The Education & Manpower Bureau has launched a two-month public consultation on the way forward for promoting information technology in education.

The consultation document proposed six strategic goals for implementing IT in education. They are:

* Empowering learners with IT;

* Empowering teachers with IT;

* Enhancing the leadership capacity of schools for the knowledge age;

* Digital resources for learning;

* Sharing and continuing professional development; and

* Community-wide support and community building

Gov't proposes merging recurrent IT grants 

To allow schools maximum flexibility to allocate resources to support school-based IT plans and account for results, the bureau proposes merging all recurrent IT grants for schools, reducing constraints on the use of such grants and enlarging the scope of permissible use of the grants.

The document also proposed empowering students with IT, strengthening their skills on information retrieval, evaluation and analysis, establishing clear learning targets and formulating an "Information Literacy" framework to give clear targets for students and teachers. 

It also suggested that through professional development, teachers be empowered with IT to undertake the challenge of pedagogical innovation. For teachers responsible for co-ordinating IT in education across the curriculum, it was proposed that schools be allowed to designate a promotion post in recognition of their key role.

The consultation document is now available from the bureau's Regional Education Offices and Information Technology Education Resource Centre, and can be downloaded from its website.

Consultation to end on May 15 

All comments and suggestions should be emailed to consultation_ited@emb.gov.hk, faxed to 3571 8121, or mailed to the bureau's Quality Education Division at Shop 28-37, UG/F, Phase I, Waterside Plaza, 38 Wing Shun Street, Tsuen Wan, New Territories on or before May 15.

Five public consultation sessions will be held in March and April. For details, click here.