March 6, 2013
Hitachi Solutions

TOKYO, March 6, 2013 - Hitachi Solutions, Ltd. today announced it has developed a social studies program aimed at fostering Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy among elementary school students. The program was developed with the cooperation of Career Link, Inc., a consulting company that focuses on CSR initiatives in education. The company conducted classroom lessons based on the program at two Tokyo area schools in February 2012-Wada Public Elementary School in Suginami Ward and Daini-Kameido Public Elementary School in Koto Ward.

Hitachi Solutions has been conducting classroom lessons at elementary schools since fiscal 2011, as part of its CSR initiatives in the field of education. In this fiscal year, Hitachi Solutions revised the course materials to develop a social studies program that explores information technology (IT) in modern life, highlighting IT for the future. The program is designed to augment a fifth-grade social studies curriculum unit that explores today's information society and how it affects people's lives. The program is implemented in two parts, with an introductory lesson taught by an elementary school teacher followed by a classroom lesson taught by an employee of Hitachi Solutions.

The program incorporates elements of social studies, IT education, and career education, and is aimed at fostering students' interest in IT that supports social infrastructure, and fostering ICT literacy that is valuable to students now and in the future.

The classroom lesson taught by a volunteer employee of Hitachi Solutions is conducted using a StarBoard interactive whiteboard, a Hitachi Solutions product, linked to tablet devices. This enables the instructor to display and pose questions on the whiteboard, for students to answer using tablets. In this way, answers can be shared on the whiteboard to facilitate interactive learning.

Hitachi Solutions aims to foster children's interest in IT through classroom lessons that give children the opportunity to explore the conveniences delivered by IT in their daily lives and examine how IT can be used to make people's lives better. The company hopes that such lessons will assist primary school education by making children more aware of the role in their lives played by IT, which is often taken for granted, while helping to foster future IT human resources who are needed to develop a healthy IT society.

Hitachi Solutions endeavors to address global-scale social issues through its business, and will continue to conduct classroom lessons based on the programs and content developed for schools that meet the needs and expectations of society.

• Teacher's Guide with detailed instruction plan
• Slides and visual materials with generous use of photographs and illustrations
• Worksheet to enhance student learning

The children of today have been raised as so-called "digital natives." Considering the fears about the negative impacts of the digital age, there is a need to broadly expose children to the digital world and equip them to recognize ethical issues on their own and make proper decisions. The lessons that we implemented in cooperation with Hitachi Solutions provided our students with essential information, enabling them to share ideas as a small group and among the entire classroom. Furthermore, the lessons fostered the children's interest in compiling and disseminating information that is needed by society going forward.

Seiichi Fukuda
Principal, Wada Public Elementary School in Suginami Ward, Tokyo

The lesson was conducted to wrap up a unit on how to use information in the Grade 5 social studies curriculum. The hands-on lesson using tablets generated strong interest from students and the practical content made it accessible for learning about how information is used in our daily lives and society, and about efforts to use information. With additional content, the program would also be useful for junior high schools as part of career education, and could be used to teach about information ethics such as deliberate misinformation.

Takahiro Tanaka
Principal, Daini-Kameido Public Elementary School in Koto City, Tokyo, Japan

Introductory Lesson

Instructor :

Elementary school teacher

Theme :

IT in our lives

Summary :

• Students view illustrations about a day in the life of a student, to examine how IT is used in daily life.
• They examine the convenience delivered by IT in the case of a convenience store, bus/train, and a family restaurant.
• They explore what kind of information is gathered using IT.
• They study the flow of information use in the case of a convenience store, to understand the role of IT in information use.

Lesson by Hitachi Solutions

Instructor :

Employee of Hitachi Solutions

Theme :

Behind IT

Summary :

• Students examine the role of IT and aspects that are important in using information.
• With an interactive whiteboard linked to student tablets, students learn about information use on a map for a proposed convenience store.
• Students hear the perspective of someone who works in the IT industry, and learn how IT delivers conveniences and is making our lives better.
• They learn about the necessity of being able to analyze and use information, and about jobs that use information to achieve certain purposes.

http://www.hitachi-solutions.com/responsibility/

Career Link Inc. is a consulting company based in Osaka, Japan that specializes in supporting corporations and organizations to implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in education. The company has designed and developed CSR programs in education for more than 20 publicly traded companies. Career Link Inc. is also the administrative body for the Consortium for the Development of Career Education Program, whose aim is to support education through the spread of education programs that focus on contemporary social issues and topics, in order to foster children's life skills through the joint effort of corporations and organizations directly involved in education. See http://www.careerlink-edu.co.jp/ for more details about the company, and http://www.career-program.ne.jp/ for details about the Consortium for the Development of Career Education Program.

Miki Takano
CSR Promotion Department, Corporate Brand & Communications Division
E-mail: csr-contact@hitachi-solutions.com

Public Relations & Advertisements Department Corporate Brand & Communications Division
E-mail: inquiry@hitachi-solutions.com

Hitachi Solutions helps clients at every stage of the business life cycle to optimize resources by providing comprehensive system integration services that make the most of its extensive portfolio of on-site, cloud-based, and other collaborative solutions.

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