CN012 is a co-educational secondary school in the New Territories of Hong Kong. This practice was first implemented in 2000.
There are 27 classes with a total of 996 students and 54 teachers in this school. Most of the students come from lower middle class families in the neighboring public housing. Two physics teachers, one laboratory technician and 35 Secondary 6 students were involved in this innovation. This practice was mainly implemented in Physics lessons. It addresses the importance of engaging students in designing some experiments that verify a mathematical model in scientific phenomena which is related to the curriculum content,
In this case, “Teachers told students that the five-year policy ‘Information Technology for Learning in a New Era Five Year Strategy’ boosted the implementation of IT in school and the use of IT in teaching and learning in this school. It was mentioned by the IT team that an additional teacher was granted to the school under the ICT scheme of the Quality Education Fund. This teacher took up part of the responsibility for managing the school network system and teaching teachers how to use some of the software. Furthermore, teachers also told students that the equipment for this project was also granted by the Quality Education fund.”
From the case, we can find during the last 10 years, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have provided a wealth of new technological opportunities, with the rapid deployment of the Internet. An ideal ICT policy should be sustainable at a national as well as at a school level. It should be cost-effective, cater to school goals, improve student achievement, enhance teacher quality and enable users to adapt to change. While the government plays the most important role in the formulation of ICT policy, it decides how countries are able to take advantage of the technical opportunities available to them and exploit them for good. And investment is constrained to be the important factor to influence the development of ICT in education. Besides the investment, public concern also is another important factor. 1. how to combine the ICT resources and teaching methods
2. how to develop digital learning standards.
3. how related staff to support the work.
Moreover, it is also very important to balance the point between the demands of improving practice over time and pressing public concerns such as accountability and equity, between the cycle of change in technology and the cycle of change in schools, between the skills of tomorrow and the skills of today.
The picture below shows the ICT framework.
From the picture, we can clearly see that the education practice base on three basic resources, the software such as a management system, the hardware like labs with a lot of computers or multimedia equipment, and the last is the human resource, for example the teacher who had be trained or an experienced the principal. This is the inside circle which called execution circle, these three points are the basic force to promote the education practice improvement.
And outside circle I called it powerful circle, this means the three points have the strong power or ability to influence education practice improvement.
Investment is constrained to be the important factor to influence the development of ICT in education. There are three key themes which are used as rationales for investment in educational technology.
1. Technology as a tool for addressing challenges in teaching and learning. Teacher of nowadays teacher, technology provides a new approach to solve the teaching problem that makes the students more effective in study. And spend less money than usual.
2. Technology as a change agent. Regardless of what is going on today, a change agent has a vision of what could or should be and uses that as the governing sense of action. IT makes the future be a much better vision, without technology the change agent can lose their way.
3. Technology as a central force in economic competitiveness. With the new IT developing, new innovation will be bring out, like ipad, iphone, that will change all the worlds' economic, at the same time, IT in education also will be influenced. New competitiveness will be rounded by IT. IT will take the position of traditional equipment, to be the new, powerful competitiveness
All in all, an ideal ICT policy should balance improving teaching practice with pressing public concerns, in that way, the circle above will have a complete framework system. And with the all important factor, the education practice will reach to a new level. ========================================= By Group
