Sharing Sessions for Primary and Secondary School Teachers

A school-based e-textbook and e-learning platform for Key Stage 1 (P1–P3) students: a pilot project
HHCKLA Buddhist Wong Cho Sum School

Our school aims to develop e-learning teaching kits through professional development programmes with teachers and other activities such as meetings and workshops. When the whole project is completed, a total of 36 e-learning kits in English Language for Key Stage 1 (P1–P3) will be produced, thus expanding the quantity and quality of existing e-learning resources. The e-learning curriculum design will follow the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council’s English Language Curriculum Guide. It will focus on the development of students’ interpersonal relationships, knowledge-building and experience. It will also help to develop the nine generic skills, and enable students to display appropriate values and attitudes. The design of the curriculum will be based on the text types in the Curriculum Guide. Teaching content involving poems, rhymes, fables and fairy tales will be designed for students for more comprehensive learning. The e-learning resource kits will also involve intervention and enrichment elements, so that students can re-do the online exercises to achieve the basic requirements of the course. In addition, there is an intervention and enrichment programme to help students with special educational needs. Besides the online e-learning materials, a PDF formatted e-textbook for each unit will also be designed which will enable us to print the PDF files as textbooks to enable students and parents to revise at home, or when their computers fail.

Our school will also invite a research centre to carry out the project research work. The centre will provide professional services in formative evaluation and summative assessment, the purpose being to collect data to improve teaching methods and enhance the effectiveness of learning and teaching in English Language throughout the project. The methods of evaluation will include:

• teacher self-assessment;
• classroom observation;
• after-class interviews;
• a learning effectiveness test; and
• a questionnaire.

Finally, the e-learning kits can replace the traditional English textbooks. However, e-learning will not replace ordinary classroom teaching completely — in fact, traditional classroom teaching can co-exist with e-learning. With the growing popularity of e-learning, the traditional role of teachers will also change as they become facilitators in teaching and learning. The students are expected to be active learners, and their individual needs will be catered for. The classroom teaching in some areas, such as group communication and team activities, still provides more than adequate training in an e-learning environment. We believe that, if e-learning and traditional classroom teaching can be adopted appropriately and flexibly, the effectiveness of learning and teaching will be greatly enhanced.

A school network for enhancing student information literacy across the curriculum
PLK Chee Jing Yin Primary School

From the academic year 2000, Po Leung Kuk Chee Jing Yin Primary School became EDB’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) on IT in Education, with the aim of providing territory-wide specialized assistance and consultation to all primary and secondary schools — thus acting in the dual role of a forerunner and facilitator in steering information technology development. Complementing the advances in ‘The Third Strategy on Information Technology in Education’ and fostering the sustainable development of information literacy, we applied successfully to the EDB’s ‘Pilot scheme on E-learning in Schools’ in 2011. In this scheme, we have joined partner schools, community resources and business sectors to formulate a teaching network for piloting new technologies and pedagogies in using IT.

In the three-year project, which focuses primarily on the P4–P6 curriculum, two satellite schools — Po Leung Kuk Riverain Primary School and S K H Kei Fook Primary School —are amalgamated to design collaboratively English and Mathematics pedagogies infused with information literacy elements. It is foreseeable that two sets of information literacy curriculum resources will be produced for each subject per year, with a total of 12 sets being created in three years. With the provision of tertiary institutes’ professional expertise, we are making an effort to outline the framework of an information literacy curriculum and appropriate assessment criteria; and the practices which are developed can then be referred to by the academic circle.

A mutual active learning system for students with dyslexia, and new e-learning facilities
Sam Shui Natives Association Lau Pun Cheung School

Starwish Digital Language Laboratory is an interactive learning system for students with dyslexia which offers them an environment filled with sensory images and words to study. The system provides students with literacy and sensory training through progressive multi-sensory learning involving various interactive games. The system also helps them to overcome obstacles they face in reading and writing. It expands the depth and width of its games in the following three categories: ‘multi-sensory teaching’, ‘thought training’ and ‘word recognition teaching’. The system covers Chinese character rules, characteristics and structures, and focuses on words and their pronunciation. Through various meaningful interactive games, students can develop their perceptual functions, strengthen their visual and auditory attention, and sharpen their thinking ability. This project will develop new e-learning facilities and classroom teaching through visual aids.

