communities of practice
4.1 Empowering e-leadership
55. School leadership is essential to successful implementation of new initiatives.
We have a good local school case below illustrating how leadership has brought about the transformation.
Committed school leadership
The school heads of five primary schools under the same school sponsoring body shared the same goals and joined hands to develop the e-materials and teaching strategies for Chinese Language (Putonghua) and General Studies.
One school head who served as the coordinator of the cluster project, planned and scheduled regular meetings to review the e-learning resources developed together with all school heads, subject panel teachers, the partner publishers and tertiary institutions. Besides, regular class observations were conducted among the school teachers involved in the project to foster professional exchanges.
The case above highlights the importance of school leadership in sustaining transformation.
56. The role of the school leaders (principal, vice-principal/teachers responsible for curriculum planning) in enabling whole school adoption of e-learning can be summarised as follows:
● Integration of IT into curriculum planning and strategy for curriculum delivery in the school development plan, including the ethical and healthy use of IT;
● Effective school cultural changes among stakeholders (including school management, teachers and parents in particular) through consultation, support and development;
● Formulation of school policy and measures to address the impact of BYOD;
● Engagement of middle managers (e.g. curriculum leaders, panel chairs in different KLAs) in curriculum planning, infusion of e-learning, sharing practices;
● Provision of continuous professional development opportunities for teachers, including the development of communities of practice (CoP) within the school and across the school community; and
● Provision of the necessary IT infrastructure with appropriate technical and programme management support for scalable and sustainable development.
57. To enhance professional leadership and capacity of school leaders and teachers, different modes of professional development programmes (PDPs) would be conducted to cover the following:
● Dissemination of school policy and support measures to teachers, parents and students;
● Strategic planning for whole-school adoption of e-learning (including ethical and healthy use of IT);
● Experience sharing on formulation and implementation of school-based e-learning development plans and successful practices, e.g. pilot project experiences and in-depth case studies; and
● Site visits to schools to develop a good understanding of other schools’ practices and to form school networks.
The programmes would be principle-led and supported by hands-on sessions for the acquisition of basic knowledge and skills. To cater for the different paces of our schools, we will organise the programmes for all school principals and a number of middle managers for each school by the 2016/17 school year or earlier.
4.2 Providing a self-learning web-based tool kit
58. A web-based Resource Pack would be developed to support schools to tailor-make their own plans in accordance with the development priorities and needs of their school development plan. Drawing on the authentic experiences of the participating school leaders, we will refine the web-based tool kit by the 2015/16 school year to support all schools in devising their school-based e-learning development plans.
4.3 Enhancing professional development of teachers
59. Successful implementation of whole-school e-learning depends on whether teachers perceive and react to it as a favourable and viable mode of learning for students. We propose to organise a series of PDPs at the generic and KLA-specific levels. The programmes at the generic level aim to enhance teachers’ information literacy and help explore the potential of using IT for the enhancement of learning and teaching, and the development of self-directed learning, collaboration and problem-solving skills with the help of various IT-enhanced pedagogical approaches. Moreover, informative sessions on the opportunities offered by IT for learning and teaching and hands-on sessions on using mobile computer devices will be organised.
60. At the KLA/subject level, the PDPs would highlight specific pedagogical content knowledge or relevant innovative approaches that work for specific topics within the KLA/ subject curriculum framework, as well as the application of SDL.
4.4 Rendering support services
61. Other capacity building initiatives include onsite school support and district-based PDPs aiming at empowering teachers to adopt or adapt good pedagogical and technical practices in their schools. Teams of professional staff of the IT in Education Section will continue to organise PDPs in partnership with teaching professionals drawing on the experience gained in schemes such as Centres of Excellence on ITE, Pilot Scheme on e-Learning, Partner Schools Scheme under the EMADS and Support Scheme for e-Learning in Schools.
4.5 Building communities of practice
62. We also encourage school teachers to build communities of practice (CoP) within schools where teachers of the same subject help one another to use IT tools and implement related practices. The learning and professional growth that take place in the CoPs will be supported by a critical mass of teachers with relevant experience and expertise. Another mode of support is to form CoPs across schools. In fact, such CoPs have been formed, for example, on Liberal Studies to explore and update e-materials for learning and teaching while teacher librarians in secondary schools have formed learning networks to promote information literacy and reading via an e-learning platform among students and the wider community of stakeholders.
Action 5 – Involving parents, stakeholders and the community
5.1 Communicating with parents
63. To reach out to parents, we will launch a series of promotion videos on the issues related to e-learning and e-safety. We will facilitate early guidance for their children to make good use of IT in learning and make ethical and legal use of IT.
Parents’ information literacy should further be strengthened on issues related to e-safety, copyright, healthy use of mobile computing devices, and cyber-bullying.
With these issues being tackled, parents may feel more assured to encourage and support their children to take on e-learning and to excel.
Questions for consultation:
● What are the perceived challenges for the school leadership to plan for the adoption of IT and e-learning for the whole school?
