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< | Digitizing and Editing Textbooks in Japan | >
> | Digitizing and Editing Textbooks in Japan (second draft)
-- By MaikoHayakawa - 20 Nov 2020 (first draft), 30 Dec 2020 (second draft) | | | | |
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< | -- By MaikoHayakawa - 20 Nov 2020 | | |
1. Overview | | | However, this system has the possibility to prevent publishers from introducing diverse views, as whether the content is “appropriate” and “neutral” is examined based on the view of the government. In addition, this process takes a considerable amount of time. “Most textbook projects run at least three years from the launch of the writing committee to the actual use of books in classrooms.” Id. This makes it difficult for textbook makers to promptly reflect the latest research in their textbooks.
4. Suggestion | |
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< | My suggestion to these problems is to digitize textbooks and allow people to edit them. Comments to the textbooks by others allow readers to widen their views and catch up with the latest research. One of my friends who is a former LLM gave me a paper textbook for Corporations class. He also got this textbook from another former LLM. They jotted down a lot of information, including their ideas, quotation from other sources, and the clue to the latest cases and research, between the lines of the textbook. Through adding information, they edited the textbook. This enabled me to meet diverse thoughts and think deeper about the issues introduced in the textbook, as well as catch up with the latest information. However, this editing and sharing process is difficult to be done in the larger community because copying and sharing physical materials takes a lot of time and costs . On the other hand, digital books can be edited and copied with almost zero additional cost. I use some e-textbooks for classes, too. However, comment sharing on digital textbooks is difficult to be done. Some e-textbooks have a function to allow readers to add comments, but don’t have a function to allow readers to share the commented version of the book with others.
Some might say free editing by people causes confusion for students by making it difficult for them to know which view is currently considered as appropriate by the government. However, this confusion can be prevented by making clear distinction between the original version (contents examined and approved by the government) and the comments added. If who wrote what is clear to the readers, they can have a chance to know diverse views and review them critically. | >
> | My suggestion to these problems is to digitize textbooks and allow people to edit them, because comments to the textbooks by others allow readers to widen their views and catch up with the latest research. Through my experiences in this semester, I learned that free exchange of comments will improve learning experience. I realized, like software and digital maps, textbooks and other educational materials have the character of functional goods that can be improved through anarchism production. First example is the use of wiki in this class. Exchanging comments freely with the professor and classmates enabled me to deepen my thoughts. Second example is the comments on the textbook. One of my friends who is a former LLM gave me a paper textbook for Corporations class. He also got this textbook from another former LLM. They jotted down a lot of information, including their ideas, quotation from other sources, and the clue to the latest cases and research, between the lines of the textbook. Through adding information, they edited the textbook. This enabled me to meet diverse thoughts and think deeper about the issues introduced in the textbook, as well as catch up with the latest information. However, this editing and sharing process is difficult to be done in the larger community because copying and sharing physical materials takes a lot of time and costs. Digitizing textbooks makes it easier to improve them with zero marginal cost. By digitizing textbooks and letting learners to use wiki to edit them, learners can improve textbooks federally and learn various points of views and the latest studies, which can be the solution for the problems discussed in the paragraph 2. | | | | |
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< | 5. Current regulations related to the suggestion | >
> | 5. Current regulations related to the suggestion and Creative Commons | | | 5.1. Digitalization
In 2018, Japanese government created a guideline which limits the time length schools can use digital textbooks up to half of entire class hours. However, the government has just announced that it started to consider relaxing the limit and digitizing all textbooks. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20201006/p2g/00m/0na/123000c
5.2. Copyright Law | |
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< | Japanese copyright law treats a textbook as a work that is subject to copyright. Basically, the author of a work has “the right to preserve the integrity of that work and its title, and is not to be made to suffer any alteration, cut, or other modification.” Japanese Copyright Act §20(1). http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?ft=1&re=01&dn=1&x=0&y=0&co=01&ia=03&ja=04&ky=copyright&page=14 Editing (adding comments to) textbooks is likely to be considered as alternation or other modification.
As an exception to §20(1), §20(2)(i) and §33(1) permits “the alteration of a written character or word, or any other modification made to a work when it is exploited” in “a textbook”, if it “is found to be unavoidable for the purpose of school education.” However, “a textbook” here is explicitly defined as “meaning a textbook authorized by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology or a textbook under the authorship of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.” §33(1). Therefore, it seems difficult to think “a textbook” includes a textbook that is edited by people after the government’s authorization. However, the purpose of §20(2)(i) is to prevent the author's right from limiting educational opportunities. As discussed above, sharing comments on textbooks with others is an important way to educate students through providing chances to know diverse thoughts and latest ideas. This matches with the purpose of §20(2)(i). I believe the Act should be modified to clearly allow people to edit textbooks. | >
> | Japanese copyright law treats a textbook as a work that is subject to copyright. Basically, the author of a work has “the right to preserve the integrity of that work and its title, and is not to be made to suffer any alteration, cut, or other modification.” Japanese Copyright Act §20(1). http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?ft=1&re=01&dn=1&x=0&y=0&co=01&ia=03&ja=04&ky=copyright&page=14 Editing (adding comments to) textbooks is likely to be considered as alternation or other modification. Under current Japanese copyright law, learners need to ask for each author’s consent, if they want to edit textbooks and share the edited version with others. Since textbooks should be improved federally, current Japanese regulation is not suitable for textbooks.
5.3. Creative Commons
Learning from the projects in other countries and Japan, I believe Japanese government should require textbook authors to make the textbooks available online and free to be edited, through using Creative Commons licenses. MIT Open Course Ware is the great example of federally managed educational resources using Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA). One of the domestic examples is the textbooks made by Linux Professional Institute Japan (LPI-Japan): it made the textbooks for its certification programs public with Creative Commons license(CC BY-NC-ND). It has been said that this project enabled LPI-Japan to increase the number of learners and successfully build learners' community. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/johokanri/58/5/58_343/_pdf Japanese government can learn from these examples when digitizing the textbooks to make the textbooks federally managed. The government should require authors to give Share Alike license and allow learners to edit and improve the textbooks. LPI-Japan’s example is No Derivatives, but I think it is important to allow the learners to transform the textbooks with Share Alike licenses because editing process is the important way to learn based on my experience discussed in paragraph 4. | | | 6. Conclusion | |
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< | In conclusion, I believe digitizing and allowing people to edit textbooks can be a way to improve them because such textbooks will give students chances to learn diverse and new ideas. In order to make this happen, current copyright law should be modified.
Why shouldn't wikis be used, as we use them here, to allow for all the flexibility of commentary and annotation you are seeking, along with all the benefits of having the original documents available?
The best route to improvement is to get a little beyond the Japanese domestic situation to compare with the approaches to "open educational resources" elsewhere in the world, including the MIT Open Courseware approach, the adoption of the MIT curriculum for use and modification throughout India, the requirement for open access scientific publication in the US in connection with federally-supported research (championed in the Senate by Hillary Clinton). You might also consider the role of Creative Commons copyright licensing, and the use of "copyleft" "share-alike" licensing in particular, in relation to these developments. If Japanese government regulations required the use of CC licensing on textbooks, would the rest of these developments not tend to follow automatically?
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> | In conclusion, I believe digitizing and allowing people to edit textbooks can be a way to improve them because such textbooks will give students chances to learn diverse and new ideas. In order to make this happen, textbook authors should use Creative Commons licenses and allow learners to improve their textbooks. | | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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