This paper presents the design and implementation of a technological literacy course in professional development training for a diverse group of in-service primary teachers in Hong Kong. A set of micro-controlling hardware was chosen such that not only the controlling and coding barriers are acceptable to the teachers but that their pupils can also adopt the easy-to-use hardware and software to create STEM projects in primary schools. The hands-on training seeks to broaden their technological experiences in various interfacing and sensing activities. The coding challenge is reduced by introducing visual programming, thereby allowing the learners to focus on real- world problems in the STEM disciplines. Details of the course are provided and the assessment projects by Engineering Design Process are illustrated in this paper. The quantitative evaluation of teachers in their micro-controlling experience is provided. Copyright © 2018 by IEEE.

Smartphones could be the fastest spreading technology in human history. These mobile devices change the way we communicate and enable mobile and ubiquitous learning at a different level. This study evaluated the use of mobile instant messaging tools to support teaching and learning in higher education. A total of 61 undergraduate students enrolled at a teacher-training institute in Hong Kong who have smartphones with WhatsApp were assigned into experimental and control groups. Besides the traditional classroom learning for both groups, the experimental group was also supported with bite-sized multimedia materials and teacher-student interaction via WhatsApp outside school hours. The participants of the control group used WhatsApp only for academic communication. Pre-test scores were used as the covariate. The marginal means on the post-test scores showed that the participants in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group. The intervention of WhatsApp improved the learning achievement of the participants. The strength of the intervention between the two groups was medium to large. A questionnaire designed by the author was administered at the end of the study. The participants showed positive perception and acceptance of the use of WhatsApp for teaching and learning. The participants slightly rejected the view that receiving instructional materials and questions outside school hours could interfere with their private lives. The typical usability issues on mobile learning were found to be valid. The experience learnt in this research was discussed.
[Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc.]

Ubiquitous devices offer new teaching and learning opportunities from K-12 to higher education settings. The integration of mobile facilities and Web technologies allows researchers and educators to explore different possibilities in m-Learning. In this study, a group of pre-service IT teachers in Hong Kong were introduced to the field of m-Learning by participating in a series of m-Learning activities. Three applications were designed and programmed with XTHML-MP/WAP 2.0 technologies and supported by server-side Web technologies of PHP and MySQL. The research aimed at providing the opportunities for the teachers to explore this new trend in teaching and learning and to find out their acceptance of this approach.
[Copyright © 2008 by SICET.]

With the surging demands for the use of network-based learning environment in primary and secondary schools, the knowledge and practical skills on school LAN management is increasingly critical for our pre-service and in-service IT teachers. Many of our IT graduates will assume the role of IT coordinators in their employed schools on top of their regular teaching duties. Training on network concepts and hands-on communication skills are essential to them. In this paper, we describe our model LAN project for teaching and learning. The model LAN stimulates a school¡¦s networking environment so that our student teachers can acquire the relevant knowledge and practical skills very close to the real school networking environment.

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.