The Hong Kong experience: The design of ICT-supported learning activities, communities, and environments

This presentation reports a project exploring the pedagogical design requirements of effective T-RLEs. ICT integration in education tends to have either a technology focus (e.g. web-based tools and network infrastructure) or a models of learning focus (e.g. social constructivism). The idea being explored here is that ICT in T-RLEs requires the effective harnessing of educational design principles. The project investigates how teachers might effectively harness the educational implications of ICT as designers of ICT-supported learning activities, communities and environments which provide appropriately meaningful pretexts for interaction, communication and the transformation of either information or skills into applied knowledge. In this way, the project aims to identify and address the missing links between pedagogy and technology, and outline principles for the effective educational use of new technologies. The presentation will refer to both the project case study (an experimental teaching module about T-RLEs) and associated critical inquiry into: (a) Different modes of ICT-supported learning; (b) learning with ICT as an activity-reflection cycle; (c) the requirements of developing a more integrated approach (e.g. ICT as a vehicle for across-the-curriculum literacy) beyond an oppositional perspective (e.g. technology vs. social constructivism, transmission vs. student-centred); (d) relevant notions of learning com-munity grounded in the effective use of ICT in education. The project aims to incorporate relevant practice and theory of effective designs for learning within a larger convergent model. The presentation has a focus on a Hong Kong context in terms of the relation between individual learners and various notions of ICT-supported learning community and environment.