CBIT 2005

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CBIT 2005 How Primary Schools in Hong Kong
Respond to SARS Teddy So teddy_at_cite.hku.hk
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• What has been Done?
• After the first IT strategic plan (1998 2003)
• Necessary infrastructure laid
• Basic IT training provided to teachers
• Digital education resources collected

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• Access and Connectivity
• Primary school 91 computers (40)
• Secondary school 247 computers (82)
• Broadband Connection 100
• gt 60 have fiber access at 10 100 MBPS
  bandwidth
• Student-Computer Ratio
• Primary 7.4
• Secondary 4.6
• Special 2.0
• In Hong Kong (mid-2003)
• Students aged 10 or over with Household
  PC 91.3
• These students with Internet connection 92.6

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Teacher Enablement BIT 50,600 teachers
100 (100 ) (including 4,600 teaching
assistants) IIT 35,600 77 (
75) UIT 12,500 27 ( 25) AIT 2,600
6 (1-2 teacher/sch.) IT Pilot
Scheme Primary 10 Secondary 10 Centres
of Excellence (CoE) 20 in various districts
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What do these figures tell you? What is your
impression?
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What happened in 2003?
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What happened in 2003? The Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak was first
brought to public attention in the end of 2002,
with few and scattered cases reported / found in
the mainland China. Hong Kong started suffering
from the spread of SARS in early 2003. By May
2003 SARS infected 1,755 people in Hong Kong and
claimed 304 lives. Around the world there were
over 8,000 cases of infections and 774 were dead
(Fox, 2004).
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What happened in 2003? In Hong Kong many
face-to-face contacts were forced to suspend.
People stopped gathering in public places. SARS
also forced many government and school officials
in Asia like Beijing and Singapore to close
schools. More than two million students were
affected (Borja, 2003 Radio Free Asia, 2003).
All schools in Singapore were closed from March
27 to April 6, 2003 (Tan, 2003).
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What happened in 2003? EMB had to suspend all
face-to-face schooling from March 31 to April 22,
2003 (age 14 or above in secondary schools) and
even longer period for primary schools.
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What happened in 2003? One Beijing Primary
School was closed on April 15, 2003.
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What happened in 2003? Even schools in Toronto,
which is far from South East Asia, had to
close schools because of the threat of SARS
too (The Hindu, 2003).
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The Impact of SARS on Education The suspension
of class forced educators to think of new
alternative means to continue the learning and
teaching. Although the face-to-face contact mode
was stopped in that period of time, many schools
claimed that they did not stop the teaching and
learning activities, which were conducted in
other means, with the help of IT.
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The Impact of SARS on Education Theoretically if
the integration of IT in schools was completed
as stated in the first IT strategic plan, the
threat of SARS which caused the suspension of
schooling would be minimal. However, what was
the reality?
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Aims of this Study The purpose of this study is
to report how primary schools in Hong Kong
conducted their teaching and learning activities
in the class suspension period under the threat
of SARS, with the help of information
technology.
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Methodology Survey questionnaires with
open-ended questions were distributed to 130
teachers from 130 primary schools. 92 responses
were collected. Total number of primary schools
is 803 in 2003 (EMB, n. d.). The teachers
participated in this study were all primary
school teachers from different schools and
teaching different subjects. They attended the
e-learning related refresher training courses
organized by EMB in 2004 and 2005.
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Results
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Results
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Discussion I One possible reason to explain why
schools still used traditional ways to
communicate with students during the SARS period
was the lack of preparation of schools. Although
the IT infrastructure was well established in
all schools in Hong Kong, as reported by EMB in
its document, the sudden closure of the schools
during SARS left most schools and teachers
unprepared.
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Discussion I (cont.) Owing to the rapidly
increasing threat of SARS, many parents
voluntarily stopped sending their children to
schools, forcing many schools to stop the
face-to-face communication before the official
announcement from EMB. It all happened within a
very short period of time (48 hours) that no
stakeholders, including parents, students,
teachers and schools had enough time to prepare
or think about what they should do during the
class suspension.
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Discussion I (cont.) As reported by a
qualitative study done by Fox (2004), many
teachers and schools were unprepared for the
class suspension. The last day of school
before the closedown was chaotic. Due to the
timetable commitments on the final day before
closedown, form teachers in my school did not
see all their students. also some parents had
already kept their kids at home, fearing SARS
infection at school. We were given no
guidelines or help on what to do or how to carry
on teaching. The school announced no policy in
fact we didnt even get the full class list of
e-mails till several days later. (p. 322). As
indicated in table one, only two schools were
managed to distribute worksheets to students
