Empowered JAPAN Webinar Report

Empowered JAPAN Executive Steering Committee was established in 2018, “To realize a world where everyone canwork and learn, from anywhere, at anytime.” To promote the true value of workstyle innovation including telework, the committee
has been coordinating symposiums in both Tokyo and regional cities. And in collaboration with various local governments,
Microsoft, and partners, the committee has been serving as an advisor to provide telework training for both corporate andindividuals. In response to the spread of infection of corona virus (COVID-19) and the government announcement on February 25,2020, which included the request to citizens to telework, the steering committee made the decision to launch a series of freewebinars starting from March 17, 2020, to provide practical information for individuals and organizations across the nation, totelework and/or practice online education.
Category：Contents for government,
healthcare, and educational institutions.
Date：April, 4, 2020

Learning Lifeline Made Possible by Teams- During the Mass School Closures -Speaker：Shota Koike
Teacher, Elementary School Attached toFaculty of Education, Chiba University
Director, Committee for ICT UtilizationEducation and School ICT
Implementation

Currently enrolled in the Doctoral
Program at the Graduate School ofHumanities and Social Sciences, Chiba
University. Holds a Master's Degree inEducation. Assumed his current position
after working as a Full-Time Instructor at
Ritsumeikan Primary School. In the 2019academic year, is promoting information
education in the school from theperspective of a "quasi-specializedteacher in 'Living Environment Studies'and 'Integrated Studies." MicrosoftTeams was implemented for all school
children due to the temporaryclosure.Held repeated practice trials toenable children to learn by connectingwith each other online.

Many educational institutions in Japan have decided to shut down from the beginning ofApril until the end of the holiday week in early May. With the focus now shifting to Internetbased remote learning, a variety of new issues have come to light. Not all homes haveInternet access, and there are significant gaps among households in terms of ownership ofdevices like personal computers, iPads, and so on. This poses a challenge for applying IT in
public education settings, where fairness is a top priority. However, the measures taken at
the Elementary School Attached to Faculty of Education, Chiba University are one exampleof how such issues can be addressed.
On Thursday, February 27, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a request for schools acrossJapan to close. In response, the Elementary School Attached to Faculty of Education, Chiba
University closed on Monday, March 2. Students instead studied from home for two to three
weeks: sixth graders, until the Graduation Ceremony on March 19; and first to fifth graders,
until the Closing Ceremony on March 24. During this period, students were able tocommunicate with teachers and each other by using the groupware called Teams.
Part of the rationale behind using Teams is the idea that “the school’s role is not only
providing classes and facilitating learning, but also ensuring communication between
students and teachers, and among students themselves” (Koike). Let’s look at an example ofusing Teams as a “lifeline for interpersonal relationships,” which are an essential part oflearning environments.
At the Affiliated Elementary School, Koike took the lead in promoting the use of Teams
during the closure. By 10:00 AM on February 28, he had created Teams accounts for all ofthe approximately 650 students; and at 1:00 PM on the same day, he explained how to use
the platform with a 15-minute video workshop given to the entire school. As of one week
after the school closed, 80 percent of students had signed into the Teams account. The
remaining 20 percent were able to sign into their accounts with help from their homeroom
teachers over the phone.

Empowered JAPAN Webinar Report
During the closure, the original assignments teachers posted on the school’s website served as the foundation of the home-basedlearning. The school’s affiliation with the University’s Faculty of Education means it is a research school as well, so stakeholders areaccustomed to new efforts and ideas. The school was able to use that to its advantage in the current emergency situation.
In each household, students engaged with their studies by displaying schoolwork posted to the school’s website on their computersor smartphones, printing the work out, and so on. Students then took photos of the printouts they studied and shared the images on
Teams, and wrote reflections on the content they had learned. Proceeding with methods that were easier for each grade to work withfacilitated a new kind of communication between the students and teachers, and among the students themselves.
“First and second graders shared photos of themselves holding up their printouts, while third and fourth graders tended to sharevideos of themselves, in the style of popular young Youtubers. Students in grade four and up also exchanged many more text
messages. Fifth and sixth graders shared pictures of themselves helping cook meals, videos of themselves playing the piano, andthings like that as well” (Koike).
Rather than taking a top-down approach to instruction, teachers acted more as facilitators, helping students learn from their failures
to draw out ideas and create new forms of learning.
“One thing we learned from using Teams for our morning class is that when we sing songs together, things quickly descend intochaos. But that failure changed to success as the students learned how to effectively use the ‘mute’ button for their microphones. We
also discussed whether it would be a good idea to record the sixth graders’ graduation ceremony and show it to the other grades, or
livestream the ceremony” (Koike).
Learning which takes advantage of online tools seems to foster independence in children, where if they make a mistake, they work
together with teachers to think of solutions. Apparently, some students started a “tele-lunch,” where they used Teams to share photos
they took of the lunches they were eating at home.
Of his school, Koike says that “we’re not necessarily highly advanced in implementing ICT,” explaining that it was only a few years
ago that the school “started adopting technology little by little.” First, in March of 2016, the school introduced 45 iPads, with asingle access point provided for each grade. In July of 2018, 45 Windows 10 computers were added. One year later, the schoolpurchased an additional 35 iPads, and also installed ceiling-hung projectors in each classroom.
Despite lacking advanced equipment and infrastructure, in 2019, the school started using computers in one lesson each week forstudents in the second and higher grades. Meanwhile, teachers began experimenting with Teams for writing business trip reports.
QR codes were added to printouts sent to parents, which were published on the web as well. Thus starting from what could bedone at that time, rather than aiming for perfection from the outset, was a useful way to introduce Teams—and other online tools
as well—in a classroom setting.
From Koike’s report, the children’s home-based studies using Teams could be called a recreation of the kind of work environment
they will experience when they enter society as adults. For students, engaging in remote learning side-by-side with their parents—
many of whom are themselves taking their first shot at telecommuting—is good practice for the future.
Koike says that “the understanding and support of parents” was essential. The school hopes to cooperate with stakeholders andparents to continue to support these efforts so that the children, who will be joining the workforce in another ten or twenty years,
will already be accustomed to “an era where learning is integrated with daily life,” says Koike.

※From the official Facebook page of Elementary School Attached to Elementary School Attached to Faculty of Education, Chiba University
https://www.facebook.com/chibafu/