Video Production as Knowledge Representation of Student Learning

With the support from the Quality Education Funds, many Hong Kong schools including primary and secondary have been granted to set up Campus TV stations along with the school curriculum. As the number of schools setting up the Campus TV station is increasing, engaging students in video production should have achieved some learning outcomes, though little attention for studies has been paid in this aspect. Reviewing the literature, Jonassen, Carr & Yueh (1998) suggested “students as designers” approach, regarded computer as a Mindtool; students being a courseware designer would learn how to understand, organize and construct individual knowledge. Buckingham, Grahame and Sefton-Green (1995) once suggested asking students to produce video outcome would enhance their understanding on a specific topic. Throughout the video production, students would go through reading, producing and reflection; at the same time the video outcome produced by students is a knowledge representation of their constructed knowledge throughout the process. The paper is going to explore whether video production will enhance students learning: during the video production, some important thinking skills may be enhanced, and the video outcome of the production is a representation of the collaboratively constructed knowledge.published_or_final_versio

Educational Leadership for ICT-based Curriculum Innovation

Education, as central to the knowledge society of the 21st century, must produce people who are able to create and gain advantages from the new knowledge. However, the question is what kind of schooling would be best to prepare students for life in the knowledge society. To address the demand of knowledge challenges, policies on information and communication technology (ICT) in education have been produced in many countries, in which educational innovations using ICT have been increasingly embedded within a broader framework of educational change. Curriculum innovation has been regarded as an essential strategy for educational reform throughout the era of educational change, and practices of ICT-based curriculum innovation have been advocated in recent years. This paper reports six primary schools in Hong Kong participated in a curriculum innovation endeavored to promote and engage students in knowledge building through online learning communities. Essential contextual factors associated with the curriculum innovation were emerged from the analysis of data collected from principals, teachers, and students. This paper also discusses educational leadership issues in connection to the curriculum innovation.postprin

Connecting Adult Learners through an Online Community: Challenges and Barriers

While online communities of various natures proliferate in cyber space, our understanding of the reasons underlying their success or failure is quite limited. Current study aims to contribute to this area through exploring motivating or inhibiting factors that influence adult learners’ participation in an online community. The virtual community under study was intentionally formed upon an existing physical community. Initiated by the Faculty, an online community was created to sustain and reinforce community of part-time doctoral students. Our study intends to explore into two questions: what are the critical factors determining members’ participation in the online community when it was built upon their existing physical group? What are the challenges or issues confronted by externally initiated communities? As matter of fact, there is a myriad of factors that might motivate or impede people’s participation in virtual community. Our research focuses on members’ need for and perception of online community which are considered as most crucial contributing factors of their participation. At the same time, we took into account users’ comfort level with and experience of using computer-mediated communication. Interview was used as the major instrument for data collection. Our study results will not only shed light on people’s perception and behavior in virtual realm, but also inform the design efforts to create nurturing environment for virtual communities.published_or_final_versio

Educational technology training workshops for mathematics teachers: An exploration of perception changes

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The digital divide in Education and students' home use of ICT

The Conference proceedings' website is located at http://conference.pixel-online.net/edu_future2012/acceptedabstracts.phpThe digital divide is a widely acknowledged global problem in the information age. The Hong Kong Government has recently launched a five-year “i Learn at home” program in 2011 to assist students from low-income families to purchase computers and pay for broadband services so that they can learn through the Internet at home. However, more recent discourses increasingly argue that the digital divide is not only about availability of networks and gadgets, but also about having or not having information. It calls for a refocus of the problem of the digital divide from a mere availability of computers and Internet network access to high order information literacy skills and education. Numerous studies indicate that the digital divide is a complex and dynamic phenomenon and the issue has been examined from a broader perspective. Given the many thousands of books and studies that have been dedicated to exploring the promises and potential of using information and communication technology (ICT) in education, the issue of the digital divide in this context deserves special attention. Students are now living with a sophisticated range of new and rapidly changing ICT tools. Thus, the digital divide in education, as an ongoing concern, should not be constructed only as an issue of technical or resource support. Unpacking the social, cultural and contextual dynamics of how students use ICT in and outside school, particularly home use of ICT, is important. This paper presents findings of a survey of 468 junior secondary students in Hong Kong. In the survey questionnaire, students were asked to report their ICT use in and outside school and perception on various issues related to contextual and family factors. The results of regression analysis indicate that students’ use ICT for learning or entertainment at home are significantly related to the variables of students’ use of ICT in school, students’ Internet literacy, formation of family rules, using ICT in public areas, parental permission, and parental monitoring. The results, obtained by means of ANOVA model, indicate that the variables of parents’ education have effect on the variables of students’ use of ICT in school, students’ Internet literacy, family cohesion, and parental participation and encouragement in students’ ICT use at home. Implications to the issues of digital divide in education are discussed. The study presented in this paper is a part of a Public Policy Research project entitled “Educational Inequality and ICT Use in Schools: Bridging the Digital Divide” funded by the Research Grants Council.published_or_final_versio

