When we search for information via the Internet, we tend to combine the knowledge about a search topic that we already have with the new knowledge that we acquire through the search. Therefore, Internet-information retrieval may be considered as a knowledge-structuring process. In this study, the metacognitions that promote the knowledge-structuring process for the Internet-information retrieval, and the instruction for activating these metacognitions were discussed by analyzing the information retrievers' protocol in qualitative terms. The results revealed two metacognitions: the metacognition to employ the searchers' former knowledge and search experience to the information search effectively, and the metacognition to make good use of the information that is acquired from the search. Successful searchers activated these metacognitions; on the other hand, unsuccessful searchers did not activate them, but instead repeated entering the same ineffective keywords. In addition, when the instruction to activate these metacognitions was given to the searchers, some begun to activate the metacognitions. For further study, it is necessary to collect more data and analyze them quantitatively. This should yield an additional instruction for those who did not activate metacognitions from this study's instruction.

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In recent research of an educational evaluation field, learning involved evaluation is practiced instead of a term-end exam. It is known to executes peer evaluation as a useful evaluation method. However, the more the number of class members increases, the more evaluating all the others becomes difficult. It is necessary to devise a method of selecting the evaluator so that the evaluation is impartial. In this paper, we conducted an experiment to examine whether there is a difference in the evaluation that the learner evaluates one another or not. As a result of the experiment, it was found that in the case of evaluating one another, the evaluation is softer ("reciprocal effect") and farther from teacher's evaluation than the case of evaluating not one another. Then, we developed peer evaluation support system to execute the peer evaluation easily that removed "reciprocal effect". As a result of the assessment of our system by student and teacher, it was confirmed that our system is effective in peer evaluation.

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We have evolved a distance education system into the universal-design type which makes use of the simultaneous synchronous captioning system. Anyone can access these information and data anytime, anywhere, because all contents for faculty are registered in the server as captioned data. Thus, we have developed a new system which effectively combines and interacts video recording, slide-show, and caption. This simultaneously secures the whole contents of on-demand lectures.

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In this study I examined and identified conditions for developing conceptual understanding in the support provided by a computerized concept mapping tool. I compared the computerized concept mapping against its equivalent paper-based behavior, experimentally found that the computer mediated mapping was more effective in helping students to solve a transfer problem. In order to examine the characteristics of the two mapping methods I analyzed the diagrams created by the students on both tools. The diagramed boxes created on the computerized tool contained smaller units of information, often explicitly connected among them with lines, to explicate the relations among the units. This implies that the features specific to the computerized media, like the ease of unitization and the flexibility of relation-making appear to be responsible for its effect as support for conceptual understanding.

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Recently incidents that an intruder harms children in elementary schools often occur. It is necessary for school officials to build a framework that includes concepts of security. Therefore we will research a realistic system that indicates the proper direction of an evacuation for children when the intruder invaded the elementary school. But it is difficult for us to decide a policy of implementing the proposed system because large scale experiments are needed to evaluate such a proposal system. For that reason, we determined specifications of the system on the theoretical side by simulating motions of children in a school building. As the result of simulations, it became clear that a default position measurement of the intruder is more important than a tracking of it with real-time so that children can escape from it in the elementary school. It was determined that existing technology could implement the proposed system.

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On this study, a new teaching method was developed for the concept formation of automatism on computer for junior high school students. This teaching method includes two productive processes in which use a metal-turning lathe, the one process is controlled by a teacher's hand operation and the other process is controlled by the computer program. On this teaching method, the teacher requests students to present the differences between two processes after observation. The teaching practices including the proposed teaching method were performed to junior high school students. And the tests were given to investigate concept 'automatism' of junior high school students before and after the class. In those tests, questions are on mechanism of machine other than the metal-turning lathe controlled by computer. The effectiveness of the teaching method was verified by the comparison of these results. As the results, concept 'automatism' of junior high school students progressed after the class, and results of learning was confirmed. Therefore, the new developed teaching method confirmed effectiveness for the concept formation of automatism on computer control for junior high school students.

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The authors conducted a questionnaire survey on the methods for educational practice research among school teachers. Consequently, we concluded that teachers trust the opinions of those close to them rather than the opinions obtained from sources outside the school. With regard to educational practice research methods, the teachers had an understanding of both the 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 out-of-school researchers to introduce non-experiential methods and theories in schools using a one-sided approach. Novice teachers had more tendency to trust familiar idea and an in-service training adapted to the feature was needed.

