MY PAGEChairman Chika Yamauchi
There are many classes and lessons for children offered for extracurricular activities. However, what are the skills that you really want your children to acquire, when you look towards the future, perhaps in 2030 or 2045, when your children are grown and have become adults?
When I reflect on myself, I wish I had learned how to speak English and calculate using abacus. If I could of understood English as much as I did in Japanese, I would of been able to expand my perspectives and enjoyed a lot more, experiencing a broader world. I also think it would of been convenient if I had a high level mental calculation skills. Having at least the basic skills of mental calculation like the arithmetic operations, they can be applied to a variety of things through further training.
I started an abacus school thinking that the mental calculation skills that do not rely on information technology would create significant value in the IT oriented society. However, I did not have the skills myself, and I could not teach the children easily. That is how I thought of developing the Tablet-based learning app, “SoroTouch”. More than 400 students, parents, and the school staff participated in the daily trial and error that were repeated in the development of “SoroTouch”. All the efforts were done from the viewpoint of mothers wanting to develop their children’s mental calculation ability. There were new discoveries every day, and I was amazed by the potential of the children and the possibilities of the people.
Like learning a foreign language, I consider mental calculation to be a skill, not an objective. We are improving the learning program constantly with “speedy and efficient learning” as the crucial key. We believe if you learn efficiently and quickly at the right age, the mental calculation skills can be utilized in many places, and the scope of utilization will be broadened through many new experiences.
SoroTouch will evolve significantly going forward. This is my way of contributing to the society and I devote my efforts to the development every day, wishing that the children who learned SoroTouch will grow to become successful adults and build rich and exciting futures.
Chika Yamauchi bio
Yamauchi graduated from Tokyo Women’s Christian University, majoring in probability theory. Joining the Industrial Bank of Japan in 1989, she worked for Citibank from 1993, and was engaged in trading derivative products as well as contributing to its development. Working among the worlds’ talented traders, she was convinced that those who acquire high level abacus skills presented the fastest and strongest ability to instantly grasp the approximate figures.
Yamauchi founded Digika Co. Ltd. in 2008 and opened an abacus school, “KaruTore” in 2011. The concept of SoroTouch was first implemented starting in 2014. While raising her own children, she visited many abacus classes and competitions around the world. She hopes to continue pursuing the necessary skills in the future world, as well as the applications of image calculation in our daily lives and fostering the ability of arithmetics and mathematical thinking.