before class suspension.
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Discussion II Even they were prepared, were the
preparation appropriate?
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Discussion II (cont.) Required IT training
received by Teachers in the first IT strategic
plan from 1998 - 2003
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Discussion III Were the primary schools pupils
prepared? 1. Chinese Character Input Method 2.
Digital Divide
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Discussion III 1. Chinese Character Input
Method Interaction is one of the concerns in
designing e-learning materials / activities.
Merely downloading learning materials /
worksheets from a school website is not
considered a very high level e-learning
activity. However, a prerequisite of designing
e-learning activity with high level
interactivity is the learners abilities to
input characters into the computers. In Hong Kong
the majority of schools use Chinese as the
Medium of Instruction (MOI). One of the learning
targets in the area of IT in primary school is
the ability to input Chinese characters before
they graduate and go to secondary school. P. 1
and P. 2 pupils are too young to learn Chinese
Character input methods. Usually primary school
pupils learn how to input Chinese characters in
P. 3 P. 6. This common practice excludes some
real e-learning opportunities of the P. 1 and P.
2 pupils.
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide The critical
barrier reported by the teacher participants was
pupils lack computers at home (54). No
matter how advanced the IT foundation is in
schools, if there was no computer installed at
students home, or there was no Internet
connection, the e-learning process could not be
made possible. The biggest headache is the
problem of ensuring students access to the
Internet, said Dr. Fung from the Baptist
University which provided an e-learning platform
for schools to continue the learning virtually
during the SARS period (Borja, 2003).
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide According to
the latest government survey, only 71.1 of
families in Hong Kong have computers at home.
Out of those 70 household, only 90 of them
have Internet connection (Ming Pao Newspaper,
2004).
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide However, the
figures are the average numbers only. In this
study, some teachers stated that Less than
50 of my students have computers installed at
home About 40 of my students do not have
computers at home. One teacher expressed that
Many of our students come from lower class with
low income and receiving subsidy from
government, many of them are living in public
estates or small rooms. There is only 15 of them
can enjoy using computers at home.
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide In response to
the Commission on Poverty established in 2005,
the Hong Kong Professional Teacher Union (HKPTU)
conducted a survey on students from P. 4 to F. 7
(Ming Pao Newspaper, 2005). 5,550 questionnaires
were collected. The results showed that 5 of
the students (P. 4 F. 7), equivalent to 42,000
students in the total population of Hong Kong,
did not have computers at home. 90 of those
students were from low-income families, or
families receiving Comprehensive Social Security
Assistance. 61 of those students were living in
public estates, or flats sharing by many
families. 43 of them did not have chance to
utilize computers installed in community centers
and schools to learn. As a summary, digital
divide is a big challenge to the possible wide
use of e-learning.
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Discussion III 2. Digital Divide References ?
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Conclusion The reaction of teachers and schools
in Hong Kong during the SARS period confirms the
old saying that merely installing computers in
schools will not allow for automatic integration
of IT into the curriculum. In the first IT
strategic plan all schools set up many IT
infrastructures, such as sophisticated computer
networks, broadband Internet connection,
intranet, etc. However, this hardware did not
guarantee real use of IT in learning and
teaching. If the challenge of SARS is a test to
all schools in Hong Kong, many schools failed in
this test. We need to build up the culture of
integrating IT in the curriculum on other
foundations but not merely IT infrastructure.
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Prologue SARS crisis became a catalyst to
schools to apply information technology in
learning and teaching intensively (Fox, 2004).
Since many schools did not know how to respond
to this sudden threat, it provided a chance to
the higher institutes to collaborate with
schools The Baptist University VITLE The
Chinese University of Hong Kong HOMEWORK The
Polytechnic University SMILE The Hong Kong
Education City iclassroom
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Prologue In July 2004 the second Information
Technology strategic plan of schools Empowering
Learning and Teaching with Information
Technology was released by EMB. Two of the
emphases of the second plan were the wide use of
e-learning and wireless technologies in schools.
All schools, both primary and secondary, are
expected to set up their school based e-learning
platforms in two years time. Funding from
government was distributed to schools in
February and March 2005.
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Prologue Although many teachers, students and
parents do not fully understand what e-learning
is, they hold much positive attitudes towards
the use of information technology in learning as
compared to the pre-SARS era. Some schools use
online education permanently for after-school
learning "Our students and parents have
experienced how useful information technology
can be in school education. Now, teachers see IT
as an ordinary teaching tool. (Borja,
2003). http//www.cite.hku.hk/people/tkkso/Publ
ications/2005/How Primary Schools in Hong Kong
Respond to SARS.doc
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Finally THE END Thank you