NewsNews&Topics(2018)

Daiwabo Information System Co., Ltd.

Daiwabo Information System Co., Ltd. (hereafter referred to as DIS: Head Office: Kita-ku, Osaka; President: Yoshihiro Nogami) announces that it has published Conducting the First Programming Class, a textbook for teaching programming, to promote programming and computer education at elementary schools; and it will begin sending the free textbook to local governments, education committees, and elementary schools across the country.

Forward-thinking local governments and schools are conducting various activities, such as studying programming and doing research on programming education, to be prepared for the new educational guidelines for elementary schools, to be implemented in fiscal 2020, which make programming education compulsory at the elementary level. Various preparations are also under way for the spread of programming education, as epitomized by the Guidelines for Programming Education at Elementary Schools (First version), which the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published in March 2018. However, many local governments and schools still find it rather difficult to provide programming education, and have expressed a need for related textbooks and teaching materials; while the teachers who will be involved in such education need effective training to enable them to provide high-quality programming instruction.

DIS has designed, developed, and published a programming textbook to promote programming education and seminars for utilizing PCs at elementary schools across the country. The textbook, Conducting the First Programming Class, is designed to help teachers provide programming instruction using Scratch, the block-based programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group of MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with Intel Corporation. On May 25, 2018, DIS began accepting requests for the textbook through its educational website.

The textbook helps teachers conducting programming classes for the first time to teach children modes of thought that utilize Scratch as a thinking tool, while learning basic knowledge and the basic operation of Scratch on PCs or tablet PCs. For example, in addition to introducing important points for programming instruction, it explains how to create a program to draw regular polygons in math class, which fifth graders are required to learn under the new educational guidelines. It contains material that many municipal educational committees and schools can use in their current and future programming education.

Those requesting Conducting the First Programming Class between May 25 and September 30, 2018, will promptly receive a free copy of the textbook.

Further information on the distribution method is available at: https://sip.dis-ex.jp/news.html?id=205.

DIS sincerely hopes that Conducting the First Programming Class will help create an environment where children can utilize PCs more appropriately and effectively, and develop computational thinking, enabling them to take an active and valuable role in society in the future.
DIS continues to make vigorous efforts to develop the educational environment with the help of information and communication technology (ICT).

On Daiwabo Information System Co., Ltd.
DIS is one of the largest distributors of ICT-related products in Japan. With its unparalleled capability to procure products from major PC makers and peripherals makers from around the world, and its nationwide community-based marketing system, it will continue to contribute to the development of a prosperous society in harmony with nature, by providing reliable and high-quality products to every corner of Japan.
Further information on DIS is available at: http://www.pc-daiwabo.co.jp/english/.

On the educational website of DIS
DIS has created a dedicated ICT Education website, to help children acquire the skills necessary to thrive in a digital society. With the help of social media, we are promoting our activities to education-related institutions such as education committees and schools, and to dealers and suppliers in the educational market.
Further information on the website is available at https://sip.dis-ex.jp/.

On Scratch
Scratch is a visual programming language developed through the initiative of Dr. Mitchel Resnick of MIT Media Lab in 2006. Even programming beginners can develop a program by combining blocks, each of which represents an order, without having to learn computer coding.
Scratch currently supports 40 languages, and more than 20 million people from more than 150 countries and regions have user accounts. Users can create a wide variety of programs for games, animations, and presentations. In addition, they can share their programs and remix (access and improve) them in the online community offered by Scratch.

On computational thinking
Computational thinking is the ability to think logically about what design combinations are necessary to produce a series of intended actions, and to combine symbols representing such actions, in order to produce activities as faithful as possible to the designer’s intentions.
(Source: Guidelines for Programming Education at Elementary Schools (First version), from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)

*Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group of MIT Media Lab.
  Further information on Scratch is available at http://scratch.mit.edu.
*Intel, and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
*Company names and product names mentioned above are expressions, trademarks, and registered trademarks of respective companies.