A two week seminar in Shanghai:
Integrating ICT in Education
- program and impressions by Prof. Edna Aphek
- part 4

5. The Seminar
Duration:The two-week seminar was conducted between June 18th and June 29th.
seminar location: a pedagogic center in Shanghai.
Participants: 42 computer teachers and coordinators from various schools, mainly high schools in Shanghai.
Ages: 25-55+
Participant's background: all participants were well-trained computer teachers and scientists. Some of them even wrote books or chapters in a book on computer usage, programming and teaching.
Number of computers: 42 as the number of participants.
Language of instruction: the course was conducted in the English language.
We had two interpreters assigned to us through out the seminar. Each interpreter worked with us for one week.
The first interpreter was a Chinese girl who studied computer science in Canada and was back in China for her summer vacation. The second interpreter was a Chinese man, a lecturer at the University of Shanghai, in the computer department.

The pedagogic center: a well equipped center: a computer viewer, television, video, projection rooms, a science lab, many classrooms and an auditorium.
However, we were promised full, fast connectivity to the internet.
The internet didn't work through out the seminar, except for very short periods of time.

5.1.The official opening ceremony:
The seminar was opened officially in the presence of the director of the Shanghai Academy, administrators from the Shanghai ministry of education, and the vice consul from the Israeli Embassy.

5.2.Participant's expectations of the seminar:
We soon learnt that our students expected us to present them with new software and programming. They weren't interested in educational theories and their implementation via the new technologies.
We were somewhat at a loss.
In the faxes that we sent and in a preparatory meeting we had with Prof. Hu-Yu, who was our host and the seminar coordinator, we went to great length to emphasized that the seminar would focus on innovative educational theories and their implementation via the tools of the ICT. We accentuated the major role the new technologies played in enhancing new educational ideas, much desired.
The first two days were devoted, then, to laying and explaining the conceptual basis and to a discussion about the role of the computer in education in the information era.
The director general of the Academy of the Sciences of Education, came to our help, and on the second day of the seminar gave (in Chinese of course) a lecture about the importance of integrating the computer in the curriculum. It was then that we realized that" computer" and "internet" were being taught as a separate subject and that "word" "PowerPoint" "constructing websites" were all topics taught in specially assigned classes, having nothing to do with the rest of the school curriculum.
The importance of what we were about to teach became even more evident.
It was only logical then to lay down the main caveats for implementing and integrating the computer in the curriculum.

In order for computers to be well implemented in schools, their use must be based upon the principles of the OMCV =

Organic = 1.computers should serve as a means for effective achievement of educational objectives. Their use should be organic in the sense of coinciding with and emanating from school's philosophy and policy
2.use of computers in the classroom should be organic in the sense that it should take advantage of the unique opportunities that the computer and the IT offer us
Meaningful = computer use should be interesting, relevant, useful
Contextual = computer use should be as contextual as possible and not devoid of context
Varied = computers should be used for different kinds of activities, according to varied interests and by using a wide array of software and computer applications.

In two days the barrier between the participants and us was down. Concept was clear. Cooperation was beyond our expectations. Participants felt they were getting a lot out of the seminar. Their idea as to how to integrate the computer and the internet into the curriculum changed a great deal. In their evaluation forms they all expressed their enormous satisfaction with the seminar and the course material.

5.3. interdisciplinary learning, cooperative learning and multiple intelligences
The course presented the participants with new methodologies (new to them) as well as with new theories: Ted Sizer and The Essential Schools, Sternberg and his Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, Gardner and the MI; Project based learning ,cooperative learning, on going assessment, interdisciplinary learning and service learning, dialoging, using many and varied sources of information, were quite new to our participants.
The Gardner theory of the Multiple Intelligences had great impact on our students. It was as if they underwent some revelation. They kept talking about his theory and tried to assess their own strong points. The students immediately integrated what they learnt into their projects and e books and each project and e book was constructed and built in light of the various intelligences the group members possessed.

5.4.Methods of teaching, workshops, assignments and products
Each day would start with an opening lecture,which I gave. In this lecture I usually presented the main philosophical and theoretical aspects underlying the methods and requirements we and our students were to use and to fulfill, on that day or in the coming days.
With the exception of short lectures, most of the work was conducted in workshops.
The students were given three major assignments:
a. to prepare in pairs an e book (the Godard method as described else where in this paper) in various subject matter ,according to their choice.
b. a project: to prepare a website in a specific area. Website was to include the 5 "entrances" recommended by Gardner: the historical, narrative, the statistic- logical, the essential- meaningful one, the aesthetic and the experiential one.
Students were encouraged to contribute to the project from their unique
points of strength, i.e., their intelligences.
c. To write part of a teacher's manual, teaching other teachers how to implement the innovative methods of integrating the ICT in education.

All the assignments necessitated cooperative group work. The whole notion of learning in action while teacher serves as a monitor, guide, tutor, rather than a lecturer and the major source of knowledge, was new to our students.
Learning from varied sources, using the library, conducting surveys, interviewing informants, surfing the net and making telephone calls in order to get updated data, much of the aforementioned was innovative.

5.5.Using varied resources of information
On the third day of the seminar we took the participants to a resource center in a building next to the pedagogic center. The participants were asked to start looking for material and information for their projects. The projects chosen were in the following areas: music, smoking, sports, documentary movies, computer games, comic strip, and talk shows.
The participants had at first some difficulty in gleaning information from a wide array of varied sources.
We often heard the complaint "we can't find any information relating to our project".
Getting information from many sources, some of them less canonized was a new experience for our participants. They found the idea of conducting surveys was most appealing and they tended to over use it, and not pay attention to such minute details as number of informants, or informants' knowledge of the subject etc.
Getting information from authoritative sources such as the national radio or television was met with opposition and disbelief as to whether information would be given.
On the whole the students seemed to like very much the new methods of teaching and learning though at first they were met with much doubt and were considered "not serious".

5.6. Completing the first assignment : making an e- book
The following is an explanation given to the participants as to the Godard e-book model and detailed d instructions and description of the various stages of creating an e book according to this model.

Zila Godard is the chief librarian at the David Yellin's College of Education in Jerusalem, Israel. Between 1995-6 Mrs. Godard was an MA student at the David Yellin's College of Education. Her thesis combined her work as a librarian with the new technologies and action research. Zila explored the possibilities of innovative presentation of a text,that the new technologies have opened to us. Zila made extraordinary use of the hyperlink for building a prototype of an e book.
As I was one of Zila's teachers in her studies towards the MA and one of the readers of her thesis, I was fascinated and captivated by the imaginative, thoughtful manner in which she used the hyperlink to present a new technological, meaningful, self contained e-unit(s).
Being so impressed with her work, I asked Zila to meet with the teachers of the Alon school, where I have been working as an academic adviser, and to demonstrate to them the unlimited options this model of hers offers to teaching and learning. Presented with her model, the teachers decided to implement Zila's model in many of their classes, in different subject matters. It was this model that I introduced to the seminar's participants.

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