The chairman of the Conference, Professor Oiwa(Faculty of Education,
Oita University/Director of Computer Center) gives the opening greeting.

Teachers and students from all around Kyushu area were listening eagerly.
Active questions and answers.

The panel discussion titled "Let's make use of the network to education."
Associate professor Yamashita of Oita University(Faculty of Education)
coordinates the session.
On the right, professor Kondo of Saga University(Science and Engineering.)
Teacher Uragou of Saga Municipal Doshi elementary school.
Chief Researcher Watanabe, Oita Prefectural Education Center.
Researcher Nakabayashi of NTT, Information and Communication Laboratory.
Why Saga prefecture this time? Because Saga boast of its top ranking in
Japan of saturation level of the Internet in the education field.
I didn't know of the fact. Mr.Uragou's role is to technically support
the teachers of his school who manage the class using the Internet.
Under the support of him, all the teachers in the school are at ease in
teaching pupils. This is the key point to spread PC education in schools.

By the way, the saturation ranking in Japan(consisting of 48 prefectures) is:
From the bottom, Tochigi, Kagoshima, Nagasaki, Iwate, Okinawa, Fukushima,
and Oita. That is our Oita is the seventh from the bottom. The statistics
couldn't be the latest, I wish so.

I felt strange, as many other attendants did, because here in Oita, we
have famous PC communication group named COARA and the governor is very
enthusiastic in spreading PC system. Since elementary and junior high schools
are run by cities and towns, there may be some difficult problems.
But Mr.Watanabe stressed that Information Education Center is always
encourages schools to introduce the Internet.

He also lamented that usually there is only single phone line in each
school which makes it difficult to introduce the Internet to the school.
I was very surprised to learn the poor situation of schools.
He recommends to adopt ISDN line to each school.

It is true the Internet is just a measure, not a purpose, but it is very
useful to bring up the positive sense of cooperation and field research of
the pupils. This is a typical voice from education sites, he concluded.

Preparation for the second day. Information outlet(10 base-T terminal)
is equipped at each desk of the lecture theaters, allowing instantaneous
connection to the Internet. I envy it, indeed.

Experts flocked together to connect PCs, projectors, and other gadgets.

The second day. Beautiful blue sky and autumnal color make me hesitate to
enter the lecture hall darkened by screens for the presentation.

There were two sessions on the second day: the first session was "How to make
use of the Internet in schools" and the second session was "how to connect
campus and local community through the Internet.

Mr.Yoshida of Oita Medical University(associate professor, a COARA member)
gave lecture about the present state of the usage of the Internet in the
field of remote diagnosis. "Actual use of the network" was his key word.

Mr.Dahran from Indonesia(left) and Mr.Chang from China. They talked about multi
lingual software in fluent Japanese. Mr.Dahran is very popular to COARA members,
isn't he? After that, a vivid female student of Miyazaki University made a
presentation under an unusual title "Is PC actually needed?"

This is me, making a presentation of "My expanded world through the Internet."
I looked up the questioners because the lecture floor was anyway at the bottom
of the hall. They seemed to be interested in the Internet life of a housewife.
I learned afterward that I was the first female lecturer in this conference on
the Internet.

Professor Akaboshi of Oita Bunri University. He is also a member
of COARA, he gave a lecture about how the Internet is used in ordinary family in
terms of informational behavior and information literacy. He also refereed to his
series articles on Oita Godo paper.

Those two days were very hard for me but I have learned much about what was
new to me.

Mie