Back in the day when I went to grade school, we went into a "viewing room" and opened up the doors with latch and key to watch programs on science and social studies when we needed to watch TV for classes. But nowadays, many schools may have TVs in every room. In Japan, analog broadcasting will end, and all terrestrial broadcasting will be come digital in July 2011. Leading up to this, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) are providing assistance to purchase new TVs to schools nationwide. Moreover, according to the overview on the supplementary budget (proposal) for FY 2009 provided by MEXT not only includes assistance to purchase new digital TVs, it also encompasses installation of LAN in every class room. So it seems that equipping schools and classrooms with IT is well underway.

The "Elite Panaboard" located in the corner for "Solutions for the Entire Classroom" is a screen board that beautifully displays images from the projector. It's not just a projector screen, however. If you use a special software, you can use a dedicated electronic pen that also functions as a mouse to write text and symbols on the board or to call on to the screen diagrams installed on the software. The teacher can also project the educational material he/she created on his/her PC onto the screen, and conduct a mini quiz where students fill in the blanks. You can also change the font color and grade the quizzes right there and then, so this may make the class more fun and exciting. The staff manning the corner said that in comparison to blackboards, you can use many more colors, and you can also connect to the Internet, so the demonstration of the "Elite Panaboard" manages to really capture the hearts of children. In the lower bit of the screen you will find speakers, so just like with a TV, you can project audio-visual content. The screen is made of steel plate, so it is very sturdy. You can also put up documents written on the simili paper using a magnet.

You can bring the text hand written using the electronic pen alive on the board　using the text recognition function. You can also expand it very easily. Watching the hands of the staff conducting the demonstration at the booth made me think that it might be quite easy to operate once you get use to it.

On the right side of the "Solutions for the Entire Classroom" corner, there is a demonstration, which has applied the "HD Visual Communication System" introduced in the main stage presentation to the educational arena. The demonstration had established a communication with a satellite classroom, and involved shooting the screen of the "Elite Panaboard" located at the back end of the corner using a digital camcorder, and displaying the image on the TV screen via the network. I was looking intently at the screen, but I could read the small letters very clearly. The application of this system to the educational arena may prove to be handy in showing an experiment to children who can't get their hands on equipment or sharing images of rare educational materials. If you have 2 digital camcorders, you can use them to take close up images of the hands or of educational materials to give a better idea of texture, which will contribute to making the imagery more dynamic.

According to the staff in the corner, camcorders that shoot images in high resolution are key to the system as well. "Professional camcorders can shoot video beautifully, but they are harder to master, too big to use in the classroom, and expensive. But this system employs digital camcorders for consumer use, so teachers can easily master them."