In the last two years, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been actively promoting the use of IT in schools. Virtually every school in the region is now well aware of the implications of these government initiatives and has embarked on the path toward integration of new learning technologies in the classroom. While many teachers may already be well down the track toward use of IT in teaching and learning, the impetus of government initiatives has meant that, all teachers now need to have clearer notions and directions about how to make the transition. Teachers need a strong foundation on which to build their skills toward modifying their teaching strategies to realize the potential of emerging technologies in enhancing student learning outcomes. Teachers themselves need to be willing to change. In the Hong Kong context it would appear that several things would have to occur before schools are able to mount any meaningful use of IT and where teachers are then able to integrate use of IT in their daily teaching and learning activities. It is with this focus that this paper will address some of the broad issues related to change in schools associated with the use of IT and attempt to provide some suggestions based on research findings and worldwide experience.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This colloquium addresses the issue of the effectiveness of content teaching and learning through English in Hong Kong secondary schools in the context of the current moves to change the eligibility of schools to adopt English as their medium of instruction. It brings together some recent classroom-based research and development on teaching and learning through English in Hong Kong secondary schools in order to promote debate as to how this can be improved. Cummins will present an overview of the value of integrating second language and content learning. Kong and Hoare will focus on the use of English by teachers and students in the local English medium classrooms, based on data drawn from two studies on teacher explanations and student writing. Man will discuss some adaption issues of Secondary 1 English medium students switching from Chinese medium primary schools and will examine some support measures for their content learning. Walker will report on some of the difficulties students face using English for content learning in S4 and the role of an enrichment programme in supporting them. The colloquium will include an extended time for discussion on ways forward in English medium teaching and learning.

In the Hong Kong Institute of Education (abbr. HKIEd), a vast amount of lesson plans for primary and secondary teaching practices are prepared by our pre-service teachers. These valuable documents are being wasted each year. One reason for this is that there are lack of formal mechanism to keep them. The other reason is that the non-standardization of these electronic documents prevents an effective exchange and retrieval of their contents. In this paper, a formal markup language for lesson plans is proposed and developed using XML. The formalization for the various components of lesson plans helps to foster a non-ambiguous data model. Using XML technology, not only we can relevantly query the lesson plans, we can display their contents in a variety of formats and styles using web-based technologies such as XSL and XSLT.

The Hong Kong government's language policy seeks to ensure that its citizens are trilingual (in Cantonese, Putonghua and English) and biliterate (in Chinese and English). The Singapore government also seeks to ensure that the population is biliterate in English and the speaker's L1. As most of the population is ethnically Chinese, this means that the Singaporean education system is concerned to ensure that people emerge biliterate in Chinese and English. The Chinese government, while insisting that Putonghua remain the medium of instruction in most contexts, is also encouraging the acquisition of literacy in English, and English has recently been introduced as a subject in all primary schools. This talk will consider the cognitive challenges involved in the acquisition of literacy in both Chinese and English and discuss some of the results of the current policies. The talk will include suggestions for ways of helping students acquire literacy in both Chinese and English.

The Education and Manpower Bureau of the Hong Kong Government has promoted 'Learning to Learn' as a crucial feature of student-centred curriculum and the educational reforms over the passed decade have been directed towards this goal. Recently, information literacy, described as: the ability to master the processes of becoming informed, was identified as the missing ingredient in the reform. Interest in information literacy grew out of a realization that the application of modern information and communication technology and related shifts in curriculum integration and a shift away from textbooks and examinations, was not sufficient to deliver learning to learn.

Educational Technology has long been a major component in the teacher education programme in Hong Kong. However, its application in actual classroom teaching is very limited. Recent studies in the science teaching in secondary classes and the trend of using instructional media in primary schools in Hong Kong revealed that the types of media being used are limited to those traditional ones. Textbook, blackboard and printed text materials remain the dominant instructional media in current practice of teaching although there are varieties of other choices (Yeung et al, 1996; Li et al, 1999). Other traditional media such as photos, graphics, OHTs and video were used occasionally and were mainly used as information delivery aids in a teaching process. Reports on the use of computer technology were rare. This phenomenon of limited use of technologies and little use of computer technology in teaching may have relation with the general adoption of directed teaching strategies by most teachers currently or may be a result of insufficient preparation in initial teacher education programme. Teacher educators have been being too emphasised on the teaching "about" technologies- the skills for operation of -equipment and computer software rather than the concepts and knowledge of their applications in real learning situations. That is how teachers and students teach and learn "with" technologies. This study aims at verifying the effects of a new teaching approach in which portfolio was used as a guide, a record and a monitor of the learning process of the revised technology competencies for teachers in a group of pre-service teachers in a primary teacher education programme. A conceptual framework that governs the design of the revised competencies was also established and will be discussed in this paper. Preliminary investigation shows positive result in the acquisition of concepts, ideas and skills in the newly revised technology competencies.