An Ecogarden has been recently renovated in the campus of the Education University of Hong Kong, aiming at enhancing the biodiversity conservation function of the campus, as well as, promoting the education for sustainability in the university. Prior to the renovation of the Ecogarden, a qualitative survey has been conducted to reveal the understanding of different stakeholders in establishing Ecogarden on the concepts of biodiversity and its relationship to the function of Ecogarden. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted for three stakeholder groups, namely designers, educators and students (both environmental and non-environmental subject-related). The results indicated that their understanding of biodiversity concept is not good, neither the concept of ecosystem functioning. However, all of them ascertained the role of Ecogarden to conserve the biodiversity on campus (scientific value) and its education values, while the provisional (product-producing) value in biodiversity is the least. This study forms important baseline information for designing educational activities associating with Ecogarden, or other facility with similar nature, to advocate the biodiversity conservation in the community. Copyright © 2017 The 6th AZEC & 33rd ASET Joint International Conference.

Researches find that school gardening provides opportunities for children to connect with natural environments, such as plants, animals and insects. This kind of experiences plays a critical role in shaping children’s life-long attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior toward natural environments, including appreciation of the natural world; opportunities to experience the closeness to nature; as well as respect for other creatures and their living habits. This can also develop their interest in and appreciation of the world around them, in order to develop their positive attitude and behavior related to environmental protection, recycling, reusing and living habits; as well as support children’s emotional and physical health and well-being. This study was a single case study of a Hong Kong school garden. A pre-school was selected purposively, which enabled the collection of qualitative data from children to understand their experiences in connection with the gardening environment. Multiple data collection methods included unstructured, participant and non-participant observations, as well as semi-structured individual and group interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the findings. The findings highlight a number of areas that children got the senses of loving and protecting the natural environment. Copyright © 2017 第八屆兩岸四地可持續發展教育論壇.

"雲計算"甫自推出便被認定為︰面向所有普通用戶的計算系統。進入2010年，"雲計算"迅速普及，帶給社會的是訊息資源獲得的便利性及使用率的提高；而為支持者稱道的是其開放性和互動性。"雲計算"與"雲儲存"在工商界、在公共服務領域、在教育界的應用與探索備受多國關注，認為這是一項足以改變未來世界的重大科技發明。本文嘗從"雲計算"對特殊學習需要學童的學程經營的啟示，簡述一所特殊學校將生本學程經營平台轉移至"雲平台"上經營；讓教師、家長、及不同的專業工作者，透過即時、互動的網上協作活動，分享訊息並共參與建構生本的學與教流程。就這實踐經驗，筆者倡議為保障融合生在融入主流教育系統時的學習質素，可考慮為每一名特殊教育學習需要學生建立一個跨專業、跨家校、及跨教育系統的"融合雲"。 When 'Cloud Computing' was first introduced, it was regarded as a computing system for all users. Entering 2010,'Cloud Computing' was widely used and seen as an elevated tool of convenience and utilization to obtain information resources; while from the supporters' perspective, the benefit is the openness and interaction that it brings to the users. Many countries are attracted to both 'Cloud Computing' and 'Cloud Storage'. They thought that this technological innovation will bring huge changes in the future in the aspects of its application and discovery in both the industrial and commercial sectors, public services and education sector. This articles aims to summarize the transformation of traditional 'Student-based' learning platform into 'Cloud Platform' being inspired by 'Cloud Computing' that impacted on the learning process of students with special educational needs. And how the new platform enables teachers, parents and various professional workers to share information and participate in establishing the student-based flow of 'learning and teaching' as well as collaborative activities through instantaneous interactive web-based activities. The information sharing will bring about mutual participation and construction of teaching and learning activities. Based upon the practical experiences, the author suggests that in order to safeguard the quality of education services for integrated students in the mainstream education system, an 'Inclusive Cloud' comprising of interdisciplinary professionals, interactive home-school and educational systems should be constructed for every student with special educational needs.
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This paper reports and discusses the results of a study aimed at automatically categorising teacher feedback on student writing. A total of 3412 teachers’ written comments on 90 students’ draft essays were collected from an EFL course offered by a Hong Kong university during the first semester of 2016/17. The data were primarily used to design and implement an automated tool to classify teachers’ comments with respect to a taxonomy of their characteristics. The findings of this study show that the performance of the automated tool is comparable to that of human annotators, suggesting the feasibility of using the automatic approach to identify and analyse different types of teacher feedback. This study can contribute to future research into the investigation of the impact of teacher feedback on student writing in a big data world. Copyright © 2018 International Journal of Information and Education Technology. All rights reserved.

This study investigates the characteristics of the organizational environment perceived by 627 teachers in 64 Hong Kong secondary schools. From the cluster analysis, the perceived school organizational environments can be classified into four typical styles: commitment, control, disengagement, and headless. All of them have contrasting organizational characteristics. The findings are consistent with the studies conducted in Western societies.

There are increasing commitments from the education sector to cultivate our next generation with a life-long and forward-looking concern for the environment, preparing them to make well-informed, reasoned and practical decisions, and to take actions leading to the creation of a sustainable environment. In 2005, the United Nations declared the year as the start of the “United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development”, where “sustainable development” is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This has become the guiding principle of environmental education focusing on the three major aspects of awareness, attitudes and actions. Through enhancing our students’ awareness of environmental issues and cultivating their positive attitudes towards conservation work, it is believed that they will be more willing to take environmental friendly actions. In response, guidelines have been issued to schools in Hong Kong urging energy saving and waste reduction. Current work on Education For Sustainability (EFS) includes elements of sustainable development infused into the curricula of various subjects at different levels of schooling, from kindergarten to secondary. In addition, a whole range of programmes related to the promotion of sustainable development have been organized. However, at a recent symposium on plastic waste management attended by educators, policy makers, personnel from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and scientists, there were discussions that in spite of these programmes aiming to help our students better understand the interactions between human activities and the natural environment as well as the environmental problems they face locally and globally, our next generation cannot contribute much to alleviating these problems in their daily lives. This presentation will share the existing challenges and opportunities of EFS on plastic waste

This paper discusses the findings of a research study investigating user acceptance of bring your own device (BYOD) practice to support teaching and learning in a Hong Kong university. Forty-four undergraduate students and two teachers participated in the study. To collect their ratings of agreement with respect to several BYOD-related issues, student participants were asked to complete pre- and post-user acceptance questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of a 13-week semester. Post-event focus group interview sessions were also organised to further elicit students’ and teachers’ views on the use of personally owned devices for learning. While most of the findings from this study support the use of BYOD in higher education, a number of concerns about its implementation are raised. Insights derived from this research will help inform pedagogies, research and practices in BYOD-mediated learning environments.
[Copyright © 2016 by the University of Georgia.]

Field experience at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) is viewed as a central aspect to our programmes. The proposed chapter will discuss a project that aimed to enhance student teachers' professional development in FE by adopting mobile technology and cloud services. Also, the use of digital forms of FE documents such as TP supervision forms, FE portfolios, and reflective journals enables student teachers and Institute supervisors to build their own e-portfolio for further sharing of their professional practices within and outside the Institute.
[Copyright © 2016, IGI Global.]