Every photo tells a story

In session 4, tools for creating vidoes have been covered.  I have created a video clip using some photos taken in the Apple Race, an yearly event of my school, using Photo Story 3.

Photo Story is a piece of very easy to use freeware.  It can help use to create slideshows using our digital photos. Adding stunning special effects, soundtracks, and our own voice narration to ur photo stories are made easy.  Details of Photo Story 3 is available here.

Teaching with Resources on the Web

The Tower of Hanoi Puzzle is one of the problems I used every year to illustrate and teach the concepts and techniques of recursion in programming.

To provide hand-on practice to students, I have purchased 3 sets of Tower of Hanoi game boards many years ago.  Students are given these game boards to try and play in groups.

In recently years, these game boards are no longer needed.  Google “Tower of Hanoi”, plenty of online resources are available.  Some provide beautiful animations letting students to play and try solving the problem online, and animated solution is available.  One of them can be accessed by clicking HERE.
 

M-Learning Case study

I would like to share a journal article about M-learning. The article talks about a report of an  mobile game-based learning research project in Finland. A historical game is developed and students are required to form groups and play the game. Members of group are randomly assigned the role(for example, beggar, merchant, etc).With the help of GPS technology,Smart phone (with Internet access), students need to walk through the Amsterdam to find the the track point in order to win the game.

The result showed playing of mobile game have a better learning effect than having lesson in the classroom. I am not surprise with the result because the "digital natives" are surrounded by the technology products when they grown up. The old,traditional teaching methods are no longer suitable for them.

However, I don't think this kind of project is suitable for Hong Kong. First of all, Local schools is lack of money for IT infrastructure. In my school, there are very limited funding for school to purchase new IT devices. It is hardly possible to launch project like this. Moreover, number of students of my school come from grass-root families.They are poor and unable to buy  these expensive devices(eg. GPS device, smart phone).

However, This project gave a a new vision. the project pointed out that more and more students drop out the school without graduation around the world(not only Finland, also USA and other European countries). It thus appears that the traditional education is not meeting the needs of certain pupils sufficiently. As an educator, we can no longer use the old pedagogy to teach!

The website of the research project:
http://freq1550.waag.org/

M-Learning in my work place

The department that is responsible for technology development and technology application used in teaching and learning in our University is called Publishing Technology Center (PTC); its mission is to integrate design, media and publishing technologies to support teaching and learning, research and publicity of the University.
There are several services it provides that are quite useful and enables mobile learning in our University. One of them is called “RVC” - Remote Video Capture which is used by a lot of faculties and being highly appraised by students. Almost every lecture classroom and lecture theater is equipped with RVC system.

Faculties will need to make the booking of the service first (by providing information on class venue and class time), and then the video recording of the whole lecture will be started automatically without any set up. You may see it as a simple video recording, what’s the big deal? Actually it does more than video recording, you can see from the following picture how it different from traditional video recording. Basically, it separates the screen into two parts, on the left hand side, you will see professor is lecturing; and on the right hand side, it shows the presentation slides during the class or what is being written on the white board. It synchronizes the lecturing from professor and PowerPoint slides Presentation. So you don’t need to refer to print outs of the ppt when you’re listening. One amazing thing is that the camera could sense the movement of Professors and adjust the angles for best video recording.

Another good thing is that it also allows concurrent video recording, which means classes happen at the same time can be recorded simultaneously.

When students want to review the class for whatever reason (maybe they skipped the class for a job interview or they attended a party last night), they could always get to the website and input their University account and password to see the lecture video from their dorm or their home.

A Possible Research Topic

As the mobile learning is become more and more popular in modern education, students are able to grab a piece of information so quickly through their iPhone/iPad or any other Internet-connected digital devises, do they still bother to make efforts to remember something?
At “ancient times”, we used pens and paper notebooks to record what teachers were taught in classes, when writing took place, to some extent, it helped students to take the first step in remembering the contents; when they reviews the class, things written on notebook could remind the learning contents again and they may think more deeper, then they might add more notes on. It’s better to understand the whole thing and remember what you have learned now, otherwise, it would be a huge task before the exam when you basically need to start from zero.
According to cognitive theory, two things are very important:
(1) The memory system is an active organized processor of information and
(2) Prior knowledge plays an important role in learning.
If students are so easy to get the information from Internet through their mobile devices, they may feel there is not a necessity to remember everything, since their mobiles made it possible for information-on-demand (or knowledge-on-demand). However, one’s knowledge is expended based on what they have now (what they remember), if you don’t have the previous knowledge base, you cannot absorb new knowledge. It can be explained that why we have prerequisites for different courses.
So what I feel will be an interesting research topic is that “Will the use of Internet – connected mobile devices weaken the memory ability for students?”
To conduct a research, a comparative experiment can be conducted. For one group of students, they are allowed to use iPhone/iPad during the class, and for the other group, they can only use pens and paper during the class. We can ask them to have a quiz right after class to see what happen to their short-term memory, and of course, we can also wait until the end of semester to see which group did better job in the exam.
Still, I think the result might be different when conduct experiment in primary school, secondary school and in the university. But I may have the hypothesis that it matters more in primary level.

