School of Fun for Children in Fukushima

Please find a Japanese version of this report here.

During the Japanese three-day weekend in February 2019, we will hold our next winter camp, Academy Camp 2019 Winter "Automation for Girls - Kawaii Can Be Automated!", at Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), Keio University, Fujisawa City, Kanagawa, Japan.

But why "Automation for Girls"? 

We all know that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is one of the keys to the future of our children. Often, we add Art, and make it STEAM. Hence, a STEAM girl (paying homage to "STEAMBOY", a film by Katsuhiro Otomo, the director of "AKIRA").

Becoming a STEAM girl looks hard in Japan. We have been surprised by the recent news on some Japanese medical schools having been accused of suppressing the number of their female students by manipulating the scores of their entrance exams for years. While we, Academy Camp, would never do such things, but it is true that our recent camps have had far less girl participants than boys, after we became more active on STEAM activities. Does it mean our camps or science in general do not attract girls and/or their parents? Perhaps the whole Japanese society has been trapped in some old norm. In any case, it is apparent that our Japanese culture has suppressed female activities in science, and we need to do something about it.

This "Automation for Girls" camp is one of our answers. In the camp, the mechanism behind our senses of kawaii (cuteness) is pursued, and we will challenge ourselves to create the most kawaii robotic movements and sounds. But we are not trying to stereotype girls. This love for kawaii might look special to women, but men also share it. So we welcome boys, too, to our "Automation for Girls" camp.

Indeed, it seems as if we will actually have slightly more boys than girls in the camp, including high-school student sub-leaders in addition to elementary and junior-high school students, the target ages for this camp. But we have successfully attracted more girls compared to our past recent camps focusing on STEAM activities.

HELP CHILDREN BECOMING STEAM GIRLS OR BOYS

This is a year-end season, and the Year-End Campaign at GlobalGiving is ongoing until December 31. We would really appreciate if you could take this great opportunity to help children in Fukushima and Academy Camp.

Our camp activities started because of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima since March 2011. Our hearts have never been changed on our motivation. We see that a long-term solution is to bring up young leaders from Tohoku region. That is why we have been lately focusing on children's STEAM activities. Please help children becoming STEAM girls or boys, so that they will be able to tackle problems surrounding them by themselves.

Links:

• Academy Camp Facebook Page in English

Please find a Japanese version of this report here.

We have held our second summer camp this year on Aug. 20-24 at Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), Keio University, in Fujisaway City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The camp was named "OK Google, Do My Homework!" Term 2, where we again tried to automate children's homework such as math drills and book reports, through which we let children learn by experiments what can and cannot be automated in the context of human intellectual activities with today's technology.

24 elementary, junior high and high school students participated in this camp. They went through "unplugged machine learning" experience with matchsticks, tried some automated comic dialogues by programming Google Assistant with IFTTT (If This Then That), which they applied when fully automating math drills with voice commands, solved a puzzle competing with computers just to see that computers are better at those things (although this time children managed to get the highest possible points in the puzzle, so they tied with a computer program), and had fun with many team-building games, including watermelon bust, in which they also learned what it is like to conduct a scientific research (repetitively verifying and refining their hypotheses).

On the third day, they went to Yokohama, played "Yokohama Station Sci-Fi Mystery" game that reproduces the future world of "Yokohama Station Sci-Fi" where 98% of Japan's main island is covered with Yokohama Station (a comical extension of the fact that the station has been under construction for more than one hundred years). Most of them also visited the China Town in Yokohama, and enjoyed Chinese cuisine.

On the fourth day, we welcomed 6-dim+, a group of improvisational theatre artists, as usual for our summer camps. Again, they gave us wonderful opportunities, with many smiles and laughters, to think about and work with others.

On the last day, we let children think about setting homework for their own future. We set the due date to be August 2038, or 20 years from now. We let them imagine what changes will be made in the society, especially through automation. Then we encouraged them to include some numbers in their assignments, stating how much or how early they would like to achieve their goals. Then we suggsted that they change those numbers to be 10 times bigger, higher or earlier. Surely their minds started working really hard to think how they can achieve their boosted goals.

We have received many messages from their parents after they got home. One of the parents wrote that she was surprised to see her son being so positive and forward-looking after coming back from the camp. We are so glad. The camp was a wonderful experience for both children and us.

SUPPORT US ON GLOBALGIVING RECURRING MATCH CAMPAIGN on SEPT. 24-28

Please support us continue to support those wonderful children getting ready for the future, through GlobalGiving's recurring match campaign, where $20,000 incentive fund is used for matching 100% for the first month of new monthly donations (the donations need to continue at least for four month, so it is effectively like 25% match in total). The campaign starts on Monday, Sept. 24 and ends on Friday, Sept. 28, 2018. Please take this great opportunity to be part of us, and let's make difference together.

Links:

• Academy Camp Facebook page in English