PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture
Chapter 2. Promotion of Lifelong Learning
2 Development of Infrastructures for Lifelong Learning
(6) Transformation of Educational and Cultural Facilities into "Intelligent Facilities"
Educational and cultural facilities are expected to serve as
infrastructures for lifelong learning activities. There is a need to explore
new concepts for these facilities to enable them to function as such infrastructures.
In 1988, the Ministry started a study project on transforming educational and
cultural facilities into so-called "intelligent facilities" and published a report
on this study in March 1990.The report defines the characteristics of "intelligent
facilities" as: (1) facilities and environments offering a variety of learning
activities, (2) those which are comprehensive in that different units closely
cooperate with each other, (3) those furnished with information and communication
equipment, as well as information processing functions, and (4) those which are
rich and comfortable. On the basis of this report, the Ministry began to commission
several local boards of education to carryout pilot studies on "intelligent facilities" in
1991.