The Association of Digital Textbook and Teaching (DiTT) has powered up

The Digital Textbook and Teaching Association (DiTT), of which I am the managing director of, was established in 2010 as a promotional organization in response to the stagnation of Japan’s digitization of education and its contentedness with being an undeveloped country. At the time, the government was not very concerned with these issues.

http://ditt.jp/

However, the former University of Tokyo president Hiroshi Komiyama became our chairman, and we took over the administration and established a private volunteer company, conducting our activities with the support of former Kyoto University president Makoto Nagao and former Keio University president Yuichiro Anzai. The company would later set about in earnest in regards to the business dealings of this field. We teamed up with the heads of municipalities that had taken an advanced stance towards this issue, and also formed a bipartisan National Diet caucus.

From the mention of digital textbooks in the Intellectual Property Strategic Program, the mention of the promotion of the digitization of education by the IT headquarters and other organizations, the government decision to provide one PC per student by 2020, the standardization of digital textbooks, the application of the radio use fee, and the new requirement for programming education in schools, we can see that DiTT’s proposals have become reality.

And now, our bipartisan caucus has formulated a bill on the promotion of the digitization of education. Members of DiTT are participating from the private side. There have already been results in the Diet, government, municipalities, schools, and the industrial world.

However, Japan remains an underdeveloped country. It is no exaggeration that in this field, we are at the lowest level of all OECD member countries. Now that we have finally begun to tackle the issue, we must bring ourselves up to a higher level immediately. While the Diet and government work from their end, the private sector must also do its part.

This is why we at DiTT have decided to fall back on our original ideal, intensify its function, and boost its propulsion. Our first goal is to team up with the government, municipalities, and schools to allow for the further promotion of our research and proposals.

We are also developing the following new features:

1) Promoting programming education

DiTT will team up with NPO “CANVAS,” which has created a platform for programming education of which we will work as the core.

Reference: CANVAS’ Computer Science for ALL Project

                     http://csforall.jp/

2) Developing a scheme for the copyright processing of teaching materials

We require a private scheme for the smooth processing of digital textbook/teaching material copyrights. We will develop a framework to regulate the relationship between the textbook/teaching material industries, copyright holders, and users.

3) Improving internet use literacy education for young people

In order to advance the digitization of education, we must enhance safety countermeasures for the internet use of young people. We will team up with the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the National Police Agency, and concerned bodies/industries, who are all working towards solving this issue, and work out countermeasures together.