Section 7: Policy & role of ecology in sustaining innovation

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

session 6--School context and innovation

This session is about School context and innovation and can be divided into several parts: School background,School strategies,Principal leadership,School ICT infrastructure and Government and community support.

We group first analyzed the example from the SITES-ME. We forcused on the ES001: Cooperrative Project Using Telecommunication Tools to Study the Climate and Weather. Four schools participated in this innovative co-operative project. Every weekday, pupils from different schools had to share introduce meteorological data in the Internet to them with the partner schools. Then they finally carried out comparative research projects on weather variables. This project had various objectives, from conceptual learning, mastery of use of different measurement tools, handling and making sense of data to facilitation of cooperative learning with virtual cooperative groups. Teachers provided suggestions and guidance for students learning, whereas students working in groups made the final decisions of what they wanted to learn and how they were going to do. The school background of this case is a strong educational vision and experience in Innovation and ICT use. This is also a case with strategies in establishing new teams for implementation, with visionary leader, with mobile computing capability and student access beyond class contact and general government policy support appeared to be relatively emergent in terms of teachers' and students' roles.

Besides, we have done some reach about the School context and innovation of mainland China and found that most school backgrounds of the schools in mainland China are council schools and alignment with government education policy. The schools forcus more on exam scores than ICT or innovation and have a traditional pedagogical practices. Though some of the principals agree with the innovation in education, they pay more attention to that if the students can pass the Matriculation Exam. This schools do have the ICT infrastructure but the use of ICT in education is just a face job and teachers care more about publishing papers rather than using ICT in teaching. Also, the government has the policy to support the innovation in school. However, as the college entrance examination system in mainland is not change, principals and teachers still prefer the traditional pedagogy.

Here is a web side about characteristics of the Higher Education in Mainland China: http://international.vlex.com/vid/characteristics-education-mainland-taiwan-228050335

=========================================
By Group

session 5--Exploring roles of curriculum innovative practices using IPPUT

After analysis the case from M2, we found an article about the “Leading curriculum innovation in primary schools ”, it is quite long.

Download: Leading curriculuminnovation in primary schools.pdf

Source: Management in Education, v25 n3 p119-124 Jul 2011



This report seeks to examine the leadership challenges posed by the implementation of curriculum innovation in primary schools. 
Aim of the project
−  the skills, processes and practices that are required in leadership for successful curriculum 
innovation in primary schools; and 
−  the extent to which schools are currently prepared for curriculum innovation 
Project methodology 

The project employed a blended methodology based on interviews, observations, and documentary analysis, in order to produce rich data. The five main aims of the project are posited in the following research questions: 

1.  What key skills are required in leading curriculum innovation? 
2.  How can innovation be encouraged and developed in challenging circumstances? 
3.  What are the main characteristics of best practice in the leadership of curriculum innovation in primary schools? 
4.  To what extent is there a link between curriculum innovation and school effectiveness and improvement? 
5.  To what extent are schools ready to implement the recommendations of the Rose Review? 
6.  To what extent are primary schools ready to implement the curriculum innovation that will be necessary at a time of strategic review of priorities in education? 



4 stage model for curriculum innovation 

Process diagram of curriculum innovation 

List of main findings of the study 
−  There was a strong sense that curriculum change is welcomed, especially if it allows and encourages innovation by the schools themselves. 
−  Leading curriculum innovation is challenging and complex but it is welcomed by headteachers, all of whom view the leadership of learning as central to their role. 
−  All of the schools reported the necessity of allowing time and space for reflection, evaluation and a carefully staged process of change with the whole school working in a unified direction. 
−  An ethos for change needs to be created which allows freedom for experimentation, supported risk taking and the trialling and piloting of cross-curricular approaches to teaching. 
−  Curriculum change needs to take full account and have a good fit with the school’s particular contextual needs and circumstances. 
−  A clear steer by both central agencies and individual school leaders is required if the important work schools have carried out with respect to planning, tracking and monitoring progress, is not to be lost. 
−  Teachers value explicit guidance in constructing new formats which capture cross-curricular approaches to learning as well as the skills and knowledge to be covered in specific subject areas. 
−  Regular meetings to discuss and evaluate children’s work as well as check on progress and quality need to involve teachers and all levels of leadership in order to ensure the widest constituency of knowledge on standards, assessment and monitoring. 
......
=========================================
By Andy

Session 5--Case from M2 (CN010)

Background：

This case describes a series of lessons that aimed at helping a class of P.6 students to learn about punctuation marks in Chinese Language. In this practice, the teachers made use of self-developed software and a series of software developed by The University of Hong Kong to help students to learn Chinese punctuation. While the students played the role of active learners in the learning process, the ICT acted as tools for demonstration, drill and practice.

