Source: Media Outreach
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 10 December 2021 – Riding on the momentum of last year’s enthusiasm, Hong Kong Education City (EdCity) organised the 2nd edition of Innovative Teacher Award (ITA), with the mission to recognising teachers who effectively adopt different educational technologies, ride on education theories and innovative pedagogies to successfully actualise innovative education. The prize presentation ceremony was successfully held today at the ‘Learning & Teaching Expo 2021’, graced by the presence of the officiating guest, the Under Secretary for Education, Dr Choi Yuk Lin, JP. Dr Choi presented the awards to seven groups of awardees, recognising their great efforts and contributions to driving educational reform.
A series of themed seminars were also held, which gathered all awardees of the Innovative Teacher Award to exchange ideas on successful factors and outcomes of innovative education and explore how they utilise technology in transforming the curriculum and teaching strategies, in response to the current pandemic and the new normal.
While the ceremony was witnessed by a bunch of guests, Mr Victor Cheng, Executive Director of Hong Kong Education City kick-started the ceremony. In his speech, he said: ‘The pandemic has lasted for almost 2 years and has brought dramatic changes to education. eLearning, Blended learning, Innovative Learning Design are no longer unfamiliar concepts to us, educators have gradually adapted to the new normal and transformed it with new teaching strategies. The performance of this year’s participants is brilliant, with diversified and vibrant learning designs, which demonstrated their innovative perspective. We are thrilled to witness fellow educators are flexible in utilising technology and creative teaching methods, which boosted teaching efficacy and unleashed student’s potential. EdCity hopes the “Innovative Teaching Award” could encourage the education sector to continuously innovate teaching pedagogies, foster professional exchanges among teachers, and work shoulder to shoulder for the vision of future ready education.’
The officiating guest, Dr Choi Yuk Lin, JP, the Under Secretary for Education, said, ‘In the new era of education, teachers have to embrace innovative education through the optimal use of technologies and innovative pedagogies to enhance teaching effectiveness and unleash students’ potential.’ Dr Choi continued to congratulate and thank all awardees for their hard work, ‘They have successfully introduced innovation to education and improved effectiveness in learning, teaching and assessment by harnessing technologies that are supported by education theories and innovative pedagogies. Their exceptional achievements fully deserve the distinguished awards.’
The pandemic has resulted in a vibrant scene of innovative education. The competition saw the enthusiastic participation of educators from primary and secondary schools and from a wide spectrum of professional expertise. Introductory videos and briefs on their teaching philosophies and strategies were submitted months ago. A judging panel consisting of professors, veteran principals and education experts evaluated the submissions and selected a total of seven groups of primary and secondary school teachers as recipients of the award (details of the awardees available in the background) for honouring their efforts on driving curriculum reform through innovative teaching.
This year’s ITA has introduced team awards in addition to the pre-existing individual awards. The new team awards are set up to recognise teaching teams who worked together in promoting education innovations in a whole-school approach to cover various aspects, including innovative teaching methods, curriculum design, team collaboration, teacher training, etc. The award recognises teams who encouraged the school at all levels in putting innovative education into practice and built a sound foundation for constructing future schools.
Apart from the Prize Presentation Ceremony, EdCity organised two seminars in the LTE 2021, themed ‘Enhancing Learning and Teaching Effectiveness with Transformation of Curriculum and Pedagogies’ and ‘Path of Future Schooling via a Whole-school Approach to Actualising Innovative Education’. Awardees of the ITA were invited to share their precious experience in innovative education and how they gainfully used technologies as well as reformed curriculum so as to mobilise their teaching peers to put innovation into practice and boost learning and teaching efficacy.
In the first session, four groups of ITA awardees shared their experiences in renewing the curriculum design by utilising innovative technology, such as AR, VR, 3D printing and EdTech in order to equip students with essential skills and qualities in the 21st century, broaden students’ horizons in the local community and global issues, as well as improve learning and teaching efficacy. You may find the summary of the ‘Innovative Teacher Award’ Series: Enhancing Learning and Teaching Effectiveness with Transformation of Curriculum and Pedagogies seminar below:
Shanghai Alumni Primary School
Teacher
Mr Siu Yin Tong
Title: Interdisciplinary Designed Anti-Vibration Layer
The awardee incorporated the General Studies theme ‘Earth’s disasters’ and created a STEM curriculum involving General Studies, Mathematics, Computer subjects in order to inspire students’ design thinking and construct an Anti-Vibration Layer for people living in the earthquake-prone area. He addressed the impacts of the pandemic, redesigned the curriculum, promoted blended learning and increased the proportion of self-directed learning. He employed flipped classrooms and various digital platforms for teaching, aiming to further improve students’ computational thinking.
Sau Ming Primary School
Vice Principal
Ms Tsang Ka Man
Title: Competence-based Innovative Education
The awardee utilised the ‘Framework for 21st Century Learning’ in curriculum design, which nurtured four aspects of core competence, including students’ self-directed learning, thinking, social motions and information technology. Through employing cross digital platforms in the Mathematic subject, flipped classrooms, revision before class, interactive assessment during class and personalised learning extension after class, she designed diversified learning activities. Students could design graphic questions on their own, which improved their problem-solving skills and boosted creativity. Employing peer assessment could also promote more interaction between students and improve their critical thinking and communication skills.
