an era of
transitional technologies. With
development of information society, global citizens are required to have
demanding skills to create new value and contribute it to global society where
the way they live and work has to be multidimensional and trans cultural. If education plays an important part in
creating the new era, NEW Technologies should not merely be something that
encourages children to acquire knowledge and skills as a goal of their
learning, but something that inspires children to transform from students in
classrooms to learners in society.
In
other words, the essential value of New Technologies in education must be in
the process to help children acquire knowledge, experience, and skills required
to lead their entire life as a member of ever-changing society.
LNDRC: In your opinion, what is the
role of New Technology in learning process?
Mineshima:
The role of New Technology in learning is discover New Learning. This means learners can become aware of their
own cognitive activities and make an objective evaluation on which the process
of nourishing their problem solving skills is based.
In recent years, many international educational institutions such as ATC21S (Assessment & Teaching of the 21 Century Skills) place special emphasis upon problem solving skills required for children to play a successful role in an international society in the future. It is highly important for children to plan, analyze, evaluate, and adjust what to learn with their classmates, not just to learn respectively with efficiency.
Naomi Miyake, professor at Tokyo
university, points out as follows; Learning skills were mainly defined as
skills for individuals to comprehend knowledge exactly and solve given problems
efficiently so educators could set goals and design education to reach them. But today massive informational environment
is created and information is updated all any one time. Goals are regarded more like something that
reset themselves as you get closer to them so goals need to take care of every
situation. For this reason, it is
important for children to find problems and answers at the same time, share
methods of solution among groups, and remake their knowledge building
processes, not for teachers to teach what is supposed to be taught. For this purpose, goals need tools to trigger
these processes. At the same time, New
Learning requires a new evaluation method.
The new evaluation method is not something that measures achievement of
learning but something that keeps track of progress of learning and generates
clues to go on to next levels of learning by deciding on how to modify what is
actually happening there. In order to
make this kind of evaluation in accordance with progress of learning, teachers
need a strong IT infrastructure to record, analyze, and share learning processes
for next steps. If the IT infrastructure
is strong enough, teachers can concentrate on innovating New Learning without
being distracted by maintenance of IT environment and the evaluation method.
Since the role of New Technology depends on how we can define the applicable range of learning processes, there is no expected answer in advance. This way a lot of attention and expectation have been paid to a rapidly-growing technology society where the effective way of utilizing technology in education is mainly on the table. In conclusion, if it is children who create a technology society in the future, it will be self-evident what the role of New Technologies in their learning processes is.
LNDRC: If you had all the money of
the world, and no restriction to take decision to design a school, what would
you include in it?
Mineshima: If I had all the money of the world, and no
restriction to take decisions to design a school, I would provide all the
children in the world with equal opportunity to learn. Children should be given an equal opportunity and the right to become successful in their entire life through
learning.
As discussed earlier, international educational institutions and their organically mutual cooperation has been facilitating international consensus and standardization regarding a modern education method and learning process. However, there are still many children who do not have an opportunity to enjoy modern and idealistic education because of a variety of factors such as politics, economy, and culture in the world. Furthermore, problems about academic achievement gap among countries and thus negative effects on education have been frequently pointed out.
Therefore, it is extremely important for educators to build an international educational platform and lead collaborative innovations in trans cultural education so children as global citizens who are living in a modern society can live a better life beyond borders with success by nourishing their intelligence and skills that will be useful when they grow up. I believe everyone can be happy if everyone hopes for a global educational consortium for everyone. And this is just what I am trying to do in my country with Learn For Japan and I believe this leads to the first step toward Learn For the World.
Don't forget to watch some videos to understand Digital Blocks:
http://youtu.be/_17oYPkB0oM
http://youtu.be/WCGR0mJKoXg
http://youtu.be/ablNj6-sPmw
You can find Digital blocks in Itunes Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/digital-block-for-vertical/id797538471?mt=8
And Learning for Japan is an wonderful resource: http://learnforjapan.org/learning-tool/math/place-value/english/index.html
Finally we share another Interview to Mineshima: http://dailyedventures.com/index.php/2012/05/06/japan/