Using the Internet for education: Training for student-teachers

We envisage a model of putting the concept of using the Internet for education into real practice in school in which the student-teachers play the key role for the successful implementation. In order to achieve the target depicted in this model, a large scale teaching development project is being carried out to develop subject-based courseware to give student-teachers at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) intensive exposure to some interactive hypermedia resources for self-learning on the Internet. Furthermore, those student-teachers are trained to have competence in developing course materials in the World Wide Web format for broadcasting on the Internet. Some preliminary findings of a survey on their attitudes towards using the Internet for education indicate that they generally have positive attitudes but they probably need more time by self practicing in order to develop sufficient confidence in authoring their own course materials on the Internet. The situation is critical at HKIEd as there is still no strategic planning to integrate the Internet with any existing teacher education program. It remains largely the responsibility of individual teacher educators to help the student-teachers develop basic competence and favorable attitudes towards using the Internet for education. Copyright © 1998 Social Sciences Research Centre and authors of papers.