PLK Anita L.L. Chan (Centenary) School
Director of Curriculum Development
Mr Tam Tin Yau Simon
Teacher
Mr Suen Wai
Teacher
Ms Chiu Fung Yee
Teacher
Ms Chan Mei Ying
Title: Centenary School – VR Classroom
The team incorporated an Immersive Virtual Reality System into the traditional experimental learning method to build a ‘VR Classroom’, which allows students with learning disabilities to feel as if they are on a real-life occasion. This helps students to master life skills and be able to handle emergencies and improve emotion management so that they can face challenges in life and integrate into the community. The team has created 360 degrees panoramic video/games, and together with multiple choice questions, they could teach students various themes, such as taking public transport, using the ATM machine, fire drills etc. and put what they learned in VR into real-life occasions.
Christian Alliance S W Chan Memorial College
Vice Principal
Mr Ng Sum Sum
Teacher
Mr Tsang Cheung Chun
Teacher
Mr Seto Wah Sang
Teacher
Mr Liu Kin Hang
Teacher
Mr Yu Lee Kan
Title: Creative STEM Disease Prevention Curriculum – 3D Print Masks
The team developed a Creative STEM Disease Prevention Curriculum, which utilised STEM knowledge to design and produce personalised 3D masks. They took science exploration as the lead, backed up by engineering design and VR coding, to achieve new media self-directed learning. They also joined computer and science subjects to teach together, stressing the importance of DIY learning and inspiring students’ creativity.
In the second session, three groups of ITA awardees will share their valuable experience in revising learning and teaching in the blended learning environment. While the trend of future education inevitably incorporates computational thinking and AI education into eLearning, cross-disciplinary cooperation can bring a ground-breaking learning experience to students. Meanwhile, in the 21st century, social-emotional learning for students is another critical teaching area for post-pandemic education, equipping students with necessary future skills.
You may find the summary of the ‘Innovative Teacher Award’ Series: Path of Future Schooling via a Whole-school Approach to Actualising Innovative Education seminar below:
SKH Holy Spirit Primary School
Vice Principal (Information)
Mr Chen Yi Hsin
Vice Principal (Curriculum)
Ms Sin Wing Sze
PSM
Ms Cheng Sau Ming
PSM
Ms Tang Yuen Mei
APSM
Mr Lee Man Leung
Title: Self-Developed C.A.S.T Unification, Experience beyond Subjects
The team used school-based C.A.S.T programmes to change the education ecology at school, teachers turned into KOL to create video programmes, which incorporated knowledge of different subjects, life skills and thinking logic. Through interesting videos and livestreaming, they show various themes including Culture, Arts, Sports, Spiritual, Skills and Technology, which increased students’ motivation to learn during and after the pandemic. The themes are curriculum relevant, but also includes non-academic knowledge, such as career planning, value education, which help students to build a positive value system. The video ideas are taken from daily life, and diversified teaching themes allow students to taste different experiences in a relaxing and interesting learning environment. For example, ‘Teacher’s Kitchen’ allows students to learn about Hakka culture or incorporating stretching exercises into mathematics to promote exercising at home. They also added in interactive elements, such as voting instantly which is just like a TV programme.
S.T.F.A. Lee Kam Primary School
Vice Principal (Curriculum)
Ms Ip Bik Kwan
I.T. Senior Teacher
Mr Chan Chi Yeung
General Studies Panel
Ms Wong Pik Yan
P.E. Panel
Ms Yeung Wing Tung
Title: Sustainable eLearning, Joyful Calculating
The team promoted blended learning model, and incorporated affective and social learning activities, which could help students to build positive emotions, improve their resilience and learning efficacy. The originally designed ‘Brain Break’ activity, in which students have to make hand postures to respond to teacher’s tests, allows teachers to diagnose and consolidate what students have learned. The ‘Emotional Thermometer’ activity which is held before and after class could help understand the change in emotions of students before and after class, and build personalised lesson learning records for after class extensions and promote self-directed learning.
The Education University of Hong Kong Jockey Club Primary School
Assistant Principal and Coordinator of Innovation & Technology
Mr Law Kam Yuen
Network and System Support Team Head
Mr Kwong Ling Chun
e-Learning Co-ordinatorMs Cheuk Wai Han
Title: Practical Experience of Motivating the Whole School for Innovative Education
The team promoted eLearning and blended learning, which targeted teaching difficulties by employing different tools and teaching methods, aimed to develop all-rounded blended learning under the new normal, improved learning efficacy and students’ participation, took care of learning differences and boosted quality of teaching. The school employed the ‘enriched virtual mode’, which began with face-to-face teaching to stimulate learning interest, then they consolidated the curriculum through online classes and in-depth discussions, together with gamified learning model. They continuously review and improve their curriculum and teaching methods, to promote computational learning and AI education.
EdCity aspires to gather pioneers in innovative education through the ‘Innovative Teacher Award’, foster innovative development and professional communication among the education sector and build a culture of sharing. We stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow teachers in achieving ”Actualising Future Ready Education’.
Details of the ‘Innovative Teacher Award’：https://www.edcity.hk/ita/en/
– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.
