November 1 to 30.2004
Sony Science Education Program for Children & Sony Science Teachers Association
- The Hasuda Minami Junior High School, one of the Full Awardment schools in 2003, staged the SSTA's third annual National Report Presentation Meeting on November 26. Hasuda Minami Junior High School is well-known for adopting as its school mottoes "If It Isn't Fun It Isn't School" and "Natural Science Inspires! If It's Not Fascinating It's Not Natural Science". Not limited only to natural science-related topics, the November 26 meeting provided open-study sessions on the general range of school subjects taught at all grade levels. Attendance included 240 educators invited from various other schools. Especially popular with those attending were the practical application classes by awardment qualifying projects that offered integrated study classes (on how we use energy) in addition to the main theme natural science classes. These were praised for their ability to stimulate creative ingenuity in children and thereby "foster children with an appreciation for the sciences." The classes taught children how to build their own fuel cell batteries, install them in toy model cars and use the cars to stage races. In addition to the integrated study and natural science classes, there were several classes related to natural science, such as ethics, Japanese, technology and health-care. Their inclusion showed just how meaningful it can be to offer open-classroom sessions covering general education subjects as well.
- The poster session was conducted as a presentation competition for the participating 28 schools, with three schools eventually selected as the winners. This approach helped the participating teachers to learn better communication skills to go along with the basic ability to present models and exhibits of physical objects.
- Ken Mogi, a senior researcher at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory, gave a commemorative temperature on "The Wondrous Relationship between the Brain and the Human Heart," is subject related to the field of neuroscience. The lecture was well received, a result due in no small part to the special effort to Ken Mogi made to present the content in a way that was more easily understood by an audience comprised of elementary and junior high school educators.
- Attended by over 100 educators from other prefectures, the third National Report Presentation Meeting was largely successful in achieving its aim to showcase open-class sessions and research featuring excellent educational content.
- A report presentation meeting for Full Awardment schools was held November 19 at Edosaki Elementary School in Ibaraki Prefecture. The Sony Foundation for Education requested the school hold the meeting as an independent local event to follow on its staging of the National Report Presentation Meeting the previous year. What was intended as local report presentation meeting soon took on the proportions of a national meeting, with the number of attending educators surging to a figure of 239. The broad grassroots interest in the meeting points to the strong commitment among the teaching community in Ibaraki Prefecture to "foster children with an appreciation for the sciences." Edosaki Elementary School was not requested to hold a poster session for what was intended as a local report presentation meeting. They held one just the same, with the participation by representatives from 14 schools across the prefecture.
- The SSTA's second Executive Committee meeting was attended by the leaders from 14 chapters on November 25th, in the run-up to the National Report Presentation Meeting held November 26.
- An exchange of information on the hiring of young teaching personnel reconfirmed the growing disparity in teacher hiring between the very actively hiring urban areas and the inactively hiring regional areas. The SSTA decided to increase the number of venues for the Young Teacher Training Workshop to five, with the venues in Aomori and Hyogo prefectures being added to the three located in Ibaraki, Nagano and Fukuoka prefectures.
- Discussions were also held on the coming program of activities for the SSTA Chapter Training and Theme-Development workshops.
- The Leadership-Fostering Workshop is holding Group Class Method Assessment Sessions that are conducted by each group's leader for the various local SSTA regions. The Chapter Member Assessment Classes for the Miyagi and the Fukuoka Kita chapters were designated "SSTA Chapter Training Workshop Meetings" and as a result were well attended by members of the local chapters.
* Supplementary Notes
Group Class Method Assessment Sessions
This is part of the group research program started by the Leadership-Development Workshop in the summer. The sessions involve the leaders of each group of trainees conducting sessions based on a specific theme that are designed help group members learn more about their research theme more effectively.
