I want to make children all over Japan the most vibrant and creative in the world!
I hope to see many “Digital Kids” emerge—children who “make full use of new technologies, possess the communication skills to collaborate with people from around the world who hold diverse values and perspectives, and combine the imagination to envision new value with the creativity to bring it to life.”

After graduating from college, I joined the MIT Media Lab.
It was a research lab that felt like a toy box.
A place where making things and challenging conventional wisdom were encouraged.
Children and media were a central theme.

A project to develop musical instruments that any child can use to compose and perform music, followed by a world tour.
A project to develop a programming language that allows any child to create games and animations, and to spread it worldwide.
Everyone becomes a creator and an artist. Tools to make that possible were being developed there.

The $100 Laptop Project. It aimed to reform education by distributing 10,000-yen laptops to children in regions that couldn’t build schools, hire teachers, or buy textbooks. It reached 2 million children in 40 countries worldwide. They also expanded “Computer Clubhouses” globally—spaces that provide after-school opportunities for creativity.

The Media Lab had built a network of children’s museums around the world.
A system of development → implementation → dissemination.
I was drawn to this framework for social implementation.

CANVAS was launched with the goal of bringing this to Japan.
CANVAS.
Let’s use new technologies to create spaces where children can create.

We want to expand these secret bases for creative, collaborative play and learning!
We started with community education since we couldn’t get into the school system.
We were amazed by the richness of out-of-school learning centered around children’s museums overseas, and we want to bridge the gap from outside to inside schools.
However, we can only reach 500,000 children.
We want to reach all 10 million children nationwide!
Introducing this into the school system is our long-cherished goal.
As institutional reforms progress, will implementation in schools finally begin?!
However, societal progress is moving even faster, and we now need to build a learning environment that transcends the boundaries between inside and outside of school.
That is why we launched CANVAS in 2002, DiTT in 2010, and Learning of Tomorrow in 2018.
DiTT has dissolved, and we are consolidating under Learning of Tomorrow.
It would be ideal if CANVAS joined us as well. However, since it has built its own community over the past 16 years, it will continue to exist as an independent organization while collaborating with us.

Societal demands, technological advancements, and educational research all call for learning environments that foster creativity and collaboration.
This change is inevitable. So, how can we expand it?
We’ll adopt the workshop approach—an experiential learning method that fosters collaborative creation.

When we first decided to work toward social implementation, we declared that once we had put everything into practice, the Act on the Promotion of Children’s Use of Digital Technology would be enacted.
In 2018, the “Bill to Promote the Digitalization of Education” was drafted by a bipartisan parliamentary league.
After many years, we believe we have achieved some results.

In our workshops,
we place great importance on the future perspective of learning.

Feel with your heart, think with your mind, and express yourself with your whole body.
And then communicate that to others.

Summer Camp: We want to open up the university as a community platform.
Gakineema: Children remix 100 films. Freely utilizing video content in education.
OtoKoto Hiroba: Before the widespread use of social media, we created a space for children to collaboratively create music online.
Children’s TV in the City: We want to share children’s ideas. We broadcast children’s creations on 4,000 digital signage screens.
Information Hub: Children from across the country share local information.

To expand opportunities for creative learning,
we’ve been working on the “10 Ways to Create” initiative to support children’s creativity.
As a result, we’ve done all sorts of things—like making toys and creating museums—but…

Ultimately, what CANVAS has always valued most is creating spaces.
Building platforms.
This is reflected in our logo as well.
What CANVAS can provide are spaces and tools. We want people to use them to create freely.

We want to be a platform that serves everyone. We want to be a buffer that fosters autonomous, decentralized activities across the country. We want to be a presence that supports those activities.

CANVAS itself is a platform created collaboratively by industry, government, and academia.

A space for promoting workshops.

A space for promoting Digital Ehon.

A space for promoting programming and TECH×EDU.　　

A space where local industry, government, and academia come together to drive initiatives.

The “Workshop Collection” brings this vision to life.
A space where children create and express themselves.
A space where adults who support them come together.

Three key principles we have focused on to advance the Workshop Collection:
Diversification, advancement, and widespread adoption.

In 2010, our message reached the Japanese government: the “Digital Schoolbag” initiative.
Every child would have their own computer, shifting learning from a memorization-based model to one focused on thinking and creativity.
This marked an opportunity for our activities—which had previously reached only 500,000 people outside of school—to reach 10 million.

In 2010, we launched DiTT and focused on introducing our initiatives into the school system.
Eight years of effort paid off, leading to institutional reforms to promote the digitization of education and the implementation of mandatory programming education.

Education is finally becoming digitized.
But
society is in the AI/IoT era.

Education alone, however, is two steps behind.

While we must catch up, we also must create the world’s most cutting-edge learning experiences.

That’s why, by leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as AI, blockchain, and VR/AR,
we’ve established the Learning of Tomorrow Association
to build an educational system for the AI/IoT era.

This, too, is a platform.
But this time, it’s not just for the digital era—
it will be a platform for the Society 5.0 era.

We’re creating learning spaces that transcend the boundaries of traditional schools, for everyone from preschoolers to working adults.
The era ahead is one of lifelong learning.
Precisely because of this, learning must be fun.

Let’s build a nation of Learning of Tomorrow.
Reggio Emilia.
It’s garnering attention from around the world for its creativity-based education.
Even though it was a town that even Italians didn’t know about.
We want Japan to attract global attention through cutting-edge education.

Decided in the 10th year since CANVAS was founded,
what we had planned to do next.
However, at that time, we shifted our focus to introducing the program into school education, so this plan has not yet been realized.

Even as we build cutting-edge learning environments,
we still need a driving force to spread creative and collaborative learning.

My motto is “Imagine & Realize.”
Imagination and creation.
A mind that imagines and the power to create.