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In this study, an online learning program was developed to give teachers practical knowledge with regard to making media literacy lesson plans. This online learning program enables teachers to interact with experienced media teachers familiar with the theoretical background of media literacy who have made media literacy lesson plans and put them into practice. Ten participant teachers interacted with experienced media teachers through a video-conference system, weblog, and face-to-face meetings. The practical knowledge the teachers acquired regarding media literacy lesson plans was evaluated using qualitative data. On the basis of this evaluation, it was found that the participating teachers acquired knowledge of the unique perspective offered by the concept of media literacy, and of the types of risks involved in implementing media literacy lesson plans, and how to avoid them.

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The authors developed a cellular phone application which displays information regarding progress and achievement of the tasks and division of labor in project-based learning in higher education. The ProBoPortable application works as wallpaper on the learner's cellular phone screen, and cooperates with a Web-based groupware. When a learner activates his/her phone, ProBoPortable immediately retrieves the current status of the project from the groupware database and displays the status on the screen. Classroom evaluation was performed in an undergraduate course, which confirmed that ProBoPortable enhanced mutual awareness of the division of labor among learners. Moreover, since the sense of community was increasingly generated, learners were encouraged to proceed with their own task because they were aware of the status of others' tasks, as and when necessary.

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In this paper, a new diagnostic system was proposed to identify student's bug rules in arithmetic calculation by Bayesian approach. The system automatically selects the optimal set of test items for the purpose of diagnosing. The system models the structure of bug rules as a tree graph, and calculates the posterior probability that each students has each of possible bug rules. The validity of the system was checked by using the simulation based on the real data.

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Virtual reality (VR) space has been used in education over recent years and various cognitive studies have examined the educational effectiveness of VR. This paper studied effective use of VR space for those who learn spatial meanings of English prepositions. In the experiment, we prepared three conditions about use of VR software for learning the spatial meanings of the English prepositions, above, below, on, and off and examined how the conditions changed understanding of them. The result suggests that VR software itself limit or control access to VR space depending on spatial meanings of English prepositions in order to learn them effectively.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of three methods on information ethics consciousness and information ethics knowledge. The methods were used for information ethics education; a lecture method, discussion without presentation, and discussion with presentation. In the lessons for high school students about copyright, the most significant improvement was observed in the discussion with presentation method regarding the information on ethics consciousness. There was also a high level of retainment. On the other hand, the other two methods caused less significant results in the information ethics knowledge. Improvement and reliability was found immediately after the lesson as for information ethics knowledge, however, they had a low level of retainment. These results indicate that there was a difference in acquisition between information ethics consciousness and information ethics knowledge. It was also observed that discussion method with presentation is the most effective method in information ethics consciousness, and that repetition rather than the lesson method was important for the improvement in information ethics knowledge.

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This study reports the progressive refinement of a course design for pre-service teachers in a public university. For supporting them to comprehend the new theory of learning and apply it to interpreting educational practices, we developed a multimedia material that described the best practice. In the first year of its deployment, students were found not to be engaged in cognitive activities we anticipated. Based on the analysis of their activities, we refined the multimedia material and further deployed a new card material in the second year. Results from the comparison between the two years manifest that the refinement made cognitive activities by pre-service teachers more constructive and collaborative. We discuss the improvement by describing how the coordination between the multimedia and cards facilitate collaborative problem solving.

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Questionnaires on the informatization of school education were sent out to 5,000 schools across the nation and responses were received from 3,869 teachers and 2,019 administrative teachers such as principals. Using their responses, the differences between types of schools, teachers' years of experience teaching, the providing of computers and e-mail addresses to teachers by their schools and teachers' gender were analyzed. As a result, it was noted that the providing of computers to teachers increases from elementary school to lower secondary school to upper secondary school, however, the use of computers decreases. The percentage of computer use is higher for male teachers than female teachers, and the percentage of computer use in class is higher in elementary schools. Computer use is more frequent for teachers with more than 10 years but less than 20 years teaching experience, and computer use is significantly higher for teachers who are provided PCs by their schools.

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