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.
 

Sharing after 1st lecture

Here I also want to share some of my experiences.  I am a secondary school teacher, teaching AL Computer Studies and ASL Computer Applications.  My school employs eClass to assist teaching and learning.  Last year, for each course I was teaching, I created a "Classroom" in eClass and related resources could be downloaded.  I also posted questions asking students to discuss online.  Students could also post questions to me and to other students.  Nonetheless, after a month, I found that the students' participation was not satisfactory.  Some students seldom logged on, few students gave responses to my questions, and even fewer ever posted any questions. 

Later, I found that they all have a msn account and they like to chat using msn.  So I created a msn account for this purpose and joined their network.  Since then, they chatted with me on msn regularly.  Initially, many trivial things were exchanged.  Then they started asking me questions regarding the course.  I would not give an answer immediately but post the questions to others via msn, asking all to think and discuss.  Certainly, I would not tell the origin of the questions.  In most cases I received responses from some of them, and I would give them a summary finally.  Gradually, I would send them the questions, but also posted them in eclass, and asking them to discuss in eclass.  Finally, I would only post the summary and my answers in the eclass.  Though they still mainly asked me questions via msn after lesson instead of eclass, the participation in eclass was much higher and most of them did discuss in eclass.

Why students enjoy communicating with me using msn instead of eclass?  I think first of all they are familar with msn but not eclass.  Secondly, students have the pre-conception that msn is for fun but eclass is for teaching and learning and so must be boring........

Tse Chi Kui (Andy)

1988054934

Lesson 1 Activity: The mini evolution of On-line Teaching and Learning systems I experienced

With the rapid development of Information Technology and the accelerating adoption rate of technology in modern society, Information Systems or information platforms are now widely used in the area of teaching and learning which enormously enhance the quality and efficiency of education.

I remember the first time I got in touch with on-line learning was in my last year of senior high school. I bet you all know the fierce competition of College-entrance-examination in Mainland China; every student went to different “Private Tutors” after school in order to get good grades for that exam. Instead of go to “Real Tutors”, I went to “Virtual Tutors”. It was like an on-line tutoring school, there were always best teachers for different subjects there for you; if you got a problem or cannot figure out a particular question, just go to their website and write down your questions, they will get back to you with detailed answers in few hours. Now, this kind of tutoring is not unusual, and some even will say that is not efficient. I absolutely agree with that. But think about it in China 10 years ago, no one could deny that this kind of on-line tutoring platform is new and effective, and of course making good profit. (You need to pay 1000RMB/semester for such services.)

When I began my UG study in Hong Kong, I got a chance to experience a more dynamic on-line learning system. The system I used was called “WebCT”, professors will upload the lecture notes and all kinds of learning materials on that system for students to download and student can take small quizzes on that system too. I believe the functionalities are more that these two I just described, but as a user of “WebCT”, I am not that benefit from it.

Later in year 2007, our University announced that they will no longer use “WebCT” for teaching and learning platform, and they gonna switch to another internally developed system called “Learning Management and Evaluation System”. I guess it was not only the expensive license fee the University needs to pay for “WebCT” that bothers, also the effectiveness and system control needs to be improved by using the new system. It was not an easy task for both faculties and students to transfer from “WebCT” to “LMES”, though the new system provides more functionality. Users were confronted with totally new interfaces and there are lots of new functions you need to learn how to use.

(Picture Source: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology LMES 2.5 All rights reserved.)









After a painful transfer phase, users are gradually adopted the new system and try to utilize all the functions. LMES, as an internal developed teaching and learning system, is more integrated with HKUST’s teaching and learning style and quite innovative in terms of interface design.

As what I have experienced from using on-line teaching and learning systems, I realized that when the communication through systems become smoother and user generated contents are become more effective, the system then can be fully utilized.


By Sophie Gu Jiaying

Lesson 1 Activity: Oscar Chan

PowerPoint

When I was a secondary school student, that was the moment that the Government start to popularize IT in education. My Pure Math teacher try to start using PowerPoint as a teaching material.  It seem she spent lot of time to add the mathematics symbol on the slides, but my classmates and I found that it is no different from using chalk and talk. We just thought it was a waste of time. At that time I started to think over the meaning of IT in education. Is it only mean that we must using IT technology instead of traditional method, or only a alternative way for teaching and learning?

Now I am a teacher, and I use PowerPoint too. But i am not using it only as a storage of notes, but as a way to attract the attention of students. So I always add a lot of beautiful pictures or multimedia on the slides but not put all my notes on it. And if I found the topic is better to present by chalk and talk, I do so.

Oscar Chan 2010/09/12

Lesson 1 Activity: Kinley Chan

 Communication Channel

As a class tutor of level one students I use facebook as a communication channel to communicate with them and I also use facebook as a notice board to announce supplementary examination information. In this way student could obtain exam info without back to school in summer holiday as well as we can interact with many students at the same time.



Kinley Chan Cho Kin