A study was conducted for creating digital classrooms to support students to learn subject knowledge and develop information literacy competency as well as critical thinking skills. A total of 144 students in four Secondary 1 classes in a secondary school in Hong Kong were invited to participate in the study. In the 12 trial lessons, every three students shared a Tablet PC for learning the topic “Air Pollution Problems in Hong Kong” in the Integrated Humanities subject. After the trial teaching, the students and teachers were interviewed about their perception of the support from the designed digital classrooms. The study found that the students and teachers positively perceived the support from the designed digital classrooms on developing subject knowledge, information literacy competency and critical thinking skills. Three recommendations are made for enhancing the pedagogical designs in digital classrooms that emphasize the use of mobile technology. Copyright © 2012 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Smart classroom has some common features such as automatic sensing physical environment, flexible use of computing devices and physical settings, connected learning environment, and learning data tracking. These features can promote interaction among teachers, learning peers and resources entertaining needs of new generation learners. Interactions in smart classrooms have a higher level of complexity in comparison with traditional classrooms. In this study, an interaction observation tool in K-12 smart classroom was developed, based on the existing interaction tools and derived from the characteristics of smart classroom as discussed. The two major parts of the observation tool are interaction records in smart classroom and interaction support from the learning environment. The tool has been piloted in 14 selected primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shenzhen. The tool has been revised eight times after thirty times of in-class observation and ten times of video observation. The tool was evaluated in the dimensions of function, usability and data processing by 5 experts of educational technology, 10 K-12 teachers and 35 observers. The average mean scores of function, usability and data processing are 4.47, 3.98 and 3.94. The Kendall synergistic coefficient is W=0.471, Sig=-0.000, indicating that the tool was highly acceptable.
[Copyright © 2015 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.]