2025 Volume 81 Issue 13 Article ID: 24-13525
We developed a new disaster learning tool, “Digital Our Timeline (D_Awatara).” The use of this tool can help students input their own actions and roles, as well as those of their family members, neighbors, and city officials over the time course of a disaster into a spreadsheet on the cloud. In the study, we implemented D_Awatara in disaster risk reduction education at three junior high schools. At all the schools we studied, the actions of the students and their families were described more frequently than those of neighbors and city officials. Schools that did not have sufficient tablets for each group at the time of implementation were described less frequently than other schools. Questionnaires administered before and after the class showed that students’ awareness of disaster preparedness increased in general, but “efficacy for the community” did not increase significantly in the school where the number of descriptions using D_Awatara was small. These results suggest that D_Awatara is an effective learning tool for disaster reduction and improvement of students’ “efficacy for the community, ” which may increase their desire to contribute to local disaster reduction. However, it is also clear that an adequate ICT environment is essential for the tool’s implementation.