Opinions on Experimental Classroom

Opinions on Experimental Classroom

It is a great experience to have classes in such a high tech classroom.

The best thing about this classroom is that we students are being the center of the learning process, while instructors are act as kind of facilitators during whole process. The student – centered learning is enabled of course by the ICT equipped in the experimental classroom.

1.    Students are arranged to be seated into different groups, it eases the communication and discussion among group members.

2.    With the provided PC, we can quickly key in opinions from different group members for documentation and later on we could use what we came up during the discussion for assignment and group works.

3.    Group works are not only shared among group members, but also with the rest of the whole class. Thanks to the ICT system, each groups’ input can be displayed through the big screen so that everyone in the classroom can see the contents of group discussion and freely give quick comments on that. It is definitely a good way to learn from each other.

4.    With smart control system, the lightening can be adjusted easily. When instructor would like to dry attention from students, he/she can turn off the lights and left only the big screens to be seen.

5.    Though the tables are set freeze in classroom, but the chairs are moveable, students can always move around. Maybe you would have a cross discussion with your neighbors, that would be possible.

6.    Except PC input, each table is also equipped with a microphone which help individual’s opinions to be passed throughout the whole class.

7.    I realized there is also a visualizer on each table too, though we have not used it until now, but I am sure it is a very good ICT that is used in education when people need to present something in real, for example, students may show some of the iPhone/iPad application on his/her iPhone through the visualizer.

Things I am not sure whether good or bad

1.    I personally do not see the leveling of the whole classroom help that much. It is a little bit uncomfortable when you hear somebody is talking but you cannot see his/her face. It is just different from talking through phones, you know the person is there, but without seeing him/her, you are not that convinced. It’s the same thing when instructor is lecturing, without the eye contact; it’s just missing something there. On the other hand, I believe to some extent leveling is good, but it is better to make sure the structure won’t block students’ vision.

2.    If the table can be movable, that would be great; but I can see how messy it could be if the cables cannot be hidden under the table.

3.    About the microphone on each table, though it is alright for us to pass around the microphone to the one and another, it is still not very convenient.

4.    If the system could display the multiple video inputs at the same time, (which means we can see different screen inputs from different groups on one single screen) that would be easy for us to make comparison.

Overall, I enjoyed the classroom a lot.

Web 2.0 in Education - Building a Virtual Classroom in SecondLife

Have you ever experienced a second life in the virtual environment provided by SecondLife? 

SecondLife has created a virtual world, each participant can create an avatar to represent himself/herself in this virtual world.  Every avatar we

meet in the virtual world corresponds to a real person in the real world.  We can chat or talk with others in the virtual world.  We can build our own buildings, rooms, and create our own settings.   We can share files, images, etc. in the virtual world.  You may click here to visit the website of SecondLife to get more information or to join it.

Thus, a teacher can use SecondLife to support distance learning.  The teacher can ask all students to create avatars for themselves.  He then creates a virtual classroom in SecondLife, and asking all students to log in and come to this place to attend the lesson.  The teacher can talk to the whole class as in the real world.  He can share the lecture notes and other resources.  Students can discuss with each others and with the teacher.

Use of Mobile Technology in my school

In my school, there is two wireless networks covering the whole campus.  One of these network is a secure wireless network providing services like Internet access, file sharing, network printing and school intranet access for all staff members.

All staff members can use mobile devices like smart phones, notebook computers to access the Internet and the school intranet.  Network printers are installed in various locations in the school campus.  Staff members can submit print jobs anywhere within the school campus and choose the desired printer for his/her print job.