Goals：

1.Help students to understand the usage of punctuation at the sentence level.
2.Help students to understand the usage of punctuation to increase the cohesion of the passage.
3.Help students to apply their understanding of punctuation into their spoken Chinese.
4.Help students to understand the notion that with the use of ICT, they can undergo self-learning and make good uses of resources.

Curriculum：

The innovation involved about 4 lessons; the following were the activity flow of these less

Lesson	The teaching activity	Use of ICT
1.	l  Pretest l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint presentation.	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
2	l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint presentation	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
3	l  Teacher presented information about Chinese punctuation with the self-developed PowerPoint	Teacher’s Presentation Tool
4	l  Students work with the software developed by the University of Hong Kong on their own l  Post-test	Student’s Drill and Practice Tool

Other Innovation in Curriculum：

1.School-based Curriculum:
The school started to develop its school-based curriculum in 1985-86. The first subject which had its school-based curriculum was Computer, with its first developed teaching package “How to apply geometry”.

2.Project-based Learning:
Project-based Learning has been conducted in CN010 before the implementation of ICT education in Hong Kong (1997). However, with the implementation of ICT, the nature of the project work in CN010 has changed. The students are now working on some more ill-structured, open-ended and cross curricular questions. They make use of ICT tool in searching information and compiling of their reports.

3.On-line Discussion Forum:
In the on-line discussion forum, the teachers would put some newspaper articles on the intranet of the school and invite students to comment on it. The students can either put their reflections online or e-mail them to their teachers.
Issues：
This practice can transfer to another school in two sense. Firstly, the other schools can adopt the ways of ICT being used in the practice: teachers’ presentation tool and students’ drill and practice tool. The kind of transfer can be easily done in Hong Kong, as most of the schools has its computer laboratory. Besides, there is a “Hong Kong Education City” website offered by the Hong Kong government, in which the teachers can download and share their ICT teaching materials here. However, if the other school would like to fully adopt the innovation, that is, they would like to develop their own teaching materials. Apart from the time and effort they have to pay, they should at least possess what teacher A mentioned: (1)teachers who were capable in using ICT, (2)teachers who were competent in pedagogy & (3)enough ICT resources in schools.
=========================================
By Group

Session 4--role of the students

Hi guys，
If you are hardly to find the case，you can access http://www.eric.ed.gov/，the website just like M2，a database all about the education，and the Search function is easy to use.
Link to case

ED253717 - The Role of Student Organizations in Vocational Education. Occasional Paper No. 94.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED253717.pdf

Now, with the development of information technology, teaching form changes a lot. Traditional text is no longer the only form, and the graphics, images, audio, video, animation and other teaching methods gradual to join in. At the same time, there has been more electronic materials, electronic libraries builded to use in daily education. These flexible and efficient information dissemination greatly enriched teaching resources, mobilize the enthusiasm of students, enhance student learning flexibility and initiative. With the rapid development of information technology,to improve teaching efficiency, teachers should pay attention to student's role changes.


Firstly, students should change from listeners to thinkers.
Secondly, students change from passive recipients of information information intoinitiatives .
Finally, students change from a educational information user into a information  discoverer and designers.
This is the main three changes of the students' role. Though the change of the students' role, they can enhance their ability of discovery problems, think and solve problems.
=========================================
By Andy

The Change of Students' Role

http://muse.tau.ac.il/publications/84.pdf

The paper analyse the data collected in ten schools in Israel which have ICT in unique ways and have succeeded in devising innovative classroom pedagogies and changes in teachers and students role and out comes. Table 1 presents a summary of the innovation domains and levels in the innovation analysis schema.

As we can see, most of the innovative practices cause a significant change in student role, who became Website constructors, teachers' assistants in ICT-related matters, or ICT projects managers. The students worked in teams to solve real problems and to accomplish projects.

Powerful new capabilities of computers make it possible to access, represent, process, and communicate information in new ways (Kozma, 1991, 1994). These capabilities make it possible to search and organize information, analyze data, represent ideas, simulate complex systems, and communicate with others in ways that were not practical or even possible previously. They also enable new ways of teaching and learning—new activities, new products, and new types of learning (Kozma & Schank, 1998).

