A secondary school in Hong Kong

Background of the school

In 1998, the Government set out a five-year strategy (1998-99 to 2002-03) centered on “Information Technology for Learning in a New Era”, stating that Information Technology (IT) was to be a key component in transforming school education from “a largely textbook-based teacher-centered approach to a more interactive and learner-centered approach” (EMB, 1998). Schools were expected to harness the powers of IT in order to help students “develop an understanding of the pervasive impact of IT on the society and their daily lives, higher order thinking skills, as well as abilities to seek, evaluate, organize and present information”, students would develop a “habit of life-long learning” (EMB, 1998).

The secondary school in this case study is one of the oldest secondary school in Hong Kong. Since 2000, the school began to realize the vision and worked to transform itself from a traditional school into one IT-based, support-active school.

“Our vision is to extend the school’s physical boundaries into the virtual space to enable both teachers and students to connect and learn with their counterparts all over the world,” said Mr. Yip, the Principal of the secondary school. (Microsoft, 2007)

Aiming at enhancing student-teachers’ relationship as well as supporting students’ outside-class learning, it has developed knowledge management in school, for instance, a collaborative learning platform like portal and forum that allow students to post questions and have online-discussion with classmates and teachers.

Knowledge Management Tools

Assessment Server

The Assessment Server is a non-structural KM tool. It started from 1999 with the purpose of collecting students’ assignments. Nowadays, the school has stored students’ assignments dated back to 2000 and recent years’ resources are uploaded to the server. It has three databases including databases for different academic years (2004-2006, 2005-2007 and 2006-2008). Students can log on to the server to access the resources.

Structure of the Assessment Server:

• Problem-based learning project
• Assignment area
• Download area
• Curriculum management
• Exam area
• Student management

The Computer subject has the most complete resources among all subjects. Computer teachers of every form also use this server to collect assignments. For example, we can see from Form 2, how many people are in a class, what assignment they have to do in a whole academic year, who handed in assignment on time or late. With this server, the principal can check any pieces of assignment anytime. This year, the school plans to ask all students to digitize their hand-written assignments as well as exam papers and submit them through this server. However, this is still in process and some technological problems have to be solved in the meantime.

This server was originally a tool for collecting assignments. Why does it become a KM tool? If a new staff comes to the school, he/she may want to know what to teach in the Computer subject. Then, he/she is asked to look at this server, seeing what assignment students are needed to do, as well as notes and other teaching resources. There is also a download area for user to download relevant resources, e.g. materials for HKCEE, assignment, module coursework, answer for textbook, marking schemes, notes, etc. Even students know how to get resources from this server. New teachers can know that how many tests were there in last year also since all tests are uploaded onto the server after they are designed by teachers.

Academic discussion

For academic discussion, there are subjects including Physics, Computer Studies, Mathematics, Geography, Chinese Language and English Language. In these academic discussion forums, any member of the school community can post a question, an issue for discussion, or simply share some ideas or thoughts. With these forums, students can acquire different subject knowledge not only in the textbooks, but also through knowledge sharing and learning among schoolmates and teachers.

For example, teacher of the Computer Studies may post exercises to the forum. Students who have difficulties in doing the exercise can post their questions to the forum. Different teachers, classmates or even some past students may help to solve students’ enquiries with their knowledge through the forum. In fact, not only students can learn from the discussion, teachers who teach the same subject may also exchange their knowledge and their teaching method with each other. In addition, as all this information will not be deleted, the knowledge can be kept, so the students of the next year can reuse this knowledge. They may also simply refer to the posts when they encounter similar difficulties during revision, by making use of the keyword search function provided in the forum.

From the above examples, we can see that members of the forum are assisting each other to develop their knowledge in this forum. When a member did not understand a concept mentioned in class or during their revision, they can asked for answers. This shows that the forum is not only a place for exchanging information and seeking help, but also a platform for members acquiring and developing knowledge.

Clubs and activities

For club and committee issues, details of events or competition of extra-curriculum activities will be posted on the forum. For example, the date, gathering time and venue of a basketball competition, or how many practice sections would be held before the competition etc. can be posted in the forum. Therefore, students who are interested in the competition can get this information from the forum and go to support the teams. Besides, even if the coach or current teacher has to leave the team temporarily, new teachers may know the pattern and frequency of the team practice, as well as how to organize a similar event, and which competition is held during the semester by searching the related topic in the forum.

Online gallery

In addition to the discussion platform, the forum also includes an online gallery, all photos of the event held in the school was organized and grouped orderly and uploaded to the album.

For example, during the trip to Beijing, students may post their daily events and the photos taken during the trip to the forum, so that parents can know about the situation of their children. And of course, parents are also welcomed to give opinions about the trip through the forum, or to leave some warm messages to their children, like asking them to wear the thinker jackets under the cold weather. This shows that the forum does not only enhance the knowledge sharing among students and teachers, it is also useful to help connecting and maintaining the relationship between parents and children.

To sum up, this forum provides users a couple of pros: first, it allows ideas exchanging among teachers, parents and students. This is undoubtedly vital to enhance and broaden users’ perspectives. Besides, it encourages knowledge sharing which will be beneficial to users to further their knowledge and understandings on any types of issue. Another advantage of the forum is that, users can make use of this platform to keep a closer connection with each other.

Sumber : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Knowledge_Management_Cases_in_Asia#Case_Study_on_a_secondary_school_in_Hong_Kong

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Pembahasan :

KM yang diterapkan pada sekolah tersebut termasuk berhasil. sebagai contoh pada bagian forum diskusi yang berisi siswa, guru dan orang tua murid. disambut sangat baik oleh semuanya, dari forum ini para orang tua, murid hingga guru bisa menyumbangkan idenya serta kebutuhan2nya.

hal ini tidak akan berjalan dengan baik apabila tidak didukung oleh para gurunya. karena metode ini terbilang baru sehingga metode-metode pengajaran yang lama yang biasa diadopsi oleh sebagian guru bisa menyulitkan pula.