This exploratory study describes how 2 classes of secondary 6 commerce students in Hong Kong have used a web-based collaborative tool, Knowledge Community (KC) to build a project called “Writing up a Business Plan” collaboratively. Using a number of 2-level scaffolds, students participated in the forum discussion to build business plan. The entire process unfolds how students, facilitated by scaffolds and teachers, brainstorm business idea and mission, decide on the type of product, plan production line and eventually formulate a business plan. The sample consisted of 41 students and 2 facilitators. Students’ participation in KC was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The strategies, suggestions and the feasibility of adopting KC for projects in schools will also be shared, along with the implications and key learning points of this project. Copyright © 2004 全球華人計算機教育應用學會.

There has been an increasing attention to integration of project-based learning into Asian school curricula. And the notion of learning community is a heated topic for learning to learn in knowledge-based societies. Yet the cognitive research on using web-based learning community for project-based learning is still under-developed in Asian contexts Based on literature review, some directions in collaborative learning strategies are suggested in web-based learning community or ecology. Through a scrutiny of basic functional tools of a web-based collaborative learning platform called Knowledge Community (KC), the paper endeavors to highlight the significance of four senses of scaffolding supports (in Vygotskian terminology) for knowledge co-construction and pedagogical facilitation in groups of primary and secondary (Grade 1-12) students in Hong Kong and Singapore. Copyright © 2004 全球華人計算機教育應用學會.

Most IT researches in mathematics education are confined to classroom settings [5], ignoring the surrounding conditions for their practicality. In this paper, an innovative collaboration of three educational parties: teaching frontiers, curriculum developers and academic theorists, e.g.[1], are all involved.The 3 authors endeavor to: (i) address pedagogical, teacher-training, policymaking problems when the parties are functioning separately without mutual adaptation at present and share value-dilemmas encountered by the three educational parties in Hong Kong; (ii) adopt and examine an integrated school (hybridizing ‘top-down’ and ‘down-up’) approach in perpetuating regionalised IT school culture in order to consolidate forthcoming school-based mathematics curricula in Hong Kong and even other Asian countries in the next century; (iii) discuss some activities on using various components of IT in teaching and learning mathematics in day-time lessons and after-school activities by the new approach. Copyright © 1999 Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics.

Explorable areas concerning actual impacts of computer usage on various types of related activities after school on student learning, and relationship between time spent on those activities and student personality styles (in terms of social and intellectual selves and learning attitudes) have still been under-researched in local and international perspectives. This study aims to fill up these research gaps by studying 528 Secondary 1-3 (Grade 7-9) students, aged from 12 to 16, in a secondary school in Hong Kong in terms of a questionnaire to record their activities on using computers after school and to identify their personality styles in Hong Kong. By taking mid-term school examination results for granted, the study not only reveals correlation between examination marks and time using computers, but also depicts variation of their participating activities on using computers. Copyright © 2006 The authors. All rights reserved.

The study investigates the development of virtual classroom in secondary schools in Hong Kong from in-service teacher perspectives and focuses on teachers' concerns towards the virtual classroom and their preferences on designing virtual classroom. Quantitative survey data came from 352 secondary school teachers and qualitative interview data was collected from 8 of the surveyed teachers. The results indicated that major concerns of most studied teachers were lower stages of typical non-user concerns profile, implying that virtual classroom was still at the infancy stage of development in some secondary schools of Hong Kong during the research period. A minority of teachers, who exhibited high competency in information literacy and were competent users of virtual classroom, had their concerns profiles shifted to higher stages of concern. An analysis of teachers' paradigm for the use of virtual classroom revealed that most teachers still stuck to the traditional teacher-centered pedagogy and employed mainly receptive and directive architecture in teaching without using virtual classroom in guided discovery and exploratory approaches. Strategic plan and staff development program for the success of implementation of virtual classroom are finally discussed in this paper. Copyright © 2005 The authors. All rights reserved.

This paper attempts to explore into teacher perception of using information technology (IT) in education by examining four major domains, namely, teacher perception of their computer training, computer facilities and assistance available, their confidence and comfortability in using computer in daily lessons, and their perception of their roles in using IT in classrooms. On one hand, a semi-structured survey revealed that there were positive impacts of teacher perception on the usage of computer in classrooms and highlighted teachers' preferences of adopting teachercentered approach in teaching with IT. On the other hand, a semi-structured interview reflected that the teaching staff members worked harmoniously and school administration was supportive. However, cross-subject or cross-curricular collaborative projects among teachers were rare. Finally, some recommendations are made to promote the use of IT in teaching concerning school-based collaborative culture, conceptual and strategic issues in e-leadership and inter-regional / intraregional resource bank for teaching and learning. Copyright © 2005 The authors. All rights reserved.

The paper reports on 740 Primary (Grade) 5 students' knowledge building and sharing of e-learning resources in a recent project work, involving inter-school learning community of 4 prestigious Catholic primary schools in Hong Kong. By using an interactive web-based learning platform called Knowledge Community (KC) and adopting learning community approach of advancing both individual and communal knowledge through knowledge building discourse (Collins & Bielaczyc, 1997), the project helped gather groups of students from four schools, forming 72 communities to generate thematic discussion on environmental protection over a period of 7 months. Empirical data showed that students exercised higher-order thinking skills through interdisciplinary project learning in the Bloom taxonomy of knowledge (7.77%), comprehension (30.68%), application (25.15%), analysis (9.08%), synthesis (3.52%) and evaluation (23.79%). As a whole, the project has exemplified an inter-school learning community model in East Asia, with stresses on e-leadership in school's collaborative learning cultures, parental involvement in student learning and students' scaffold supports in computer-mediated communication environment. Copyright © 2005 The authors. All rights reserved.

In the face of heavy demand for private supplementary tutoring in basic education, the state seems to have adopted a consumerism model in the decentralised governance of mass tutoring, allowing students and parents to select for themselves course information, payment amounts and methods, tutoring dates and times, and physical conditions when buying services from registered cram schools in Hong Kong. In the study reported here, a 3-level cultural analysis of cram schools was conducted from 1998 to 2008 to examine the patterns of mass tuition trends in Hong Kong. The analysis investigated the impacts of such trends, or culture, upon youth values, and implications are drawn for policy making, educational reform, societal movements, and academic recommendations for further research.
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