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.

We are presenting the fruit of our collaboration in the context of the T&T Project --- a publicly-funded inter-institutional collaborative initiative for all academic and professional staff in Hong Kong’s HE institutions. Project mission is to pull together human and instructional resources from all institutions in a collaborative effort in promoting, fostering and advancing quality teaching and learning. We are going to share with conference participants the following: · Designing and conducting sessions on IT in teaching and learning for academic and professional staff from all tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, in particular on: · formatting and layout of text · digital graphics · perfecting presentation skills · other digital media for enhancing teaching and learning · Designing and producing for colleagues’ use self-instructional multimedia packages for enabling IT self-sufficiency (in CD-ROM format) · Initiating audio and video streaming for the “T&T Project Website” and related on-line multimedia packages.
[Copyright © 2000 The Association for Advancement of Computing in Education]

Learning study aims at improving teaching and learning in the classroom. The paper describes the process of conducting a Learning Study in school, with illustrations drawn from one case study conducted in a Hong Kong primary General Studies lesson. Teachers began this particular Learning Study by selecting the topic of condensation and evaporation as their research lesson. The choice was based on the recognition that this topic is known to be difficult for students to learn. The Theory of Variation provided the team with an overarching framework for conducting the Learning Study and analyzing its results. Interviews with students and pre-test results indicated considerable confusion in students’ conceptions, especially in regard to where water ‘goes’ when evaporated. Teachers also discussed their previous attempts to teach this topic and the difficulties encountered. The teaching and learning difficulties provided the starting point for lesson planning, which used the pedagogy of variation to enhance student discernment in regard to the three states of water. The lesson was then taught and analysed, followed by further rounds of teaching and analysis, supported by post-test results. This paper will describe the process as a whole and the presentation will show video extracts of the case as it progressed through the various research cycles. The case study will illustrate how, within the practice of Learning Study, student learning and teachers’ professional development are viewed as interdependent. Each is enhanced as a result of the Learning Study process.

Using IT for teaching and learning at schools is not only a hot issue nowadays, but it is also a threatening demand of all the school teachers in Hong Kong. The most common way is to present the lessons using presentation software. Under the limitations of the functions available in common presentation software, and the average IT competence level of school teachers, the majority of the products are no more that reproducing the content of textbooks using those presentation software. Not too long ago, expecting an IT amateur, such as a primary teacher, to produce full multimedia teaching materials with attractive animation was generally considered as unrealistic, if not impossible. For most school teachers, reproducing the content of textbooks using presentation software is already a daunting task. Most recently, more and more software tools which are powerful, yet very user-friendly, are available in the market. With those tools, an average IT competent school teacher, with reasonably short period of training, can produce innovative multimedia teaching materials with attention-drawing animation. This paper demonstrates how this kind of tools can be applied innovatively in teaching Chinese Language in primary classrooms. Since this paper is not a tutorial note, it does not teach how to use a specific software. Rather, it suggests various ways the elements of the subject can be taught in the teaching materials, making use of the powerful functions of the software tool.

For enabling the teachers to achieve the IT competence as required by the Hong Kong government for implementing the recent IT in education policy, we find that when it comes to the competent (or upper intermediate) level, a subject-based training approach is definitely more ideal in catering for the special needs of Science teachers whose subject disciplines are highly specialized in terms of content and pedagogy. The advocacy for a subject-based (or subject-specific) IT training course for Physics teachers is supported by some recent needs analysis. Based on those research findings and the content analysis on features peculiar to the Physics teaching and learning, we shall present an initial sketch on the scope of IT applications for Physics through a subject-based approach. Results from the questionnaire survey on the Physics teachers' perception of the training needs in various kinds of IT skills will also be given in this paper.

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) largely provides training to students who wish to pursue their career in teaching in compulsory education. The authors, computer literacy lecturers, were interested to find out if there was any difference between the perceptions of computer student teachers when they were at year one and at year two regarding the importance of computer knowledge they should possess as competent computer teachers. A questionnaire was distributed to student teachers of Northcote Campus after teaching practice in 1996 and again in 1997. The content of the questionnaire was based on the computer literacy curriculum for lower secondary students. The computer topics were grouped under basic computer knowledge, Logo programming, computer applications and others. Student teachers perceived all the computer knowledge were important. Student teachers gave highest regards to computer applications category, followed by Logo programming category, basic computer knowledge category and others category when they were in year one. However, the rankings of basic computer knowledge and Logo programming category were reversed in 1997. The rankings for computer applications category and others category remained the same even though the average mean scores for computer applications category had increased and others category had decreased in 1997. The means for the first three categories actually were very close for both years. When we looked into details we found that five out of seven topics of computer applications category had increased their importance. It was not surprising to find out the largest increase was the social implications of computers on society as there were successful charges for computer hackers recently for the first time. For the basic computer knowledge category, the increase was mainly caused by the large increase of importance of limitations of computers which was also the greatest among all topics. For Logo programming, all the sub-categories

Our Chief Executive announced in his 1997 Policy Address to promote the use of information technology (IT) in education. One of his aims was to have 25% of the school curriculum taught through IT in five years' time. The author, a computer lecturer, believes one of the best way is to promote IT in education is to prepare student teachers for this new trend. She practised what she preached by integrating World Wide Web (Web) into her teaching. A tailored-made Web site was implemented and students were able to learn some computer concepts by surfing to the Web. Although there are many successful stories of adopting IT in education and yet there were very few studies to examine if Web-based learning are indeed more effective than paper-based learning. Therefore, the author attempted to investigate such an issue by conducting a case study. The participants were pre-service student teachers studying at the Hong Kong Institute of Education taking Computer Literacy (Information Technology) as one of their electives. Two groups of student teachers, one group consisted of ten participants whilst the other group consisted of eleven participants, participated in this study. Each study consisted of : (1) a pre-test, (2) a learning activity - Group A used the materials posted on the Web whilst Group B used the same materials but which was printed on papers, and (3) a post-test. All the questions asked in the pre-tests were asked again in the post-tests so that students well understood what to learn during the learning session and it was also easier to find out the effect of the learning medium. The average Group A students performed slightly better than Group B students in the pre-tests. However, Group B students performed much better than Group A students in the post-tests. The findings suggested that student teachers were able to learn more effectively using Web-based materials rather than paper-based materials. The limitations and implications of this study will be discussed.

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

Hong Kong's policy of academic banding, whereby students are placed in secondary schools according to factors such as test scores and available places, often influences the type of education a student receives. In the area of technology education, with subjects such as Design & Technology (D&T), the programs vary, depending on the band of student in the program. This study examined pupils' attitudes toward technology and what effect the characteristics of banding and subjects such as D&T had on attitudes. Using a 58-item instrument to gauge Pupils' Attitudes Toward Technology, over 3,000 students were surveyed from 17 schools. Of these schools, seven were from upper band (1&2), while ten were from lower band schools (4&5). Basic characteristics of the students' were obtained on such areas as mother's and father's occupation, computers at home, and whether or not they have taken "technology" subjects such as D&T in school. Attitudes were grouped in categories of "Interest", "Role Patterns", "Technology is Difficulty", Consequences of Technology", "School Curriculum", and "Career Aspirations". The results indicated interactions with three of the six attitude categories. The results suggested a review of the approach to teaching technology and student access to such courses is required.