In recent years, various efforts have been made to foster the media literacy of youth in Japan. The government introduced new educational systems (e.g., the implementation of a "period for integrated study") and established the computer infrastructure. Enthusiastic teachers improved their teaching materials or curricula at school. The media industry or NPOs have also executed media literacy-related activities. The understanding of media literacy, however, differs with each entity. Therefore, this article reviews the major concepts of media literacy, as well as the history and current status of media literacy education in Japan. Based on such a review, issues concerning the future systematic development of media literacy such as the cooperation of the government, schools, the media industry, and NPOs are clarified and future visions can be discussed.

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The authors developed a prototype of Training of Trainer (ToT) of Instructional Design (ID), based on the elaboration theory. The prototype was validated through the implementation of ToT at CEMADOJA (Dominican-Japanese Friendship Medical Education Center). The results are satisfactory in improvement of the ID skills, and sustainability of the transferred innovation at the participant and institutional levels. Based on this experience, the authors tried to clarify the relevant factors for the effectiveness and sustainability of the program and propose the Composite Model of ToT.

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In this study, we proposed a method of feedback termed anchored feedback in a classroom feedback system and conducted two experiments for the evaluation. The system enables text-based communication between students and the instructor via arrow-shaped indicators, directing feedback to the target topic in the lecture slide on shared computer screens. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the deictic function by comparing an interface with the deictic feature to one without it, and the findings suggested that the deictic function facilitated access to feedback by directing it to the target topic. In contrast, in Experiment 2, we investigated the practicality of the feedback system in an actual lecture, and the results revealed that the system increased the participants' consciousness of interactivity, with the exception of those participants who had keyboarding difficulties.

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Since its early days, Nishimera village in Miyazaki prefecture has been keen to introduce use of Information Technology (IT) in school education and by now has considerable experience. In this study, a follow-up survey, focusing on 142 ex-students who attended elementary or junior high schools in the town in 1996, was conducted in order to examine the educational effects of IT use in schools. Analyzing 101 responses (recovery rate of 71.1%), it is shown that the experience of using IT in schools contributes to an educational effect, such as knowledge acquisition, expansion of thought and deeper comprehension of subjects. Furthermore the survey shows that the zest for living needed after school were also cultivated by IT education in the schools.

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Numerous authentic speech samples should be played to learners in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) when the material is aimed at improving their listening and/or speaking abilities. However, speech files are often compressed in materials that deliver content over the network, such as e-Learning systems, to keep the transfer speed high or to conserve memory space. Therefore, there is a possibility that training with compressed speech will decrease its effects compared to training with uncompressed speech. The effects of speech format on the intelligibility of English phoneme pairs, which are difficult for Japanese to distinguish, were measured through perception experiments. Both native speakers of American English (AE) and native speakers of Japanese (J) identified English word pairs that contrasted /r/-/l/, /b/-/v/, or /s/-/θ/. The results demonstrated that the intelligibility of certain phonemes in certain formats decreased, both for native speakers of AE and native speaker of J. We also found that when native speakers of J were trained to identify English phonemes by using speech with insufficient intelligibility, the training effects could not be generalized to identify high-quality speech. These results suggest that there are some speech formats that are inadequate for use in foreign-language education materials.

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In distance education, there is no precedent for research on the eye contact that a student has with the teacher during a simultaneous lecture. In this research, the lecture was executed by three different methods. Two of these methods involved lectures executed through Video Conferencing Systems, a new system allowing eye contact and an older system that does not allow eye contact. The third lecture form involved the teacher facing a live audience. After each lecture, questionnaires were handed out and learning effect measurement examinations were given. Using these, comparative analyses of the educational effect were made. A decentralized analysis of the examination results showed no difference between the lectures. Analysis of variance and multiple comparisons were used to evaluate the questionnaires. In addition, factors related to study volition and the feeling that something was understood were excluded as being too subjective. After this, a factor analysis was executed. As a result, the following six factors were extracted: "Nonverbal Communication," "Getting Tired," Strained," "Eyes, Real Existence Desire," "Fatigue, Dissatisfaction," "Relaxation." Each of these factors was assumed to be an independent variable, while examination result, objective study evaluation, and subjective study evaluation were assumed to be dependent variables. Using these, a single recurrence analysis and a multiple regression analysis were executed. As a result, the following were clarified. "Nonverbal Communication" has a positive influence on the feeling of understanding and determination, and on the level of understanding. The lack of eye contact in a learning environment becomes an obstacle to the learner's study activity. Although distance education using a method that allows eye contact can apply the same teaching method as those used when facing a live class, measures against "Getting Tired" are necessary.

