MONTHLY NEWS
February 1998

Videophone Classes for Hospitalized Students

Advances in multimedia technology are enabling hospitalized children to participate in classes that are taught at schools. Last year, the city of Koshigaya in Saitama Prefecture initiated a program linking an elementary school with a hospital by videophone, and three other Japanese cities are now gearing up to offer interactive links of their own.

Koshigaya became the first city in Japan to give hospitalized children a chance to take part in laboratory experiments and other classes that until now couldn't be held outside the school.

This program is part of the Education Ministry's project to develop multimedia teaching systems. The other cities planning to connect hospitalized kids with local schools are Sapporo (Hokkaido Prefecture), Sendai (Miyagi Pref.), and Osaka (Osaka Pref.).

In Koshigaya, a fiber-optic link was set up to carry images and sound between Higashi Koshigaya Elementary School and Koshigaya Municipal Hospital. The third class to be held using this videophone connection took place on December 11, 1997, when two hospitalized fifth graders, Nozomi Kitahara and Hiromi Yabe, joined 33 students at the school for a scientific experiment on the movement of a pendulum.

The class started with four students at the school--chosen to serve as narrators--introducing themselves to Nozomi and Hiromi, and the students proceeded to carry out the experiment together.

They recorded the time that the pendulum took to swing back and forth 10 times, and observed any differences when the angle from which the weight is released was changed. The groups at the school and hospital regularly checked the TV screen to see how the other was doing.

Yuto Tachibana, one of the four narrators, said, "Communicating over a TV screen made me a bit nervous, but I think I'll get better once I get used to it."

The two hospitalized girls said the joint lesson was a lot of fun, giving them a chance to interact with other kids their own age.

There are plans for videophone classes to be carried out regularly in Koshigaya from now on, about two hours every week. The Education Ministry eventually hopes to set up similar arrangements with schools outside Japan; it's studying a proposal to link Japanese schools with nearly 40,000 schools around the world.

Photos: (Top) Fifth graders at Higashi Koshigaya Elementary School carry on a science class with Nozomi Kitahara and Hiromi Yabe at Koshigaya Municipal Hospital; (above) Erisa Morita talks to the two girls through a microphone. (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun)