My KWL (session 1)

What do I already know about curriculum reform?
The 3+3+4 senior secondary reform will come into effect in 2009 in Hong Kong. Under this system, students only need to take one public examination. And the number of subjects they need to study is also reduced. As more students will study in Form 6 under the new 3+3+4 senior secondary, the variation of the abilities of the students will be larger than what is happening now. Teachers will have to tackle this problem more seriously.

EMB has published the document ‘the Empowering Learning and Teaching with Information Technology’ to further promote the integration of ICT in teaching and learning. Under the curriculum reform, teachers may need to adopt a new of teaching, and students may need to adopt a new of learning. The roles of teachers as facilitators and students as self and life-long learners are encouraged.

However, sometimes people are reluctant to make changes in the way they now practise. As good results in public examination are stressed instead of the growth of knowledge of the learners, you cannot force teachers to give up familiar ways of doing and ask them to try something that is likely to have many challenges and problems, and more importantly, whose effect is unknown. This may be a problem caused by the present examination-oriented curriculum.

What do I want to know about curriculum reform?
In what ways can curriculum reform help students to learn by themselves?
How does the use of ICT facilitate curriculum reform?
How can we be sure that students are learning the curriculum using ICT?
What are the impacts of the curriculum reform and ICT on my workplace?

What have I learnt about curriculum reform?
(Group 1) I see the curriculum reform to have 3 main changes. They are in the areas of SBA, Project Learning and Liberal Studies.

SBA – School Based Assessment will be implemented throughout the reform. Students will need to do school-based assessment. This will cultivate generic skills and attitudes, because these cannot be assessed by conventional examination. This is a better tool to truly reflect students’ learning motivation and attitude.

Project Learning – A number of learning hours is allocated for project learning for most subjects. Students are encouraged to work in collaboration and solve problems on their own. This will put more emphasis on hands-on experience which could be covered by examination. It will build higher order thinking skills and will develop their life-long learning skills and attitude.

Liberal Studies – One other big change in the curriculum reform is the addition of the core subject, Liberal Studies. This subject is very difficult to have textbooks and it is a very dynamic subject where topics are built on daily events. This will connect and apply the knowledge, perspective and skills as students acquire in the study of the different units.

Curriculum reform and ICT
Internet helps people to get more information more quickly than before. The use of ICT enhances a new type of teaching and learning paradigm. The use of ICT brings more fun on the lesson, e.g. through interesting simulation, interactive games. Unlike textbooks, ICT acts as an interactive learning tool to enhance a new form of teaching and learning. It also stresses on the learning process of the students, but not the final grade.

Curriculum reform from my workplace perspective
As a commercial company, it may not be a good news that a new curriculum reform is coming as the company needs to start from the beginning again to prepare the educational resources and invest lots of money again before they gain profits. On the other hand, the threat ahead brings another opportunity and this opportunity can bring a big gain to my company. As a paradigm shift is anticipated, publishers should be ready to shift from a textbook publishing to e-learning publishing. At the time being, textbooks, multimedia and online resources co-exist and support one another, these really cost publishers a lot of money. Teachers need to learn new ICT skills and apply ICT to enhance teaching and learning, and so are the editors in the publishers. If the editors do not know what is happening in the schools for the new curriculum reform, they may not be able to prepare quality educational resources that really meet the requirement of teachers and students. On-job training for the paradigm shift should also be provided to editors. This is one of the reasons why I enroll in MSE(ITE).