This article mainly addresses the Hong Kong new Information Technology in Education policy to have further integration of information technology into the learning and teaching process, particularly on the design of IT-supported inquiry learning in the primary General Studies. The article focuses on the collaborative effort of the teacher educators from the Institute of Education and the curriculum developers of the Hong Kong Education City in the design of a web-based learning unit on "Earth Movement" to support pupils' inquiry learning of science. The article discusses the different modes of inquiry learning with the web-based learning unit in primary General Studies

E-learning has become increasingly important. The situation in Hong Kong is no exception. Since the implementation of the five-year strategic for information technology in education, there have been substantial changes in the infrastructure in Hong Kong schools in terms of hardware, software and peopleware. These advances are providing a good platform for Hong Kong schools to further develop a better and necessary learning environment for their students. This paper reports some of the recent development of e-learning in Hong Kong and reflects critically of its future.
[Copyright © 2002 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.]

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) provides training to students who wish to pursue their career in teaching. The authors, computer literacy lecturers, would like to find out if there is any difference between the expectation and perception of the computer knowledge students should possess in order to be competent junior secondary computer subject teacher. The authors would also compare the computer knowledge required with the present Computer Literacy curriculum and suggest amendment if necessary. A questionnaire was distributed to student teachers of Northcote Campus before and after teaching practice in 1996. The questions were grouped under basic computer knowledge, Logo programming, computer applications and others. Student teachers regarded all the computer knowledge as important. They gave highest regards to Logo programming, followed by computer applications, basic computer knowledge and others before teaching practice. However, after teaching practice, student teachers gave lower regards to all categories of computer knowledge except for the topics included in the"others" categories. It might be due to the anxiety they had before teaching practice and they found the reality was not so demanding. Student teachers found that computer applications were more important than the knowledge of Logo programming after teaching practice. The importance of other computer knowledge remained unchanged. It could be due to the fact that not all schools required student teachers to teach Logo programming to their junior form secondary school students. Although the importance for most topics in the"others" category had decreased, there was a slight increase of importance in the topic of artificial intelligence, computer organization, database programming, objected oriented programming language, operating systems and systems analysis and design. The present HKIEd curriculum has covered all the topics in basic computer knowledge, Logo programming and computer applications

This paper draws on practical experience in the development and implementation of an integrated learning environment (ILE) that allows teachers to take advantage of improved connectivity to use the web as a medium for teaching and learning activities in Hong Kong primary schools. It explores the critical issues of implementation, the ingredients needed for creating an infrastructure to support a rich mix of learning to facilitate an active learning community involving school administrators, teachers, students and parents and school culture change in adopting a new paradigm.
[Copyright © 2002 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.]

This paper reports on the investigation of 15 pre-service teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) adoption during teaching practicums at seven preschool settings. Surveys, classroom observations, interviews, and teaching resources were analyzed to examine the extent to which technologies were applied. In addition to defining eight specific categories of ICT-related pedagogical strategies, this study provides evidence that pre-service teachers generally use ICT more for teacher-directed activity than for teacher-guided or children-initiated activities. Pre-service teachers working within preschools that allocated higher levels of teacher authority in the curriculum decision-making process and provided a rich ICT environment reported using ICT more often in classroom learning activities.
[Copyright © 2014 AACE]

In the forthcoming Hong Kong Primary Mathematics Curriculum to be implemented in 2002, "Probability" will be a new topic to be included in the syllabus. Although most primary school teachers had learnt the basic concepts of probability during their secondary schooling sometime ago, they express their anxiety that they lack experience and confidence in teaching even the basic notions of this new topic. Of course, the lack of suitable teaching aids or Chinese-interfaced computer-assisted learning or teaching materials constitutes another obstacle for overcoming their worries. In order to enhance their confidence in teaching this topic in primary schools, a self-designed computer-assisted learning and teaching program has been implemented to teach the basic probability concepts for both pre-service and in-service teachers studying in The Hong Kong Institute of Education. In this paper, we will discuss how to design and implement such an interactive learning program, using Visual Basic as the programming language. The rationale behind our design and difficulties encountered during the implementation stage will also be discussed.

This article describes the development and research process to support Hong Kong primary school pupils in constructing understanding of the motion of the Earth with integration of information technology in teaching and learning. The design of the research mainly addresses the call for further integration of information technology into the learning and teaching process as enshrined in the second Information Technology in Education strategy in Hong Kong, as well as to support teachers in the design of inquiry learning for the new General Studies lessons. A web-based learning unit is developed with consideration of inquiry learning and integrating IT in teaching and learning. Analysis of different ways of teaching with the web-based learning unit in primary classrooms is reported, and comparison of pre-lesson test and post-lesson test are conducted to study pupils' learning outcome.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Government (HKSAR) has been encouraging the teaching professionals at all levels to apply Information Technology (IT) in education. The general public usually connects IT in education with computer-assisted instruction (CAI), computer-assisted learning (CAL), and information search in the internet. In fact, IT can bring in other advantages such as developing a continuous and dynamic approach to educational testing. At present, the common practice of paper-and-pencil testing (P&P) is that all examinees are arranged to receive the same set of test questions at the same time-slot. One of the major shortcomings of this arrangement is that competent examinees may waste time to answer simple questions while low ability examinees may face challenging questions that could destroy their confidence in the subject. This practice is actually against a very basic educational principle: catering for individual needs. With the availability of powerful personal computers and the advancement of psychometric measurement, tailoring tests to individual's ability becomes much easily realized. A system that delivers tailor-made tests for individuals using computer with certain item selection program is called Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT). As CAT has many advantages over the traditional P&P, it is becoming prevalent in many advanced countries. However, CAT also has shortcomings. For example, it cannot measure certain kinds of mathematics abilities. This paper will describe the general background and the current development of CAT and particularly will discuss in more details the potentials and limits of using CAT for Mathematics assessment.