Keynote Speakers

 

Topic: The Next Generation of eTextbooks
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Professor Ronghuai Huang
Beijing Normal University

Prof. Ronghuai Huang is the Deputy Dean of Faculty of Education, and Director of Research and Development Centre for Knowledge Engineering of the Beijing Normal University (BNU), in which educational technology is one of the National Key Subjects. He holds a Master of Science Degree from the Department of Mathematics and a PhD in Educational Technology from the School of Information Science from BNU. Prof. Huang is visionary and active in the field of exploring how to improve human learning by developing new tools and utilizing new methods innovatively, such as collaborative learning and its supporting software. He has been engaged in research on Educational Technology as well as Knowledge Engineering since 1997. He has accomplished over 40 projects, including those of key science and technology projects in the national “Ninth Five-year Plan”, “Tenth Five-year Plan” and “Eleventh Five-year Plan” and the projects in the national 863 plan as well as others financed by the government. His ideas have been widely published, with more than 130 academic papers and over 20 books published both nationally and internationally. Prof. Huang is a popular speaker and has served in many top China academic committees and organizations in the field of Educational Technology, e-Learning, Teacher Education and Learning Sciences. He was co-chair of the program committee of the 6th and 8th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education, and the chair of organizing committee of International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE2006), the 10th IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE2007) and the 5th International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE2008). He was the General Co-Chair of the 5th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA2009).

Keynote address

With the development of information technology, ebooks have been around since the 1970s, but ebooks have only recently become fashionable with the development of handheld reading devices such as the Kindle, iPad, tablets computers. The first step was to transfer printed books into electronic formats, through scanning and sometimes even typing. Features such as searches within the text including interactive tables and figures, hyperlinks to related topics, case examples, and links to videos can facilitate content learning. While features for etextbook, such as interactive media, note-taking tools, assignment tools and management tools, similar structures and layout of paper textbooks, are essential for the use of etextbooks by teachers and students.

In this talk, pilot studies with more than 40 etextbooks employed in both K–12 schools and universities will be reported. They offer insights on how to overcome the challenges to provide students and teachers with etextbooks that could meet various pedagogical needs

Based on the studies, development stages of etextbooks are designed. In the first stage, text-based etextbooks are development. In the second stage, media-Rich etextbooks are produced with text, and inclusion of pictures, videos, and other multimedia material in the book. Such textbooks are no longer seen as a unique source of knowledge, but rather as a complementary source within a multimedia package.

The next generation of etextbook will no longer be just a multimedia package. It will be a cloud-based learning toolkit that support easy, engaged and effective learning, which could be called smart etextbook. Technically, features for smart etextbooks should include (a) a large knowledge base with semantic linkages that support the presentation of all kinds of multimedia resources, (b) a semantic search engine embedded in the textbook that facilitates users to find the substantive and non-arbitrary links between different knowledge nodes, and (c) a computational knowledge engine inside should generates outputs as text, images, charts, tables, images, maps and graphs. Pedagogically, there should be three features for the next generation of etextbooks, namely (1) optimized learning experience, (2) supporting personalized learning, and (3) encouraging visual & collective thinking by mind map tools.

All in all, this kind of next-generation etextbooks is under development in our laboratory, and the prototype will show how the next generation etextbook will support students’ easy, engaged and effective learning.


Topic: Enacting Mobile Learning Curricula in Schools: Innovation, Implementation and Impact
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Professor Chee-Kit Looi
Nanyang Technological University

Chee-Kit Looi is Professor of Education in the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was also the Founding Head of the Learning Sciences Lab, Singapore from January 2004 to June 2008. The lab was the first research centre devoted to the study of the sciences of learning in the Asia-Pacific region. As PI or co-PI of several research projects funded by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, Chee-Kit Looi’s research has sought to create significant inroads into impacting school practices in Singapore. Notably, in his design-based research on seamless learning, the notions of intentional and incidental learning outside of school contexts, and the support for continuity and interaction between in-school and out-of-school experiences are explored through harnessing mobile technologies. Seamless learning is mentioned in a recent report by UK Open University as one of the ten innovations that can create a significant impact on education. Over the years, Chee Kit has given keynote addresses in international conferences held in the US, Chile, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. He is an associate editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences. As a member of the Core Expert Group, he participated in the work on developing the framework for assessing Collaborative Problem Solving in OECD PISA 2015.

Keynote address

Many countries, regions and education districts in the world have experimented with models of one-device-per-student as an enabler of new or effective pedagogies supported by mobile technologies. Researchers have also designed innovations or interventions for possible adoption by schools. What might be of interest to policy-makers are the question of what kinds of one-to-one model actually work and the question of how to implement such an innovation successfully across different levels of the education system. My talk will describe a research programme that demonstrates how to make successful research innovations count in practice and that delineates what types of educational R&D involving scaling need to take place to make the critical link to impacting practice. We do this in the context of a mobile-learning curricular innovation scaling from one Singapore primary school to more schools that moves through various phases to where the innovation is becoming an integral part of routine classroom practices for different contexts. We discuss the implications of impact from differentiated levels to students, teachers, classes, schools, as well as policy-makers.