Each classroom is equipped with a desktop computer with fast Internet access and a digital projector.  Each mainstream teacher is supplied with a notebook computer by the school while each IB teacher is supplied with a Blackberry smartphone.

Originally, the other wireless is supposed to open to all for accessing the Internet and the school intranet.  Each students can then use their mobile devices to these purposes.  But complains have been received from many teachers that students are using their smartphones and notebooks to access Facebook, msn, nba.com, etc. all the time even during lessons which comes to the concern of the school management.  Since then the network is not open to students until suitable measures are devised against the undesirable accesses.

Usage of open source software for schools: A case study in Hong Kong

Define	The education software is rarely and expensive in Hong Kong. The free online application is not stable. Thus, we try to find out the possibility of using open source software in Hong Kong Secondary School.
Plan	Literature review: Mobbs, R; Hawkridge, D.(2010). Utilizing open source tools for online teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology. 41(3).58-65. Chan, Man-hoi.(2004). Utilizing open source software in schools of Hong Kong. Master thesis. The University of Hong Kong. http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/31384 DiBone, C., Ockman, S.,& Stone, M.(1999) Open Sources. Sebastopol:O’Reilly.
Execute research procedures	quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, including satisfaction surveys, qualitative content analysis of online discussions, and unstructured interviews

The Golden Ratio of IT investment in system providing to training - A Potential Research Topic

I have observed that there are a huge different between the IT investment in hareware, software and training. This situation lead to inefficiency of using Information Technology. For example, IT department buy a lot of hareware and software that the teachers and students seldom used; the teachers have no idea what they can choos; even some simply technology that the teachers require most are never introducted.

I believe that there is a "golden ratio" of IT investment in system providing to training which is most effectiveness to education, and it's worth to find the ratio.

Firstly, I  hypothesized that there is a ratio of IT investment in system providing to training that can maximize the effect. Here I define that "system providing" mean the hareware and software that provide to teachers and students, and "training" included the knowledge of Information Technology that they can choose, the knowledge to applicate them and the idea to combine them in education.

The method we will use is collect the information from different schools and find the relation between the ratio of investment and the effect. Questionnares can be sent to the IT coordinator to collect the information about the investment. The data collected is reliable if the questionnare is set in detailed to guide them what is included in which fields. However, the effectiveness of IT in education is difficult to measure. I think it can be approximately measure by setting questionnares to all the teachers and the students in the school to determine the effectiveness of IT in education. For examples, we can ask the teachers how much they know about the latest Information Technology and how often they use them; or we can ask the students do they agree it is useful for the Information Technology that the teacher used.

After the information is collected, we can calculate the Correlate Coefficient between them and make a conclusion of the most suitable ratio of IT investment in system providing to training.

Mobile Learning Age

Preview

• A Theory of Learning for the Mobile Age (pre-print)
• Mike Sharples, Josie Taylor, Giasemi Vavoula 
• A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive.’ Dewey (1916, p. 88) 

Full Version

The book describing the Criteria for a theory of mobile learning, exploring what is learning as Conversation on mobile, it not only coverage the possibilities of mobile learning it also inspire us the implication of e-learning or learning with technologies.

How “Digital Natives” educate next generation “Digital Natives”

I came across an interesting story recently which is about an innovative use of iPhone to perform scientific experiment. (“Father and a son performed home science experiment and an iPhone goes into space” http://communities.canada.com/VANCOUVERSUN/blogs/geekingout/archive/2010/10/18/father-and-son-perform-home-science-experiment-and-an-iphone-goes-into-space.aspx)

The father and his son wanted to see what it looks like in the space, so they used a fast food container to build up a craft, tied a HD camera up on the end of a weather balloon to find out. The digital technology devices they used are not only a camera that took picture from outer space, but also an iPhone which allowed them to follow the GPS signal of the craft and find it when it landed.

When a kid wants to know what the outer space looks like, they might go online to have a Google image search (if they have Internet access and basic search technique) or they may just find a relevant book to read through. But nothing can be more excited and impressive to find it out by yourself, taking pictures of space with your own camera, it means a lot to a child and definitely a better way to learn basic astronomy than just listening to your geography teacher in a regular class.  