Exploring the role of weblogs in supporting learning communities: An integrative approach

This study explores into the role of weblogs in supporting preservice teachers during their teaching practice and the key factors determining their engagement with weblogs. Underlying our study is an integrative approach that puts weblogs alongside with other popular media in use. An online community was intentionally built with weblogs to facilitate reflection and social interaction among dispersed preservice teachers. In parallel, multiple channels of communication were employed for peer interaction. Weblogs were perceived as valuable in relieving isolation, documenting their experience, and expressing their personal feelings. Instant Messenger and phone were rated as the most frequently used media. This study sustains our conviction that the integrative approach is vital to have a comprehensive picture of interaction among a community. Our study deepens the insights into the distinct benefit of weblogs as educational media and informs the future development of an online community with weblogs.published_or_final_versio

Adapted design of multimedia-facilitated language learning program for children with autism

The aim of this pilot study is to help researchers construct an appropriate multimedia-supported learning program for students who have autism. The results of this pilot study assisted the multimedia learn program designers to pay attention to the need of the development of a clear and simple layout, multiple level of content presentation, and simple but direct audio instructions. The core conclusion is the significance of the need for caring individual differences of these students during the learn process.published_or_final_versio

ICT implementation and school leadership: Case studies of ICT integration in teaching and learning

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government launched a five-year ICT strategy in schools in late 1998. This paper reports the findings of the analysis on models of change in 18 schools striving to integrate the use of ICT in teaching and learning across the school curriculum. The study shows that the strategy adopted by a school in instituting such change and the resulting variation of pedagogical practices using ICT is strongly dependent on the school leaders’ vision and understanding of the role and impact of ICT in the curriculum, their goals and objectives for ICT integration, as well as the history, culture and background of the school and its general vision and mission.published_or_final_versio

What Happens in Project-based Learning?

There is an accumulating literature over the last decade on collaborative learning in various types of settings, from more focussed learning tasks to open enquiry to problem-based projects. Project-based teamwork was valued as students were required to work together for knowledge sharing, knowledge building and problem-solving, and thus provide them with opportunities to be acculturated as members of a knowledge community. Over the last couple of years, it has also become extremely popular in Hong Kong schools to assign group projects to students. This was often justified on the grounds that project work promotes the information retrieval and self-directed learning abilities of students; collaborative learning is good and students should learn to collaborate with each other. However, as a pedagogical strategy, very little is known about the actual impact of group projects on learning in Hong Kong and whether the assumed advantages and expected learning outcomes do come about. Is group-based projects the panacea for the evils of teacher-centred delivery? This paper explores the question “what happens in project-based learning?” based on the observations made during the SLITS (Self-directed Learning with Information Technology Scheme) project. The project involved 40 groups of students working on projects of their own choice, each group being facilitated by a teacher. There were several key findings from this study: 1. Participation in such a project may not necessarily lead to deep learning; 2. Learning to collaborate in a group is in itself an important part of the problem-solving process; 3. There are different models of collaboration and only those models which engage the students continuously in interactive decision making during the learning process would lead to collaborative knowledge building; 4. Effective collaboration is in itself crucial for sustaining motivation and interest in the learning process; and 5. Facilitation is required for guiding both the collaborative as well as the enquiry processes. This paper will report on these findings as well as describe the key features of good collaboration and good facilitation identified through the study.published_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon

Comparing Innovations: Educational and Institutional Issues

Based on the analysis of 83 case reports developed from the Module 2 of the Second International Information Technology in Education Study (SITES M2), this paper explored the contextual factors influencing change at the institutional level within which innovation took place. We identified six contextual factors including initiation, school background, principal leadership, school strategies, government and community support, and school ICT infrastructure. We then characterized patterns of findings on such contextual factors in association to the innovative pedagogical practices that had been in place in classrooms through cluster analysis and qualitative comparison, with the aim of examining the contextual factors contributing to the emergence and sustainability of the innovations to inform policy decision makers at all levels as a support for their policy and strategic planning.published_or_final_versio