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Lecturer-led university classes were conducted by a blended learning approach with an e-learning component while the learning activities of the students were analyzed via their logon behavior and the end of course questionnaire. The logon behavior analysis confirmed that the students conduct learning activities as intended by the instructor. It also showed a correlation between the e-learning contents usage and learning effectiveness. From the end of course questionnaire analysis, four characteristic factors i.e. 'expectation of convenience', 'achieving of communication', 'fostering preparedness for classes' and 'mini-test activity evaluation' were extracted. Cluster analysis using the factor scores enabled the students to be classified into three groups, each group showing difference in factor tendency and access frequency to the contents. To deliver effective blended learning, it is necessary that the lesson plan take the characteristics of the class into consideration.

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In February 2007 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan released a teacher's competence standard of elementary school, lower and upper secondary school, in information and communication technology (ICT). For this paper, a fairly large sample of teachers (2,031 teachers in all) was asked to evaluate their competence on 18 items arranged in 5 categories of the MEXT standard, and a factor analysis identified 4 factors: (1) use of ICT during classes, (2) instruction in ICT ethics, (3) use of ICT in class preparation and other school-related matters, and (4) support of the use of ICT by students. Note, however, that in the case of the upper secondary school teachers, one item pertaining to communication with guardians of students is not included in Factor (3). Next a number of teacher attributes is considered-how many if any ICT related training courses the teacher has attended, and so on-and analyze the effects that these attribute have on the 4 factor scores.

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This research aims to examine the affective aspect of text-based communication. The participants are 42 university students, who were randomly paired and asked to participate in a series of e-mail communication. Right after each e-mail communication, those who received e-mails were asked to answer the questions that concern how they felt (their affective states) and how they interpreted the message senders' affective states (affective interpretation). The participants were divided into 3 groups in terms of their inherent affective traits determined by the established questionnaire, Discrete Emotions Scale IV ('Negative-affection oriented group', 'Positive-affection oriented group', and 'Hostility-affection oriented group'). Then, the correlation between the message receivers' interpretation of the message senders' affective states and the message receivers' affective states, together with the correlation between the message senders' affective states and the message receivers' interpretation of the message senders' affective states was compared among the three groups. The results showed that the two relationships were influenced by message receivers' inherent affective traits, based on which the causes of the affective problems faced in text-based communication were discussed.

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In this research, we target students' photos for school use. When using students' photos in a class newspaper, teachers have to treat students equally. Usually in this case, the teacher counts the number of times a student appears in the photos. However, by only using this method it is difficult to feature students equally, since there are various kinds of photos, such as individual photos, group photos, etc. Considering this particularity of school use of photos, we propose the concept of "presence," which expresses the impact of the face in a photo, by examining every subject in the photo, and measuring the students equally using the "presence" points of each subject. In this paper, we present a regression formula of "presence" using simple and objective items. Next, we present an experiment we conducted which measured perceptions of equality of student exposure in photos using the sum of "presence" points. The result of the experiment was the group of photos where "presence" points were within the predicted "range of equality" was judged to be fair.

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In this paper, we describe an Interactive Learning Environment which realizes the learning by Solution-Based Problem Posing for multi-digit subtraction. It is effective to master solution method that a learner poses problems which can be solved by the solution method. We call the type of problem posing Solution-Based Problem Posing. We have already developed some ILEs for arithmetical word problems. In the case of multi-digit subtraction, it is too difficult for learners to pose problems which can be solved by given solution method directly. Therefore, we suggest a method that learners solve and consider a problem and pose problem which can be solved by the used solution. In this paper, we describe (1) an interface for solving and considering a problem, (2) an interface for posing problems which can be solved by the used solution while referring the solution, (3) a function for diagnosis of the posed problem and for feedback, and also report an experimental evaluation in an elementary school.

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Briefly speaking, portfolios are learning files with specific purposes. In order to create portfolios, an instructional design is necessary. Using portfolios as an instructional tool, this study designed a learning program for English e-mail writing for 41 nursing school students. The program included some elements featuring portfolios: a) presenting guidelines to learners before the class started; b) utilizing goal cards for learners to write down their reflections on their learning; c) holding conferences which would help learners to reflect on and share their learning; and d) intentionally teaching learning strategies to learners. Based on the data gathered using post-questionnaires, the results revealed: a) the program designed in this study was favorably evaluated by the learners, from the viewpoint of the ARCS model; b) it proved effective in reflecting on or correcting the learning in the process of creating portfolios. Furthermore, based on the data gathered using pre-questionnaires and post-questionnaires, the results indicated: c) that learners' awareness of more use of the learning strategies was confirmed. Moreover, based on the results of the pre-test and the post-test, d) the program utilizing portfolios was found to be effective in improving the English writing abilities of the learners.