What might be an implication of this case is not only that technology is playing a more and more impressive role in education, but also parents can be their children’s best teachers. Prensky (2001) pointed out that generation born between 1980 and 1994 are “digital natives” who are familiar with and reliance on ICT. These 20 or 30 some are most having children now and I believe their ways of educating their children would be quite different from last generation who we called as “digital immigrants”. Just like the father in this story (who I believe is a “digital native”) has this kind of mindset to use digital technology to teach his son, it might at first for a fun for doing that; but eventually, with this kind of activities enabled by ICT, children would be influenced and get used to using ICT to enhance their learning process.

Another thing that is worth to point out is the “Mathew Effect” (Merton, 1968), if a person already in possession of good culture capital, they will be easier to benefit from technology use. The father in this story had created a good culture environment for the family to be innovative and to use ICT effectively for education purpose.

Of course, this is also a help from i-series product which enable the whole activity. Clearly i-series products are trying out their market in education and there are tons of Apple applications out there for education purpose, but what’s more important is how you can use them effectively and innovatively and in what way they can be used differently to provide more valuable educational results.

Creative use of Web 2.0 on learning

Creative use of Web 2.0 on learning

Creative Web 2.0 Learning

View more presentations from Judy O’Connell.

Drupal - CMS in education

Tsoi Hang Sang Ron
2006053839

Transforming learning through technology

Use SMSs to support learning

This is the case of using SMSs to support distance students in South Africa, most of the students in South Africa are from remote rural areas, where there is very limitd infrastructure for access, however, there are almost 100 billion mobile users in Africa, this research state how they using Short Message Services (SMSs) as administrative tool in 2002.

The research trying to explore how adult learners registered at UP’s Unit for Distance Education, experience the academic short message service as a learning support tool, for a specific module.

For details pls read the following archive.

http://www.learningmaterials.co.za/resources/Transforming_learning_through_technology.pdf

Kinley Chan Cho Kin

e-learning standards for educators

e-Learning is getting more popular. When we develop e-learning utilities or courses, how can we ensure the quality of e-learning? To ensure the quality of e-learning, standards have been proposed and developed. The design and implementation of e-learning should then follow the standards, the "standard" of the courses can be maintained to an acceptable level. Besides, the reusability and interoperability of the e-learning “products” can be enhanced.

Many resources regarding e-learning standards are available on the Internet. I found one paper, "The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice” - prepared by THE HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAM AND POLICY COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS May 2000, provides very useful guidelines (You may press HERE to view the paper).

On this paper, a total of 14 standards have been stated. AFT has long been active in distance education. This report constitutes the next step in the AFT’s involvement. In the fall 1999 academic term, the union surveyed 200 members of AFT higher education locals who are themselves practitioners of distance education to produce this report. These standards are expected to be applicable equally to public, private, non-profit, and for-profit educational providers.

Heading of these standards are listed below and the implications to our eLearning course development are briefly discussed.

1. Faculty must retain academic control

Distance learning courses should be reviewed and approved in advance in order to receive college credit. Teaching and research faculty, together curriculum specialists must be involved.

2. Faculty must be prepared to meet the special requirements of teaching at a distance

Proficiency in the communications technology employed is a must. Strategies and skills to communicate with students electronically in the absence of visual and oral cues is a must.

3. Course Design should be shaped to the potentials of the medium

Course design (curriculum planning, class projects, visual aids, library materials and student interaction) should not be replicate of the traditional classrooms, but be maximizing the potential of the medium that will be employed.

4. Student must fully understand course requirements and be prepared to succeed

Students must be prepared of the new mode of learning and teaching. For example, they should be given a clear statement of course requirements in advance and their responses to be submitted electronically.

5. Close personal interaction must be maintained

Distance learning should not scarify close personal interactions, real-time electronic interchange and asynchronous forms of communication must be available.

6. Class size should be set through normal faculty channels

This is to ensure that education rather than bureaucratic or financial considerations drive the process.

7. Course should cover all material

The amount and the depth of material covered should equal that of a classroom-based course.

8. Experimentation with a broad variety of subjects should be encouraged

The process should be reviewed very carefully and courses that have been unsuccessful should not be offered in future.

9. Equivalent research opportunities must be provided

Distance learning students are provided with same opportunities as the traditional students. They should be given assess to all possible electronic research material.

10. Student assessment should be comparable

The level of achievement expected of students, and tested for in a distance education environment, should be as challenging as that in a classroom-based course.

11. Equivalent advisement opportunities must be offered

Same-time same-place advisement should be made available.

12. Faculty should retain creative control over use and re-use of materials.

Students should have guarantee that the course they take is of the same quality as before and has been updated to reflect changes in the subject area.

