Japan Hosts IP4Youth&Teachers Workshop
June 9, 2021
The WIPO Academy and the WIPO Japan Office held a virtual workshop from June 1 to 4, 2021, with the support of the Japan Patent Office and with financing from the Funds-In-Trust Japan Industrial Property Global, on how to teach intellectual property (IP) to youth as part of the IP4Youth&Teachers project. The workshop was organized for the benefit of 44 national curricula setters, policy makers, schoolteachers and practitioners from Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam.
The IP4Youth&Teachers Workshop focused on the importance of teaching IP to youth from the perspective of promoting creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship to foster a knowledgeable future generation of IP users and producers. The workshop was held in English and Japanese, and consisted of a hybrid learning approach, combining distance learning with a virtual workshop and a final assessment. After the workshop, participants were tasked with preparing a lesson on IP, an IP business case proposal or a creativity curriculum proposal.
What did the IP4Youth&Teachers Workshop cover?
The virtual workshop covered a range of topics aimed at policymakers and educators including:
- the role of IP education policies in fostering creativity and innovation among the youth;
- practical steps for policymakers on how to bring IP education policy issues to the national attention using a business case;
- methodological approaches on teaching creativity and IP in schools;
- examples of young inventors from Japan;
- the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) as a tool for creativity; and
- practical sessions on developing learning outcomes and lesson plans for students on copyright, traditional knowledge, patents and trademarks.