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The Federated Search System was developed to make it possible to reciprocally search by keyword between the Japanese learning gateway (NIME-glad), which stores LOM (Learning Object Metadata) created for Learning Objects on the Internet, and gateways in the USA, Canada, Australia and the EU. This Federated Search System defined the function and method of exchanging LOM between gateways according to the international standard, and using this method, gateways are collaborating with each other. As a result of developing this Federated Search System, it has become possible to search not only Japanese Learning Objects by keyword, but also at the same time to use the Japanese gateway to search through overseas Learning Objects on overseas gateways. Alternatively, the overseas gateways use allows for the possibility of conducting concurrent searches of overseas Learning Objects by keyword as well as Japanese Learning Objects.

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Sports instruction is conducted in an open space with physical action. For this reason, sports instructors are required to possess greater spatial cognition, learners' physical condition, cognition of the energy during activities and predictive recognition in sports education classes than they do in classroom lessons. In this context, we investigated situational cognition in this paper by recruiting a university football club coach who also served as a JAPAN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE (J-League) youth team coach and had him observe a J-League game while imaginings that he was the coach. The subject was instructed to talk of what he was seeing as a coach in real time and drawing whatever image he was seeing or processing in his head in real time, whereupon a cognitive review of the talks and supporting drawings was conducted after the game. As a result, it became clear that the space visually perceived as a horizontal surface from pitch-level was understood in terms of representations based on a bird's-eye view of the pitch from above and in terms of representations based on a wide-view of the pitch from a slightly elevated location and that predictions of what would occur next were being made through a process that involved the successive overlaying of representations onto representations.

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The present study is a part of broader studies aimed at developing a system designed to classify and search for information on the Web so as to benefit university faculty and students in their teaching, research and learning. Through the use of link structures of Web pages, academic research information including useful pages for education, such as research descriptions and lecture notes, was extracted automatically from university Web pages. A new technique was applied for the purpose of automatic extraction, that is, the collection of pages to which links are provided by anchor text from html pages containing a distinctive word, and additional collection of groups of linked pages from the collected pages. More specifically, laboratory Websites were extracted automatically from Websites of the University of Tsukuba with an exceptionally high recall factor and relevance ratio. This extraction method using Web page link structures has been proven to be effective in automatically extracting information where the terms of high appearance rate in the page are not found and therefore it is difficult to implement the automatic extraction of information through natural language processing or where the page structure lacks regularity.

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The Space Collaboration System (SCS) connects numerous universities and institutes by an interactive satellite communication system. The National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) has been using the SCS since 2001 to deliver seminars of the "Support Project for Students with Special Needs". The SCS has been used to deliver seminars covering the latest developments in educational methods, to share knowledge of educational techniques, and to clarify problem areas. From 2004, we began to introduce sign-language interpretation and a PC transcription system in the seminars. Seminars have been delivered from the NIME studio. These video seminars with simultaneous captioning are automatically recorded. Those recorded seminars are preserved on our website and can be viewed on demand.

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The authors conducted a questionnaire survey of the methods for educational practice research among schoolteachers. Consequently, we concluded that teachers trust the opinions of those close to them rather than opinions obtained from sources outside the school. With regard to educational practice research methods, the teachers had an understanding of both experiential and non-experiential methods and expressed a preference for experiential research methods. Moreover, it was found that belief based on practical knowledge considerably affects teachers' understanding of educational practice research. Therefore, it is suggested that it is difficult for researchers outside schools to introduce academic methods and theories for infrequent use in schools using a one-sided approach. Novice teachers tended to trust familiar ideas more, and in-service training adapted to the feature was needed.

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We investigated how an avatar's facial expression function affects users' motivation to engage in conversation and ability to understand a partner's emotion during online chat communication and attempted to improve the chat system based on the usability ratings of this function. In Experiment 1, 15 pairs of university students chatted in English using both an emoticon-input facial expression system and a non-facial expression system. The evaluation of the systems' usability indicated that the emoticon-input system was not superior to the non-facial expression system. The emoticon-input system was thus modified to an icon-input system to improve its usability. In Experiment 2, 16 pairs of students chatted in Japanese using both the icon-input facial expression system and the non-facial expression system and guessed their partner's emotional states during the chat. Participants found it easier to guess their partner's emotions when using the facial expression system. We discuss the outcomes and limitations of our experiments for future research.

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