Learning with a tablet PC
CCC Heep Woh Primary School, Cheung Sha Wan

Six CCC primary schools have participated in an EDB e-learning pilot scheme since September 2011. The main objectives of our project are to enhance the self-learning of students and cater for their learning differences.

We have tried to use a tablet PC to improve learning in two subjects: teaching Chinese using Putonghua in P1 and General Studies in P4. Our project also emphasizes the introduction of a new teaching strategy, so our teachers have held meetings and lesson demonstrations every month. In addition, we cooperate with various publishers to develop IT programs and school-based learning materials. The results of our projects are positive and encouraging, and worth sharing with other schools at this stage.

Using ICT in conducting programmes for gifted learners
CCC Kei Wa Primary School, Kowloon Tong

From the experience of developing a school-based curriculum, e-learning resources have been found to be very constructive in motivating learning and in creating a more engaging learning atmosphere. Consequently, three pull-out programmes for gifted learners centred around creative writing and reporting were designed: I’m Creative, I’m a News Writer and I’m a News Anchor. The use of ICT was considered to be a crucial element to enhance students’ knowledge of English outside the classroom and beyond the syllabus.

The e-learning platform developed for the three pull-out programmes offers interactive games and teaching resources which can be accessed not only by participants but by all the students in school. The flexibility of e-learning resources allows students to learn more at their own pace. The online writing and uploading of broadcast videos are administered by participants. Parallel to the development of the e-learning platform, multimedia and interactive newspapers are issued quarterly, which all students can read and watch; they can also rate the best pieces of work. In this way the platform fosters peer-learning.

Secondary schools

Collaborative learning platform for Liberal Studies
Christian Alliance S W Chan Memorial College

The Hong Kong government changed its educational system to the New Senior Secondary (NSS) Academic Structure and Curriculum in the school year 2009–10. Under this new structure, all students have the opportunity to complete six years in primary, three years in junior secondary and three years in senior secondary education. All senior secondary students have to take four core subjects, viz. Chinese Language, English Language, Mathematics and Liberal Studies. The introduction of Liberal Studies enables students to: broaden their knowledge base; enhance their social, national and global awareness; and think critically from multiple perspectives.

The learning and teaching of Liberal Studies is structured around enquiry into a range of contemporary and perennial issues related to six modules — ‘Personal Development and Interpersonal Relationships’, ‘Hong Kong Today’, ‘Modern China’, ‘Globalization’, ‘Public Health’ and ‘Energy Technology and the Environment’. Instead of using textbooks to promote student learning, Liberal Studies teachers employ a wide range of teaching materials including books, journals, news reports, research reports and official documents. The preparation of high-quality curriculum resources is very challenging for Liberal Studies teachers, and so a school cluster has been formed to share their materials in an e-learning platform. The platform also provides students with an assessment and feedback system. The aim of this session is to report, and share views on, the platform design and its development.

From do you think to what do you think: using interactive technology to facilitate collaborative knowledge construction
United Christian College, Kowloon East

The teachers have changed from a ‘talk and chalk’ approach to promoting students’ thinking and encouraging them to ask questions in the classroom. This sharing session is about how teachers are using interactive technology in the Chinese History classroom. Through the Learning Management System Lesson Plan design tool, teachers will make use of multimedia learning content and design various kinds of discussion questions, so that students become more involved in classroom interaction.

Sharing Sessions

Global learning for life — multi-city, real-time distance learning with Chongqing, Foshan, Taipei and Hong Kong

Wai-choi Lam
St Bonaventure Catholic Primary School

Pak-shing Au
St Bonaventure College and High School
Hong Kong SAR, China

We believe distance learning provides knowledge-sharing opportunities, leading to effective teaching and learning. It motivates students to become more independent and empowers them to learn by themselves through the Internet. As one of the pioneers of the distance learning project, we feel that our mission is to broaden our students’ vision by organizing real-time sharing with students from different cities.

In this session, we share our real-time distance learning experience over the last few years by:

• explaining how the distance classroom was set up;
• discussing how the distance class and teaching was managed; and
• demonstrating how our real-time ‘distance class’ with four cities works, and the dynamics that a host would need to consider to hold a successful distance class.

We also consider briefly some of the difficulties schools faced in this project. For details on the ‘Establishment of Distance Learning Classroom for teaching and learning’, please visit: http://www.jsit.net/dis-classroom/.