Reforming Learning and Teaching through Online Collaborative Knowledge Building

Abstract

In the past decade, educational innovations using information and communication technologies have been increasingly embedded within a broader framework of educational reforms in different parts of the world. It is within such a reform context that this chapter explores students' and teachers' authentic experiences in a science curriculum innovation, in which students and teachers from five primary schools in Hong Kong engaged in online collaborative knowledge building. Thirty students and eleven teachers from five primary schools were interviewed. Their conceptions of the new experiences were built on cross-case analyses of their personal accounts of this unique pedagogical experience. A total of six student categories of descriptions and six teacher categories of descriptions emerged out of their views and experiences of using the new technologies for learning and teaching science. The findings alert us to the importance of understanding students' and teachers' conceptions of experiences in integrating ICTs in the school curriculum.