An Expat Educator in Asia

Firstly a big thank you to Timothy Lower, Ed Edquist, and Dr Andy Page Smith for allowing us to use a room at Hong Kong Academy for the 4th Seminar. This was a well-attended event with around 25 teachers and leaders present who clearly relished the opportunity to network with like-minded educators and share common concerns and successes.

We kicked off around 3:15 with a host of great reports of the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai

Web 2.0 tools Ning and Twitter were the cornerstones of the conference and they allowed for an innovative way of tying 600 delegates, presenters and exhibitors together. many commented on how exciting it was to be able to comment, receive feedback and find new friends all within this environment. We looked at the still very active Ning site for the conference http://learning2cn.ning.com/

Jeff Pierce of ISF Academy kicked us off with a great account of some of the sessions that he attended, especially the “Teaching Zack to Think” one with Alan November http://novemberlearning.com/ and how he now feels compelled to “walk the talk”. Jeff showed us how he uses a combination of an edublog blog http://www.edublogs.org/ and a wikispaces wiki http://www.wikispaces.com to accomplish things like discussions about learning, homework setting and parental communication in a way that is being well received by the school community.

It was noted by Jeff that if you set up a free blog on edublogs and use the link from there to set up a free wiki on wikispaces, you can get an advertisement free wiki that will be much more acceptable to your school community. Contact me if you have any trouble doing this.

For those who have not seen it, this is a great teachertube video http://www.teachertube.com on the uses of a wiki. Download Video: Posted by cmantin at TeacherTube.com.

Following some great sharing from Karen Moffat and others who attended Learning 2.0, Timothy Lower treated us to a great activity used by Gary Stager of http://www.stager.org/ I have uploaded the file to this Blog but, not having uploaded files on blogs before, I am not sure where it appears. It is called “Who should I vote for?” I know that I was challenged to be able to find the answers that I needed using the web and I am sure that it would be impossible to do so with any encyclopedia. I think we all had lights going on about why we need to teach information literacy to the learners in our charge.

There was no doubt in the minds of attendees of the need to have more opportunities like Learning 2.0 or even the seminar itself. It was also said by many that the need to get administrators along to these events is crucial! Karen Moffat informed us that the next Administrators Conference for EARCOS http://www.earcos.org/ featured a strong element of the use of ICT for learning in the programme. Having just had a glance myself, http://www.earcos.org/eac2007/glance.html, I can see what she means. Looks like a great opportunity for member schools or associates.

At around 4.15pm I slotted in a short demonstration of Primary Games/Maths Pack software produced by Mark Cogan of Interactive Resources, a cottage developer who runs a small operation in the UK and produces really high quality software aimed at, but not exclusive to, Interactive Whiteboard classrooms.

Mark’s software is a great hit with schools who want to get up and running with IWB use quickly and want to source some activities that are engaging and motivating. I have links to evaluations of Mark’s titles on my website. http://www.learningsolutions.com.hk/

At around 4.25pm we commenced the Open Forum/Sharing sections of the seminar which starting with the following topics:
1. Networking for sharing information about robotics teaching.
This mainly concerned attendees from The International School of Macau and ISF Academy who are both looking at using the Lego Robotics Kits but there was some discussion of Picaxe http://www.picaxe.co.uk/ This could be a good option for schools looking to try something original in the technology field.

2. Discussion of needs for storing/transporting and charging laptops.

It is clear that more and more Hong Kong schools are using laptops with students in classrooms. The issue of storage and transport of class sets of notebooks/laptops is a challenging one for schools that are multi-level and often not connected by lifts. It appeared that noone has a good solution for notebook transport and storage in Hong Kong. I feel that this will be an ongoing point of discussion in the group.

3. Organizing a Hong Kong school meet up for BETT
attendees this January.

A couple of schools in the group are attending BETT http://www.bettshow.com/ in January. It was suggested that we may want to meet up. I am happy to coordinate this for the group. You can contact me here if you wish to be put on a list that I will circulate ahead of the term break.

4. AOB.

This was quite lively and included discussion of the use of United Streaming videos  in schools,  the two EARCOS Conferences , a sharing of filmstreet http://www.filmstreet.co.uk/as a part of a rich discussion of the use of video in classrooms across Hong Kong and the implications of storage of such media and a lot of discussion of the ability of various curricula adopted across Hong Kong to accommodate the new media that students choose to work in. This could have gone on into the night if allowed to!

At around 5.30, our Hosts Ed and Timothy shared something of the learning vision of HK Academy with us. This was very interesting for all as it was a school that many of the  members knew little about. It was clear that the ambitious development plans that HKA had were subject to the same frustrations as almost all other schools represented in the room.

Ed made some very insightful comments about the challenges of technical people trying to support the needs of teachers and students as we all move into the digital school age. He made a very good point about teachers and especially Senior Management of schools needing to know the implications of embracing a digital way of learning.

All in all this event was a great success and will ensure the future of these seminars. Stay tuned for news of the possibility of something like Learning 2.0 in Hong Kong in the near future.

Filed under: Education in Hong Kong