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Hi-tech lows

Hannah Lee

Hong Kong universities have jumped on the wireless bandwagon. All universities, except Lingnan, have installed wireless technology allowing students and staff access to cyberspace.

But few students are making use of the technology, particularly in the lecture halls.

Koo Chi-ho, a 2002 engineering graduate from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), never took his computer to lectures. 'It was too heavy,' he says.

Another 2002 HKU leaver, Ernest Kong Cheuk-lam, rarely carried his laptop to classes, and had heard friends mock a peer who abandoned his pen and paper for a Notebook computer. 'Everyone thinks it's just a way to show off,' he says.

However, both students appreciated the wireless facilities in the libraries, where, with their own laptops, they didn't have to queue for shared computers. They also say a lot of 'extracurricular activities' went on. 'E-mails and ICQs were big distractions,' Kong says.

Associate professor and head of HKU's Interactive Media Group, Ian Hart, says he doesn't like teaching when students are online. 'You find half the students are checking e-mails and the other half are playing games,' he says. 'In a way, lectures and computers are in fact opposed ways of learning. If you do have an IT-based system then why have lectures at all?'

An example, Hart says, is the learning approach at the medical faculty, where groups of 10 to 12 students are given a problem and then left to solve it - with the use of their computers. Teachers only participate when their help is needed. 'This is a constructive way to use laptops,' Hart says. 'Not while a lecturer is trying to teach.'

The director of Information Technology Services Centre at the University of Science and Technology, Lawrence Law Hing-yim, agrees. 'In lectures, students mainly listen,' he says. 'I don't know of many cases when there's a demand for students to use computers to download data. If there is such a need, the class would take place in a computer lab. Wireless technology is useful, but only as a supplement to a normal wired network.'

More than 80 per cent of HKU's undergraduates own a portable computer thanks to the university's Notebook Computer Programme. Since August 1998, all first-year students have been offered the chance to buy an IBM ThinkPad Notebook computer for about 25 per cent less than the retail price.

Less than 20 per cent of students at Baptist University own laptops, although wireless Local Area Networks have been installed at its Kowloon Tong campus, says SH Tong, assistant director of IT User Service.

Are students who take their computers to lectures distracted by games, checking e-mails or surfing the Net?

'They are not high school kids any more,' Tong says. 'If they don't want to be there, isn't it easier just to not turn up?'

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