13. Full undergraduate degree programs should include same-time same-place coursework

The faculty should assume responsibility for carefully considering how much coursework is appropriate to be obtained through distance education. A full program taught at a distance may be acceptable as determined by the faculty.

14. Evaluation of distance coursework should be undertaken at all levels.

We must conduct more rigorous evaluation of distance education programs and disseminate the results broadly.

TSE Chi Kui (Andy)

1988054934

What r kids doing with digital technology

Marc Prensky (2005) sees today's kids as "Digital Natives" who get tons of digital technology skills that they could express themselves in a different way from previous generation of "Digital Immigrants", seems he is not the only one who recognize the new trend that kids are creating another kind of new culture to learn and to express with the help of digital technology.

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig)

The TED talk by him I found is quite interesting and inspiring, and to some extent, related to modern day's learning through technology.


Posted by Sophie Gu Jiaying

Re-purposing a Web 2.0 application as a Learning Tool

Audacity

Original design of the application

Audacity is a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

Re-purposed Audacity as a learning tool

In study the Physics of sound, we often use the wave diagram to illustrate the format. A number of properties are commonly used to define a wave. For example wavelength may be defined as the horizontal distance between two successive equivalent points on the waveform and  amplitude equates to the height of the wave; loud sounds produce waves of higher amplitude. Sometimes it is difficult for students to remember these terms. Audacity can be used as a tool for students to record the sound and then anaylse the wave pattern. Students in a group can take turn to record on the same computer. Then different tracks will be shown on the screen.

The waveform can be magnified so that students can observe in order to find the repeating pattern, compare the amplitude of different voices and find out the peaks and troughs. With the software, students can select part of the waveform and analyse it. It is easier for them to understand the different terms through this kind of experimnet.

The potential affordances of the application

In tradition, students learn this topic only through the textbook and doing experiment in the laboratory at school. With the help of the application, they can extend the learning at home. Since the software is free of charge, they can use it and record other sounds for analysis. Also, they can compare the waveform in the same window easily, even with other group mates,  as the application supports multiple tracks.

Posted by Van Chi Ho, Brian

Toondoo

Website:

http://www.toondoo.com/

Introduction

Toondoo is a cartoon-making website. Users need not to be experts in drawing, Toondoo provides thousands of cartoons and users can Drag and Drop to create cartoon strips. Moreover, Users can combine two and more cartoon strips into an eBook! Fascinating!

//Tutorial Youtube by barrynabdahl






Re-purpose into education


We all like to listen story, read comic. We can grab the chance and making some comic strips in History lessons. Instead of remembering boring historical facts, Student must love to read the eBook of Toondoo.

Beside, students can make they only Toondoo historical eBook as Toondoo is very user-friendly. As Constructivism suggests,  "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Toondoo is a great platform for student to make their own historical  story and share their eBook to other classmate. It is more interesting than using traditional textbook.


//An example of students project. Toondoo is easy for student.



Ron Tsoi Hang Sang
2006053839

Re-purposing a Web 2.0 application as a Learning Tool

eQuizzer

eQuizzer is a free web-based quizzing program.

URL:
http://www.equizzer.com/

eQuizzer allows us to
- create custom quizzes that can be taken online.
- manage our quizzes and monitor our students' scores.

Original Purpose

The original purpose of this program is to help teachers to create custom quizzes and monitoring students' performances.

Re-purposed as a Learning Tool

This program can be re-purposed as a learning tool to help students to explore and consolidate their concepts.  After finishing a topics, teacher asks students to use this program to set a quiz for their classmates.

To setup a quiz in the topic, students will be motivated to make themselves familar with the concepts and techniques of the topics.  Besides, they are encouraged to explore in further details to set challenging questions for their classmates.

When attempting the quizzes, each student will have sufficient drills.  Besides, students may need to explain to their classmates regarding their own questions.  In the process, concepts and techniques of both parties are consolidated.

Justification

Students being frequently tested by teachers, they will be enjoyed to test others including their classmates.  When self-motivated, they will certainly put effort to finish the task.  In the process, they will explore the topics further to set challenging questions for their classmates.  Besides, they will ensure themselves to be familar with the concepts and techniques of the questions they set.   Besides exploring the concepts and techniques by each student himself, each can also acquire the extras explored by their classmates.

TSE Chi Kui (Andy)

1988054934