In 2016 the Information Planning Division of Ogaki-shi requested to cooperate with IAMAS to cultivate IT knowledge in children, and that became the opportunity for this collaboration. Based on the meetings with Ogaki-shi, using the previous fiscal years course results and tasks as a foundation, we progressed with project research at our school for a children oriented course. Furthermore, our school also managed things such as the PR materials.

Continuing on from the last fiscal year, the master’s project seminar “Collaborative Design Research Project” (managing professors: Professor Nobuya Suzuki, Professor Kyo Akabane), the planning, drafting, management and PR of the workshop was organized.
The plan for this fiscal year, “Hello world,” is a workshop that whilst using a string telephone to learn about the mechanisms of transmission, allows one to think about communication. This workshop was held with the target audience being 3rd to 6th year elementary school students. As for the origin of the plan, the background lies in the fact that the opportunities that even elementary school students have to interact with smartphones and the internet have increased. The objective is to learn about the mechanisms of transmission technologies especially now where it is no exaggeration to say that they are considered a form of infrastructure, and to consider the difficulties of media mediated communications.
Through using the string telephones, the participants experienced a form of communication that differed from times when they would converse face-to-face. With string telephones it is not possible for either party to speak at the same time. Additionally, it becomes a conversation with only your companion connected by string. Based on the exchange of messages mediated by media termed “string telephone,” participants experienced “manners of production” according to the characteristics of media, and the goal was to devise their own ways of sending and receiving messages.