Posted by Esther Lai

PERSONAL PROFILE

My name is Esther Lai and I was born in Hong Kong. I acquired my Bachelor degree of Social Science at the University of Ottawa in Canada and worked in the Government of Canada under the department of Human Resources and Social Development Canada – Welfare Adjudication System after I graduated. As my entire family was lived in Hong Kong and along with many other reasons, I decided to return to Hong Kong in late 2007. I am presently working at the HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education as an IT Officer and have an eager to enhance my education level to pursue my next academic goal.

Being in the IT industry, my current position in this educational institute are not only providing technical assistances and advises to our users, one of my job responsibilities is to develop training programs and prepare learning materials to introduce them about the new software applications that we developed in-house to meet their very specific requirements in supporting their daily operations for the School, it is essential for me to learn how to teach them effectively and understanding their learning behavior to optimize the learning outcomes. My target teaching audience is all adults with various educational backgrounds and work experiences, hopefully I could utilities my IT expertise to integrate and develop the most appropriate teaching and learning framework using different technology tools and learning platforms with an additive of IT-based innovative practices for them to stimulate their learning of new applications/systems and improve the learning experience.


RISAL ACCOUNT
My Risal account: Esther


SUCCESSFUL USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN LEARNING & TEACHING
As an IT Officer, my perspective of using technology in teaching and learning could definitely enhance the learning experience by creating a more dynamic learning environment where knowledge could be transmitted in a more effective way of stimulating learners’ interests and prompting participation actively. No doubt about many research figures and reports have proven that students seem to be more engaged in the class when technology is used, however, after reading some articles, I was impressed by the one called "Technology Combined with Good Teaching Leads to Success" which reflects me on thinking about how the educational practitioners could effectively convey knowledge using technology would be another key element of success.

The article mentioned about an assessment was performed by dividing 85 educators into two groups; one group was targeted in providing lessons to their students using interactive whiteboards and the other taught lessons using the same standard way of traditional tools. Based on the students’ total scores of the teaching subjects, their overall scoring ratio were increased by 17 to 29 percent depends on how skillful the teachers were used in the technology and the frequency of use among the classes. Since the proficiency of technology for the teachers is also critical to the results, the development of the teachers themselves must be fundamentally necessary in the success of the learning and teaching process.

In my opinion, the effective use of technology in teaching will increase the productivity of the students and the correlation between technology-use and student achievement, teacher quality is irrefutable, but technology should only be considered as a tool and the role of quality teacher could never be replaced by technology.

To simply conclude my reflection on the use of technology in learning and teaching: Technology + Teaching = Uncertainty, but Technology + A well-trained, passionate, creative teacher = Endless Growth and Possibilities.

REF: Technology Combined with Good Teaching Leads to Success – by Heather Wolpert-Gawron