*******************************
Following is a question by the Hon Sin Chung-kai and a written reply by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Miss Denise Yue (in the absence of the Secretary for Education), in the Legislative Council today (January 9):
Question:
Established in 2000 with the support of the Quality Education Fund, the Hong Kong Education City (EdCity), with its Chinese name subsequently changed, was incorporated in 2002 to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Government. The EdCity web site provides teachers with teaching resources to support their professional development. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) whether it has set up a mechanism to ensure that the teaching resources developed by EdCity can cater for the teaching work of teachers; if it has, of its details; if not, the reasons for that;
(b) whether it has assessed teachers' utilisation of the teaching resources on the EdCity web site; if it has, of the details;
(c) whether it has, in the light of the growing popularity of the Web 2.0 concept in recent years, assessed the situation of teachers sharing resources and teaching experience through the EdCity web site; if it has, of the details; and
(d) whether it has formulated measures to encourage teachers to become more proactive in sharing teaching experience through the EdCity web site?
Reply:
President,
The Education Bureau set up the Hong Kong Education City Limited (HKEdcity) to promote the use of IT in education to support the education reform. Its value is not limited to sourcing digital resources. It also serves to demonstrate how pedagogical application of IT can improve learning outcomes. HKEdcity is revamping the contents of its website to better fulfill its mission.
(a) HKEdcity has set up an advisory panel to advise it on, among other things, the development of digital learning and teaching resources hosted at its website. The panel is chaired by a school principal with members comprising representatives of frontline teachers, teacher education institutions, the social services sector, parents organisations, the IT industry, and the Education Bureau. Besides, HKEdcity also formed various teacher communities to facilitate teachers of different key learning areas to share experiences and resources. These communities are making valuable contributions to steering the development and sourcing of digital learning and teaching resources.
(b) HKEdcity regularly commissions local tertiary institutions to conduct stakeholders' surveys to collect feedback on its services. The last survey was conducted in the third quarter of 2006. In summary, teachers considered that the HKEdCity website was a useful source of digital teaching resources. However, it was difficult to search for appropriate resources in the website and there was a lack of tools to customize contents.
(c) Web 2.0 applications generally refer to web-based social networking to foster creativity, collaboration and sharing. Since its inception, the HKEdCity website has been serving as a platform to facilitate online sharing of teaching experience and resources among teachers. At present, subject teachers are using the "subject i-Worlds" on HKEdCity's website for exchange of teaching experience and sharing of self-produced teaching materials.
(d) HKEdCity has produced the on-line "Teacher TV" channel, which includes videos of good teaching practices, to encourage professional exchange among teachers. In addition, HKEdCity has recently launched blog services and is developing a wiki platform for collaborative learning to further encourage proactive professional collaboration.
Ends/Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Issued at HKT 12:20
NNNN