The Centre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kong presents a course for primary and secondary school teachers on:
Designing, facilitating & assessing knowledge building
Co-organized by:
Centre for IT in Education, University of Hong Kong
Education and Manpower Bureau, HKSAR
Dates and time
8, 15, 22, 29 of June (Thursdays), 5:30-8:30pm (4 sessions)
Target Participants
Primary and secondary school teachers
***Priority will be given to prefects of studies/ panel heads /primary school curriculum leaders
Venue
Computer Room, Maryknoll Fathers?School
2 To Yuen Street, Tai Hang Tung, Kowloon
N.B. This course is a re-running of the two workshops named 南troduction to Knowledge Building as an approach to developing higher order thinking?and 圯signing & Facilitating Knowledge Building Activities in the Curriculum? held in June and July 2005. Teachers who have participated in them need not apply.
Introduction
A major focus for the educational reform initiatives in recent years around the world is on developing students' abilities as autonomous learners ?to be able to identify their own learning goals and strategies, to seek and evaluate information and to use them for the solution of real life problems. Many teachers have introduced online discussions into their curriculum activities for this purpose. However, it is often found that online discussions may not be as productive as expected since students may simply be not interested. Some will just ut and paste?materials and, at worst, regressing into random chats. This common phenomenon reveals that new learning goals not only require new learning activities, but more importantly, they call for new learning theories, new pedagogies and purpose-built technology to support them. This course introduces the theory of knowledge building put forward by Bereiter & Scardamalia (1993) and how it helps to address the above issues in Hong Kong classrooms
This course is a follow-up activity of the Interactive Symposium on "Deep & Satisfying Learning through Knowledge Building" jointly hosted by CITE and EMB on May 20 2006. It is designed for teachers and educators who are interested in
- understanding the theory of knowledge building
- exploring how knowledge building can be facilitated through appropriate curriculum design
- choosing suitable online platforms to support knowledge building/quality learning.
Objectives
This course will provide participants with
(1) an opportunity to explore some exemplars of students?online constructions;
(2) a review of curriculum design and pedagogical strategies that some teachers have successfully implemented in facilitating knowledge building in their teaching; and
(3) a brief introduction to two purpose-built platforms for knowledge building: Knowledge Forum?(KF) developed at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto; and Future Learning Environment 3 (Fle3) developed at the University of Helsinki.
Structure and approach
The structure of this course reflects the knowledge building approach itself. Examples of how the knowledge building approach has been adopted in actual primary and secondary classrooms in Hong Kong will be shown. Multimedia workshop materials include video recordings of the learning activities, interviews with teachers and students as well as uided tours?of students?online work illustrating instances of deep learning and teachers?facilitation. Various key learning areas, including languages, sciences, humanities, general studies and technology education will be demonstrated.
Target Participants