A roundtable discussion between Professor Kazunori Tomano and Professor Mitsuteru Watanabe on digital textbooks has been published.

Educational Information Magazine “Junior High School Japanese Language Education Consultation Room,” No. 94—Special Feature: Utilizing ICT

And today, I also attended the Central Council for Education’s Working Group on Digital Textbooks, which I had missed since the very first meeting (*^^*)

Since I wasn't quite sure what the scope of the discussion was, I made the following comment.

・The issue of digital textbooks should be discussed in terms of both the short term and the medium to long term. There is a difference between discussing what needs to be done by the next revision in Reiwa 6 and discussing the revision schedule for the revision after that—which will include matters such as how to handle textbook approval.

First, it would be best to share a common vision for the future of digital textbooks. It goes without saying that the goal is not simply to widely distribute digital textbooks with the exact same content as current paper textbooks.As the nature of learning undergoes fundamental changes, how will textbooks evolve? Once current constraints—such as the textbook certification process—are removed, what vision for digital textbooks do we aim to achieve? We should establish a schedule outlining the specific steps to be taken in the next two revisions to bring this vision to fruition.

・The current challenges regarding the widespread adoption of digital textbooks have already been discussed at various meetings and are generally well understood.It would be advisable to compile and organize all the challenges raised to date in meetings related to digital textbooks and to create an action plan that specifies concrete measures and timelines for addressing them. Based on that, we should identify issues—such as cost concerns—on which no conclusion has yet been reached and focus our discussions on those.

・While the empirical studies on effectiveness and impact, as well as initiatives to improve teachers’ instructional skills—all of which are budgeted under the “Digital Textbook Promotion Project”—are extremely important, isn’t straightforward promotion the key? There is still opposition in the media. Can’t we invest in promotional efforts that thoroughly spread the use of digital textbooks throughout schools, without letting that opposition get the better of us?