virtual learning

During the whole trip, I got in contact with lots of teachers and scholars. In the last two days, I had the luck to go on some school visits with another two representatives from Scholastic and a Malaysian teacher. We talked a lot during the trip and at one point, Juliet, from Scholastic showed us this:



http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/expert21/virtual.htm


This is what virtual learning really means. It not only offers a big pool of resources and guidelines for teachers to ‘guide’ and students to ‘learn’, but also addresses the problem in Hong Kong- cater for diversity. The web package was designed in a way that it offered materials for learners of various abilities. That’s what e-learning really means. It allows the learners o explore further at their own pace and their ability.


Shouldn’t we in Hong Kong do similar things?

Conference day

I am excited. I am inspired, very much so and I cant wait to have this happening in the school with all the students and teachers. I hope they could share the same excitement with me, if not more.

I also got the chance to meet Big heads from UK and big heads from Malaysia. One big head is Lord Sutherland. He told me he’s good friend of our former governor, Sir David Wilson! He gave a very interesting keynote speech and he used an analogy of buying tickets to illustrate that computer is already a part of life. He used to buy tickets by telephone order and yet he had to press few buttons before he got on to the right channel and could eventually end up with someone saying, ‘the waiting queue is very long at the moment…’. It might be 30 mins before he could really place an order. But now, everyone could do it by few clicks online. So why stick to the old way of doing things? What a nice analogy telling people that our students are living with the technology and we just have to teach them in the way they are learning.


There is a big team of Malaysian officials from the Ministry of Education. They are now planning to use the new platform in ALL the schools in Malaysia. They are talking about hundreds and thousands of schools! What an innovative attempt. So we people in Hong Kong should catch up. We have been boasting ourselves as the most forward looking people and we can lag behind, still using talk and chalk!


There are really lots of things to talk about the conference. Let me just drop in few lines from my notes. They are spoken by different people, some are educationalists, some are just teachers in the school. Each of them is enough for me to write a paper on it. Whoever is reading this blog, do ‘think’ after reading each line and apply that to our teaching and learning context in the schools. I hope you get as inspired as I am now!


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Using IT in school - Ordinary people doing extraordinary things? Or just ordinary people doing ordinary things?


A learning platform should be fun, interactive, cool, flexible and socially involved.


Schools should reflect what the society is. Schools should then help students to fit in society. We should equip them with 21st Century skills.


Education is an engine for change in society; education should prepare students for change.


Information technology is no longer an add-on. It is the way we live now! We should take the young folk’s hands and head them to the future.


WE should transform the school so the students can use the platform to interact with people.


Professional development therefore comes during and after CHANGES.


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A goal in education - independence in learning but abundance in culture. There should be something for everyone. Allow and promote creativity! Teachers have to teach with creativity and students could then develop their creativity.


Examples of creativity learning:


Ask students to do a project: What can you do with the content in your waste bin?


Use the idea of a card game, think of a way to learn periodic tables


Get a Physics teacher in and tell students how to take pics of ‘motion’- a blend of Physics and photography


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Learning and teaching should be done in a mixed mode- bit of lecturing and bit of technology


Intellectual abilities are developed through socially/ culturally authentic tasks. Learning through making!


Learners construct, rather than passively receive pre-digested knowledge and understanding. ( I love this very much! That points out straight away the difference between instructional teaching and student-centered learning)


Teachers are ironically, very good risk managers. They avoid too much risk too soon. ( So brave, dear! School is already a very safe place!)


Intranet and eclass are different from a good learning platform. It is sort of like separating learning from life. We have to make learning and life together for our students. We then need a platform which is our students’ home page, the very first page they browse. So it should include all the social networking sites, like Facebooks, twitter, youTube etc. We should adopt a ‘one shop for all’ model. It is more like a blurring of social network and learning network.


Engage is the word. We have to engage our students in learning. We should then grasp the good timing- when students are heavily involved online- to sustain the momentum and fine tune their direction.


OH, teachers, are you excited? Let’s work together to create a real learning scenario that would excite our students too!

If you want to know more about the conference, here it is:
http://www.frogtrade.com/index.phtml?d=1308460

My trip in UK

I arrived at Manchester on Saturday night after leaving home for 20 hours. I was dead tired by then. Luckily, I could pick up some sleep and was quite myself the next day. I decided to grab some time before the conference to have a quick glimpse of the city.

My first destination was the museum of Science and Industry. Only then I realized or better say remember that Manchester is an industrial town. The museum is huge, something like the Universal studio but hardly charge a penny! Great job! It has altogether 5 towers, each having a focus, like 1830 warehouse, station building, power hall, air and space hall and the main building which is basically on textile industry. I went into the main building first.


The way the narrator talked about the development of textile industry in Manchester was sobering. The condition there at that time was so poor. The noise level was so high and the cotton was everywhere in the air, bad enough to cause you lung diseases, if not cancer. The factories at that time got child labour, getting children who were only 5 yrs old to work. It was because the factory was so cramped that only kids would save space in working. OH my god, imagine the kids now! They even complain of having not enough entertainment, life being boring. Words that come out from their mouth would be like, Why should I? Oh, consider those in the 19th Century please- why should they suffer?

When we were in school, we were always shown the living condition in Hong Kong of 1960s. But compared to the situation of Manchester in the early 18th century, things were far worse. We really have to count our blessing for what we have now!


What interested me after walking through the halls would be the cross subject learning envisaged in the exhibition and the display. It’s not only History; it could be English literature as we are shown ‘Hard times’ by Charles Dickens which narrated the hard time in Manchester. When the display is about the sewage system in Manchester (History again and Physics: motor system of how to pump the water), we have boards and displays about how we should treasure the use of water (Water cycle in Biology and Geography). Then we have global warming at the end of the corridor which is a big issue to discuss and be alert of!


You know what’s on my mind? I’m thinking we should grasp a theme and then do cross curricular projects like these for our 20th School Anniversary celebration! The museum director must be one having worked in education, if not a teacher! Well done!


The weather here is beautiful, cool and breezy. I look forward to the coming conference. I hope the conference can give me inspiration on how to develop e-learning in the school. ‘The world is flat! ‘ So if other people in other parts of the world are doing something good and innovative for their students, I see no reason why in the same time zone, we should not do the same!