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Victor Kwok
Jennifer W. Tang

Opinion | Hong Kong cannot improve online learning with more money alone

  • Much government funding has been used to help schools acquire digital devices, leaving little for digital training of teachers, pedagogical research and curriculum development
  • However, teachers guiding students during online learning is essential for better outcomes

Reading Time:3 minutes
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A student looks at an online portal in Sham Shui Po on December 22, 2020. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds have struggled with the move to online learning. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Over the past two years, social unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic have caused interruptions to in-person teaching and learning in Hong Kong.
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While these disruptions have created opportunities for the development of education technology and innovation in modes of teaching, educators are also concerned about the impact of school suspension on children’s growth.

Classrooms offer a space for children to acquire knowledge, learn how to form relationships, and develop a wide array of skills from a very young age.

Would the lack of the social, spatial and temporal structure in school harm children’s learning and growth? Could educational technology offer solutions to make up for the lack of contact hours?

The Education Bureau’s Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education, published in August 2015, aimed to leverage information technology to nurture self-directed lifelong learning and foster whole-person development. More than five years later, the education and technology landscape has changed significantly.
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The market for global education technology and smart classrooms grew from US$43.27 billion in 2015 to US$89.49 billion in 2020 and is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 19.9 per cent from 2021 to 2028.

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