Course: ICTs in Teaching & Learning
Hong Kong, 23-28 January 2007

I recently taught a week-long intensive course in Hong Kong, focusing on ICTs in teaching and learning. Hong Kong is obviously one of the world leaders in technology: you just have to look at the lightshow on Victoria Harbour every evening at eight, or take a trip in the underground, or use your Octopus card (or watch) to buy drinks from a vending machine … But having technology is not the same as knowing what to do with it pedagogically. Actually, with the advent of web 2.0 technologies, it’s less and less about the technology and more and more about how to use it. Few of the teachers on the course had used technology beyond net searches and email; only a handful had heard of blogs or wikis. Yet by the end of the course most had begun to create their own technological resources – blogs, wikis, folksonomies, Moodle VLEs, podcasts – and, over the past couple of months, they’ve successfully embedded these in their teaching. There’s a really important message here:

A knowledge of pedagogical principles is more important than a knowledge of technology for teachers who want to make use of web 2.0 in their classes.

Tags: technology, pedagogy, web 2.0