Self- learner, team member, and knowledge manager are the three new roles for students and were often associated with project-based or inquiry learning. Students are capable to use the resources and on-line learning to learn by themselves without the teachers. They can learn whenever and wherever. It make the study to be active and initiative. With the help of ICT, students are divided into several groups ti communicate both in the classroom and after classes. Students just have to work collaboratively to move the work forward.The members have also to be active to finish the group work. The action they did just interact each others in the group. What's more, with the help of ICT, students are exposed to the knowledge by the global internet. They no longer waiting for the teachers to teach them the knowledge in class time, but manage and pick up the one they need whenever they want by reading reports, research studies, newspapers, or multimedia presentations that solve a real world problem, address a scientific question, or express personal feelings.

All in all, students are changed into a more active and initiative role comparing to the traditional education. They are possible to get access to the knowledge in various approaches and manage it under their own willings. Learning is now becoming a innovative work that full of creativities and no more a simple accpetence of knowledge.

References:

Kozma, R. (1991). Learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 179-212.

Kozma, R., & Schank, P. (1998). Connecting with the twenty- first century: Technology in support of educational reform. In C. Dede (Ed.), Technology and learning. Washington, DC: American Society for Curriculum Development.
=========================================
By Group

session 3 activity----How the teachers' role in change

Hello Groupmates，
I have read some articles about the role of the teachers. The articles may be helpful for you to understand the role of the teachers.


http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/teacherrole.html The website show some opinion of the teachers role from different people.
http://www.csun.edu/~meq75037/paper1.html This paper talks about the role of the teachers.


After read these articles I think teachers need to constantly update their professional knowledge and ability of structure students to learn knowledge, in that way teachers in the classroom should change from "teaching" to "study", concerning and respecting for each students, to achieve the goal of really "teaching" and "learning", not only for teachers themselves but also for students all. Actively participate in education training to improve themselves.
=========================================
By Andy

Session 2 Activity----How Can Success In Innovation

Educational Innovation is to achieve certain goals of education and innovation in the field of education activities. Educational innovation contains the education system, educational structures, educational concepts, educational methods, educational tools, curriculum materials and educational time and space, involving almost all aspects of the field of education. With the development of human society, education has continuously engaged in innovation activities, such as the establishing of schools, textbooks appear, multi-media use, they are all part of the successful educational innovation. For several reasons, the education innovation often will meet some problems

Our discussion is around the problems based on the article which raised by Joyce Wycoff—“The Big Ten Innovation Killers and How to Keep Your Innovation System Alive and Well”. Though the article we summarize the several ways to address the problem about pedagogical practice.

1. What is culture, culture is a driving force to any organization. Without culture an organization just likes a sailing without direction, neither as education innovation. When an education institution does not know which culture it has, Innovation will never be happened in such education institutions. They will develop slow, even stop. Only if the culture will be established with clear direction.
2. Equipment is also a big factor about successful innovation, good innovation without hardware support is just useless. So the government and the leader of the school should put more money on the basic equipment, that with these equipment, innovation class can be come true.
3. Company should have a good Innovative leader, so as education organization. If the principle makes an innovation strategy, that the pedagogical innovation will be boost. If the principle is conservative, so he is the Stumbling block of innovation.
4. Teacher is the soul of the education, if the teacher does not know how to innovation, his class seems so boring that no students will like it. To address this situation the teacher should be trained with innovation course, such as ITE.
5. To have an idea management system that students and teacher can communication online or make course more simple. For example, once teacher want to have a task out of the classroom, he can use the management system to give suggests and guide the students to finish the task.

Overall, there also many other measures to make the innovation successful, but the important thing is the new innovation is whether suitable for the current education.
=========================================
By Group

Session 1 Activity----ICT-Innovation Example

ICT is the synthesis of information technology and communication technology. Education ultimate goal is to develop the student meeting the demand of the information society. ICT in education main guiding ideology is to cultivate the students' participation enthusiasm, motivate them actively to learn. And with the booming of IT, ICT innovation develops speedy.

For example, the traditional translation teaching mode is that teachers teach in accordance with the teaching plan step by step, such as teaching some conventional translation skills, and then let the students do relevant written exercises. Through the exercise, teacher will find out the typical problems and analyze, evaluate, in that way students can benefit from what teachers find. The new technology has brought the new transformation of the teaching method, ICT innovation has certain influence on the effect and quality of teaching.

In translation teaching session, seeing and hearing IT equipment is actually to use electronic multimedia equipment. And another speaking equipment is used in the oral translation course. Students are interested in such a study and pay more interesting on practicing. In that way students have a high level of effect on learning than on traditional learning. That is the ICT innovation’ product.
=========================================
By Andy, QUAN Xuhui