Teacher Training

In late 1990s, the Education Department, in collaboration with tertiary institutes and local teachers’ associations, began to provide training programs introducing the use of ICT to in-service mathematics teachers. The content and structure of these courses were quite similar and reflected major direction in developing mathematics teachers’ competence in using ICT in their teaching. Despite the fact that the programs were centrally organized, content development and tutorship was mainly taken up by a few teachers who had been enthusiastic about using mathematics learning software and expecting different means of teaching and learning through the use of technology.

These programs were intended to develop teachers’ basic competence and pedagogy regarding use of ICT in mathematics teaching, with focus on application of various subject-specific software: spreadsheet, function graphing tools and dynamic geometry software. These are considered as open-ended and content free, therefore allowing more flexible use by students and teachers.

The training courses were usually conducted in the form of hands-on workshop, each accommodating about 20 to 40 participants. Participants of early courses were interested in knowing the latest development of educational technology but usually had little knowledge and experience in using computers. Thus, much of the training time was spent on practical work to familiarize the teacher participants with basic commands for working with selected software. Nevertheless, examples, mainly from overseas, were introduced to suggest possible ways of constructing or adapting teaching units that integrate the use of new software. These examples usually assumed greater involvement of students through explorations and were generally considered uncommon in local classrooms. Little time was left for discussion about the design of appropriate teaching materials and strategies based on the teachers’ newly acquired knowledge of the tools and their pedagogical understanding in local context.

While some basic skills of using the three common mathematics learning software were repeatedly taught in the training courses, the Education Department prepared a demonstration CD-ROM which was distributed to all secondary schools in 2000. The dissemination of this CD-ROM was intended to speed up the process of popularizing basic use of ICT tools in mathematics teaching.

Curriculum Resources

Exemplars from the Education Department

Besides teacher training, the Education Department began to further promote the use of ICT through publication of exemplary teaching materials. When the latest secondary mathematics curriculum was first implemented in 2001, a collection of exemplars had been compiled to demonstrate the new teaching strategies claimed to be compatible with the design of the new curriculum. Through these examples of teaching and learning activities, the recommended teaching approaches and learning outcomes for individual topics were illustrated. It was emphasized in many of these examples that, with the advent of technology, entirely different means of teaching and learning would be possible and, in some cases, even necessary. Some examples, such as exploring the use of statistical graphs with MS Excel or investigating the properties of triangles with drawings by Wingeom, were provided with detailed instructions for using specific tools to complete a teaching or learning task. Guidelines for conducting the lessons and worksheets were also suggested. Many of these examples of ICT use came from materials used in the above-mentioned teacher training programs.

Altogether six teaching packages have been distributed to all secondary schools, among which the first, entitled “Use of Information Technology” (CDC 2001), is a collection of sample classroom activities in which different types of popular ICT tools are employed. Once again, ICT is used in these activities mainly as a tool for exploration. In most cases, students are supposed to work directly with the software to explore possibilities, observe patterns, formulate conjectures and interpret output. Similarly in the other teaching packages, sample activities conducted with the use of ICT in the same manner are common. In particular, wherever there are emphases on new curricular objectives in different mathematical areas, teachers are encouraged to use ICT creatively and critically. For example, in another teaching package for the dimension Measure, Shape and Space, where objectives and approaches of studying geometry are specified, there is a greater emphasis on the development of spatial sense and adoption of intuitive approach compared with the original curriculum. The change in such curricular emphasis is supposed to be greatly supported by the use of dynamic geometry learning software.

In the primary sector, there were similar developments, though at a slower pace. This was partly because the new primary mathematics curriculum was first implemented in 2002, one year later than the secondary one; and partly because the curricular content of the primary mathematics was relatively more stable. However, the emphasis on exploratory learning is still noticeable. For example, the Education Department published in 1999 a teaching and learning package entitled “Using Calculators for Exploration: The Mystery of Numbers.” The use of such basic technological tool as calculators for investigative tasks was obvious.

Other Resources

In addition to teaching exemplars provided by the Education Department, curriculum resources promoting the use of ICT in mathematics teaching are also available through many other means. Some of these resources are provided by individual teachers, schools and professional bodies while they are sharing their self-developed teaching materials through the Internet. Some others are provided through projects funded by the Quality Education Fund (QEF) or Information Technology Resource Centre (ITERC) as a result of the government policy in developing IT-related curriculum resources for all subjects. Take the secondary mathematics resources as an example. The packages provided by the ITERC (http://www.ited.emb.gov.hk/ITERC/Cal/eCalIndex.asp) include:

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