Transitioning To The Digital Generation Case Studies (Previous Digital Point Studies In Japan Cases:1993-2023)

TL;DR

This paper examines Japan's ICT education history and current digital learning trends, highlighting the transition to digital natives and discussing future challenges and integration of ICT in education.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of Japan's ICT education evolution from 1994 to 2023 and explores smartphone-based learning dynamics among youth.

Findings

ICT environments are effective in some contexts but not others.

Japan is transitioning to a generation of digital natives.

ICT education has both benefits and challenges.

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss at The 8th International Workshop on Application of Big Data for Computational Social Science, October 26-29, 2023, Venice, Italy. To achieve the realization of the Global and Innovation Gateway for All (GIGA) initiative (2019), proposed in December 2019 by the Primary and Secondary Education Planning Division of the Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, a movement has emerged to utilize information and communication technology (ICT) in the field of education. The history of ICT education in Japan dates back to the 100 Schools Project (1994), which aimed to provide network access environments, and the New 100 Schools Project (1997), which marked the beginning of full-scale ICT education in Japan. In this paper, we discuss the usage dynamics of smartphone-based learning applications among young people (analyzing data from January to September 2020) and their current status. Further, the results are summarized and future research topics and issues are discussed. The results show that there are situations in which ICT learning environments can be effectively utilized and others in which they cannot, depending on the differences between digital students and analog students who utilize ICT in their studies; this indicates that we are currently in a transition to a generation of digital natives. ICT education has both advantages and disadvantages, and it is expected that it will be used in combination with conventional educational methods while assessing the characteristics of ICT education in the future. Of course, there are many challenges. We plan to discuss how to appeal in this regard at the Workshop.