● What are the specific knowledge and skills required for the school leadership and teachers to promote and develop use of IT and e-learning?
● What is the role of teachers whenstudents are highly motivated to learn with the aid of technology?
● What support is required for schools to facilitate students to make good use of e-learning to develop the abilities of learning to learn and to excel as well as to enhance SDL, collaboration and creativity?
● What are the key factors for communities of practice to work effectively teachers of the same school and from different schools?
64. Parents have much concern about the healthy growth of their children.
Children may be exposed to a variety of possible adverse influences on the Internet that may affect their physical and psychological health. To address these issues, the EDB will work with relevant Government departments and other community partners to provide advice on appropriate use of mobile computing devices for parents and students.
65. Children at kindergarten are expected to have a happy and enjoyable childhood. They are curious and like to explore the world and some parents may provide mobile computing devices for their children. To support these parents in giving proper guidance for their children, we will help provide guidelines according to the age level of the children.
5.2 Working with stakeholders and the community
66. To strengthen support for individual parents, we will collaborate with the federations of parent-teacher associations in districts so that they would work closely with schools on supporting their children in e-learning in an appropriate way.
We will work with community organisations and NGOs to provide relevant services to students/schools on healthy and ethical use of e-learning.
67. With the world-wide trend of BYOD in education, our schools should formulate relevant measures on the better use of students’ own mobile learning devices. The EDB will provide information for schools’ reference on how to set guidelines for both parents and students. Schools will also be encouraged to provide training for parents on the use of mobile computing devices in the context of education.
68. We will work in collaboration with other sectors, including the IT sector, local tertiary institutions and NGOs, to form community partnerships which will enable each to learn from each other and help foster cooperation to nurture gifted young IT-talents in our schools.
5.3 Leveraging community resources
69. Schools have adopted IT in education and e-learning over the years at different paces and in ways that suit their contexts and needs of their students. While the Government has provided schools with recurrent resources commensurate with their size and needs, schools may need to respond readily to the opportunities brought about by IT and to cater better to the needs of their students. With effect from April 2014, “Using e-learning (IT) for effective learning”
has been included into the priority themes for the application of the QEF. Detailed information is available at http://www.qef.org.hk/.
V. WHO WOULD BENEFIT?
Students would
● be motivated to learn with the help of IT, which would meet their diverse learning styles,strategies and interests;
● enjoy the convenience and benefits of mobile learning through campus WiFi access;
● have easy access to networks, e-resources and various online services including world-class resources and real-time information;
● engage in face-to-face collaboration and communication with a much wider learning community of teachers and peers;
● develop themselves into self-directed learners with better problem- solving and collaboration skills, computational thinking and creativity through more interactive learning experiences;
● become capable digital natives and learn to make the best use of technology to support their own development and learning and to be ethical users of IT; and realise their potential and develop career interests in IT.
Questions for consultation:
● What do parents expect to know about e-learning?
● What do parents think of BYOD?
● How to further enhance the capacity of parents to provide guidance for their children?
Teachers would
● spare themselves from the need to use computer rooms when all classrooms have WiFi coverage. They would also enjoy a much more convenient environment to promote e-learning effectively;
● spare themselves from the chore of fixing technical issues when the new service model for upgrading schools’ IT infrastructure is in place. Besides, they would not be troubled by uncertainties arising from the long-term maintenance and upgrading of school IT infrastructure;
● have easy access to networks, e-resources and different online services with one single account;
● have a much wider range of e-textbooks, e-assessment tools, e-resources and online platforms for teaching. Instant feedback and innovative teaching approaches such as Flipped Classroom would help teachers make the most effective use of classroom time;
● share knowledge in adopting e-learning and advance professionally through the establishment of CoPs; and
● enrich their repertoire of e-learning pedagogy through professional development programmes, establishment of CoPs and reflective practices.
Schools and school leaders would
● plan the maintenance and upgrading of school IT infrastructure according to their own pace and context;
● have greater confidence in planning to adopt e-learning according to their context;
● make use of better connectivity among different e-learning platforms and higher compatibility across computing devices to facilitate data exchange and management; and
● enhance their capacity through engagement with various stakeholders and the community at large.
Parents would
● have easier access to support from community organisations when these organisations could offer such support services through a more standardised, simplified and integrated infrastructure;
● be provided with guidelines to support their children in the healthy, effective and ethical use of IT in learning and in their daily life; and
● save time and efforts to identify additional learning resources for their children when more free quality learning resources and tools are available.
Hong Kong as a whole would
● foster collaboration among schools, the IT and business sectors, professionals, community organisations, tertiary institutions and parents to contribute to education endeavours;
● develop itself towards a knowledge-based society as our students acquire the skills to become life-long learners, together with their ability to learn beyond the confines of time and space; and
● build up a stronger IT talented workforce through nurturing students’ IT skills and interests in exploring problems and identifying solutions independently.