Since attending the Learning 2.008 conference in Shanghai last month, I have been asked to consider the possibility of hosting next year’s conference in Hong Kong. Whilst on the one hand, I am very keen to get something like this going in Hong Kong, on the other I know just how difficult it is to get schools in Hong Kong to work together. As I have mentioned on this blog previously, there are a lot of “International” schools in Hong Kong that are really English Medium Local Schools. These schools do not want to upset parents who feel that are very rigourous, book based education programme is what kids need. Whist the schools are happy to make the use of ICT an adjunct to learning, they are not keen to really make it front and center. This is far too risky as the majority of the parent body see kids using computers for learning as too closely aligned to game playing.

In this environment, very little PD funding is allocated to workshops or conferences around using ICT in the classroom. The vast majority of PD funding is allocated for IB workshops, reading, language and ESL support programs based around traditional approaches. Having attended a great many of these myself, I can assure you that they are a long way behind still in embedding ICT in the workshops. Even the IB, which every school in the region seems to be rushing to take up, has very little use of ICT in the workshops showing teachers how to teach via this “new and updated” curriculum.

Given this low priority for ICT in the region which is changing but sooo… slowly in spite of investment in the hardware tools, it is quite a risky venture to try to host a conference in Hong Kong unless we can attract some of the bigger, truly international schools in the region to Hong Kong.

As per the Shanghai initiatives, we would need around 500 or so teachers to make the conference viable. Give that we were able to attract 200 or so in May, I am sure that we can do this easily. We need a venue. This should be no problem as there are a number of large schools in HK with good wireless access.

I would also consider changing the format as I feel that we know the big picture. I think we need to be moving onto the “digital artifacts”. I would set it up with some streams with one being students and teachers showing what they are doing. Real “in your face stuff”.

I would like to pitch for it for Hong Kong.

Comments??