The 21st century is commonly referred to as the knowledge age because of the phenomenal and escalating pace at which new knowledge is generated, impacting deeply all aspects of human life. The rapid development of ICT and its integration into the fabric of all human activities have played a critical role in these changes. Policy-makers around the world have recognized the importance of a high quality workforce and the citizenry’s preparedness for lifelong learning to the economic and social well-being of the nation or system that they serve. Hence, many education reform policies, often in conjunction with system-wide masterplans/strategies on ICT integration to support formal/informal/lifelong learning have been launched since the 1990s, including Hong Kong.

The Centre for Information Technology in Education, Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong is funded by the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme of the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to conduct a policy research project entitled “e-Learning in Formal, Informal and Open Learning Contexts: A Study of Global Trends, Policy Options and Their Implications for Sustainable Development in Hong Kong”. The project comprised a wide-ranging literature review and document analysis, followed by a Policy Delphi study involving key stakeholders including government officials, teachers, principals, parents, NGOs, businesses and researchers. It aims to provide policy recommendations on strategic implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in formal, informal and open learning based on an in-depth analysis of Hong Kong’s current state and positioning within a global context.

As an extension to the project on "Development of an interactive platform for the consolidation and dissemination of good practices through the Internet in schools", CITE has been commissioned by the Education Bureau to implement phase II of this project and the project has started in January 2006. The aims of the phase II project are as follows:

1. to create a database of practicable pedagogies in schools that have been tested and proved effective for teaching professionals’ reference;
2. to provide teachers and other education practitioners with an interactive platform for discussion and reflection on the uploaded practices;
3. to encourage schools with common interest in any particular case to establish the mode/relationship of inter-schools collaboration so as to further explore strategies on IT applications.

The project was successfully completed in August, 2007. The project comprises two major components. At the first phase, CITE held a series of training course for seconded teachers and research assistants in the 20 identified Centers of Excellence (CoEs) as well as other seconded teachers fully seconded to the EMB who will also be involved in supporting these CoEs. The aim of this course is to provide members of this team the opportunity to gain the requisite understanding and skills on (i) effective uses of ICT for curriculum and pedagogical innovation, (ii) leading and supporting pedagogical change in schools and (iii) action research. The course contents will include methods and techniques in data collection, analysis, case write up and reporting.

At the second phase, i.e. the second component of the project which is to provide guidance to the team of research assistants in the data collection and with their support to collate, analyze and report on the experiences gained by the 20 CoE schools.

CITE has been commissioned by the Education and Manpower Bureau to run the project “The development of an interactive platform for the consolidation and dissemination of good practices through the Internet in schools”. The aims of this project are to create an innovation community database, a sharing system for teachers to explore and reflect on their own pedagogical uses of information and communication technology with other interested education professionals and to build professional collaboration on action-oriented school development initiatives. The project started in Jan 2005 and it was completed in Jan 2006.

In this project, an interactive platform for teachers’ professional development has been developed. Around 25 good practices from different schools were collected and uploaded to the platform as in December 2005. A dissemination workshop on “Using an Online Database of ICT-supported Good Pedagogical Practices to Scale up Innovations across Schools” was held on 10 December 2005 with an aim to share their experience in using the online database and also on the innovative pedagogical practices they have generated by using ICT that have proved to be effective in enhancing student learning.