The ongoing, unprecedented growth of ICT, coupled with the globalisation of the economy, has created a huge challenge for education. This rapid growth of infusing ICT in education is confronting stakeholders with the effectiveness and the impact of these technological applications. This paper explores the impact of ICT implementation on Hong Kong classroom practice since the inception of the government IT initiatives with particular emphasis on teachers' perceived changes in teaching and learning, and how it interacts with a variety of contextual factors such as leadership and school climate. To deepen our understanding of how ICT acts as a lever to bring about changes in student learning, this study also relates changes in learning to various factors like frequency and types of ICT tools used in classroom teaching, and the kinds of instructional strategies. It is hoped that the findings will inform educational practitioners and researchers of the emerging pedagogical practices with ICT.
Weblogs are a popular form of easy-to-use personal publishing that has attracted millions of bloggers to share their personal thoughts, opinions, and knowledge on the web. The versatility of weblogs as a communication medium has attracted interests from educators. Educational applications of weblogs have so far included journals, e-portfolio, learning diaries, and logbooks. As in the case of other educational technologies, the perception of students is a determinant factor of whether weblogs are used in a way that elicits educational values. This paper investigates student perception towards the purposes of blogging. It reports an experience of introducing blogging tasks to third year computing students, and compares their perception with students not participating in the blogging tasks. A student perception model is proposed to explain the difference in the perception due to the experience in blogging. The paper concludes that mandatory use of weblogs in a course can gradually cultivate educationally sound perceptions in students despite of the observed misuse.
Information literacy (IL) has spawned a proliferation of studies in the past two decades. Information literacy is deemed pivotal to the pursuit of both personal empowerment and the economic development of a society. Most of the contemporary interpretations of information literacy are inextricably intertwined with lifelong learning. In this paper, we will (1) examine the commonalities exhibited among a variety of information literacy frameworks developed in different regions; and to deepen our understanding of school principals' and teachers' perceptions on information literacy framework and its role in learning. The research findings indicate that the practitioners share the view that IL should embrace learning outcomes of the four dimensions of learning: cognitive, meta-cognitive, affective and socio-cultural. Results of this study indicate that the traditional notion of information literacy is inadequate to address the learning needs in the 21st century and a spiral approach to developing students' information literacy is deemed necessary.