The Japan Association of New Economy submitted its comment on August 10th in response to the mid-term summary issued in June by the “evaluation committee on the role of digital textbooks” of the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology

The original comment in Japanese can be downloaded from here

Summary of comment

1. Recognize the significance of the proposal to introduce digital textbooks in school education
2. Create an environment to facilitate the promotion of active learning by adopting supplementary teaching materials that utilize digital resources such as videos, sounds, URL links and QR codes.
3. It is the role of each municipality’s board of education to determine how digital teaching materials should be used, while taking into account the views of the private sector. The involvement of the national government in the process should be kept minimal.
4. The same rights and restrictions as paper textbooks should be applied to digital textbooks in terms of their copyrights.
5. Efforts should be made to train teaching support staff who can help conduct classes using digital textbooks and teaching materials, while at the same time streamlining the role of ICT support staff