Computer education in Hong Kong secondary schools has a short history. The histories of Computer and Information Technology education in junior secondary and primary schools are even shorter. This report is part of the comprehensive review of the development of teacher education of Computer and Information Technology in Hong Kong. It focuses mainly on computer courses for teachers, especially those developed in the colleges of education and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. There are three different stages: (1) before the implementation of the Certificate-Level Computer Studies; (2) from the implementation of the Computer Studies subject to the formation of the Hong Kong Institute of Education; and (3) after the establishment of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Implications of the development in computer teacher education will be discussed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education]

The name ‘CRUCIAL’ stands for Center for Resources and Understanding of Cross-curricular Instruction and Learning. Project Crucial was fully funded by The Hong Kong Institute of Education and started to operate in 1997. the project was launched because it is believed that Cross-curricular Education is urgently needed for present-day education in Hong Kong. In addition, the Chief Executive’s devotion to develop IT (information Technology) aided education has further confirmed the feasibility of establishing a Center for Cross-curricular education. Crucial was initiated, therefore, as a development of cross-curricular subject interaction and delivery by means of networked resources through the Internet. The URL is http://crucial.ied.edu.hk. The principle is to use computer networking to support curriculum enhancement, resource sharing, and access to remote databases, to improve local education from primary to secondary level. In a previous paper about the vision and reality of IT in education, it was found that school teachers’ perception of CRUCIAL and the use of learning technologies in classrooms are very positive. In this paper the feedback from ~150 students will be analysed and described. The feedback from students was obtained from a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part contains fixed response items that focus on the respondents’ attitude towards the effectiveness of the project while the second part contains open-ended questions for them to elaborate their opinions further.

One key element in changing societies is the advent and the use of computers. Computers are ubiquitous nowadays. There is no exception for education. The explorations of using computer packages like Mathematica, Maple V, and Cabri-Geometre in mathematics education have been reported in various Mathematics Education Journals. The applications of software to teach primary and secondary mathematics are also found in conferences. These developments indicate that it is time for us to investigate the potential of applying computer technology in mathematics education and the implications for our aims of mathematics education. Two of our speakers, Mr. Kong and Mr. Leung, will choose Exel as a software for exploration in this conference. The reasons for choosing Excel have twofold: 1. Almost all schools in Hong Kong have licensed Excel copies; and 2. Excel has both computational and graphical capabilities which formulate great potential for teaching crucial mathematical notions and can serve as tools for mathematical exploration. Kong and Eeung will demonstrate how Excel can be used for the teaching of the statistical notions of central tendency and deviation and as the exploration tool for solving arithmetic problems. Dr. Man will discuss how Maple V, one of the modern symbolic computer softwares, can be used in teaching primary mathematics topics, such as finding prime numbers, greatest common divisors, least common multiples, etc. He will also demonstrate how to use Maple' s worksheet structure to prepare notes or examples for discussion purposes in class. Besides, if time is permitted, he will also try to demonstrate how one can make use of Maple' s graphical abilities in teaching some chosen topics in the current primary mathematics curriculum. After the exploration of using computer packages in teaching and learning mathematics, Mr. Ng will discuss the implications of the use of computers for the mathematics education: Is it possible for computers to reproduce the achievements