eLearning Consortium ELC Education 2.9 Conference (Feb 2013)

On 23rd February, 2013, eLearning Consortium (eLC) held “Education 2.9 Conference-Next Step in e-Learning Revolution” in Cyber Port. Eddie Ng Hak-kim GBS, JP, the Secretary for Education, was invited as guest for opening speech. Our WebOrganic CEO, Mr.Erwin Huang, delivered the welcome remarks. 

The event was divided into four sessions, including “School Infrastructure Readiness”, “Content and System Readiness”, “Student and Parent Readiness” and “Teacher Readiness”.

I was one of the speakers on that day. My sharing topic was “Bicycle and Tricycle of e-Learning”, which included the role of parents during implementation e-Learning programmes, as well as parental support offered by WebOrganic.

It was my first time to have over 100 audience. I got short notice for this event as well. This time I got 3 days notice (not that bad) but was super busy with my first consultancy project in WebOrganic. Luckily, I had Nic to test out the contents with me. It was important to keep things simple and insightful.

 The speech was regarded as "Make or Break" my career, since it will be delivered to 100+ people and my CEO as well. I did rehearsed for a few times in order to achieve a smooth presentation flow.

Originally my speech was in the morning when even more audience was there. However, due to overrun by previous speakers, mine became the first after lunch. Good and bad... Good was that I got more time to rehearse; Bad was that I forgot a lot of my scripts in the morning (maybe because I was quite attentive to process what I heard from other speakers).

Overall speaking, this was a great experience for my career. Hope in one day, I will deliver a speech in front of a million people.

The seminar speakers are listed below:

• Mr. Charles Mok , Legislative Councilor – (IT);
• Ms. Winnie Wong, Head of Marketing, HK Cyberport Management Company Limited;
• Ms. Leona Wong, Executive Director, HK Wireless Technology Industry Association (WTIA); Mr. She Mang, Chief Curriculum Development Officer, IT in Education;
• Mr. Victor Cheng, Executive Director, Hong Kong Education City;
• Mr. Ip Kin Yuen Legislative Councilor – (Education Constituency);
• Dr. Allen Wong, SVP, Product Development and Management, Consumer Group, HKT Education Limited;
• Mr. Li Chi Shing (IT Panel); Po Leung Kuk, Chee Jing Yin Primary School, (won in 2012 Chief Executive's Award for Excellence in Education (information Technology in Education); Ms. Becky Lo, Education Lead, Public Sector Group, Microsoft Hong Kong Limited;
• Ms. Deon Man, Baptist Lui Ming Choi (Shatin Wai) Primary School; Cheung Kwok Che, Legislative Councilor (Social Welfare);
• Mr. Jeff Ng, Programme Manager, WebOrganic;
• Mr. Ha Chi Hung, IT Panel, True Light Middle School of HK, the Hong Kong Institute of Education;
• Dr. Kong Siu Cheung, Head of Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, Hong Kong Institute of Education the Hong Kong Institute of Education Jockey Club;
• Mr. Chu Tsz Wing, The HKIEd Jockey Club Primary School;
• Mr. Jimmy Lam, Head of Information Technology Department;
• Mr. Andy Li, IT Panel, Salesian School;
• Mr. Wong Kin Wai, Albert, Chairman of Association of IT Leaders in Education (AiTLE)

For more information, please visit ELC's website: http://elearning.org.hk/

Open e-Learning Lesson at The Lok Sin Tong Leung Wong Wai Fong Memorial School 樂善堂梁黃蕙芳紀念學校 (Feb 2013)

On 5th Feb 2013, I attended an open lesson at The Lok Sin Tong Leung Wong Wai Fong Memorial School (樂善堂梁黃蕙芳紀念學校). This was co-organized by the school and e-Class which was an education solution vendor. 

For evey open lesson, it is like a show. Usually teachers will select more mature students from P.4 or above. But for this lesson, Mr. Tang, the demonstrator, was so confident and chose a P.2 class for demonstration purpose. The lesson was on Math and the topic was about multiplication.

Lesson was quite smooth. Mr. Tang used the digital whiteboard a lot. Whenever Mr. Tang asked a question, students raised their hands quickly to show that they knew the answer.

The lesson was conducted for more than 30 minutes and , finally, iPad got into the demonstration in a T&L activity. A paid apps, Math Runner, was used for game-based learning. Two students used one iPad and played the game in "1 vs 1" battle mode. The iPad was also used for consolidation. A PowerLesson quiz was setup to test the students' understanding of the topic. Feedback of the lesson was collected through the PowerLesson platform. Interactive statistical report was immediately generated and Mr. Tang was able to drill down to individual response.

Indeed this was a good demo on how to integrate a Learning Management System (LMS), digital whiteboard, iPad, traditional printed textbook, and learning analytics in a lesson. I observed that e-Class devoted a lot of resources to support this school. In this event, there were over 10 staff from e-Class to support it. 

After the event, I met Mr. Wong, the IT Panel of this school. He was a really helpful and humble person. The relationship between WebOrganic and Mr. Wong was quite strong and there were quite a lot of interactions since our school programme launched in 2011.

I also met some co-workers from e-Class. I found that John Chan, a senior manager from e-Class, was a brother in Christ from my church. Our sons played together in the same room at church. 

Apart from e-Class, there are many LMS solutions in the market, like i-Class from a group of HKU students, Edmodo from Silicon Valley with 15 million users, etc. This event accelerated my understanding of the local market landscape for LMS. 

To conclude, the e-Class PowerLesson solution was quite user-friendly and mature. The open lesson demonstrated not only the LMS but also how it integrated into every day lesson. It was a good show!!!