Bronze Award in the Best Practice Award on e-Education 2011 competition

Deliverable of a KE Fund project 2010/11 ‘Mobile eBook in Chinese learning’ headed by Dr. W. W. Ki, an iPhone app on Chinese learning (the software is called ‘Chinese dimension, 中文次方’), has won Bronze Award in the Best Practice Award on e-Education 2011 competition (電子教學卓越大獎) which was organized by e-Education Alliance and supported by Education Bureau. An Award Presentation Ceremony was held on 21 February 2012.

The KE Fund Project aims to develop an iPhone app on Chinese learning in collaboration with Dr. Lau Man Kin Vincent.

The Best Practice Award on e-Education is the first-of-its-kind campaign related to the education industry in Hong Kong, seeking to recognize and honor the best work practiced in schools and to setup reference model in this field. The Best Practice Award on e-Education is presented to those schools or organizations with outstanding achievements of using ICT in learning, teaching and administration works.

(Extracted from the pamphlet)

Chinese Dimension

Objective

Now, there are further requests from the students and their teachers involved to extend the features of the mobile App to include stroke order and component exercises that help learners enhance their discernment of internal structures of the characters/words, and Chinese-English bi-directional dictionary and internet community sharing, that enhance connectivity in the learning process.

Product

An iPhone App is developed, which is available in AppStore.  The research, development and knowledge of the past (www.dragonwise.hku.hk) can be further developed for mobile platform, and potentially accessed by millions of user globally.  The eBook can let the foreigner to have an interesting introduction about Chinese character, and let the users to learn the four dimension of Chinese languages, including reading, writing, listening and speaking.  This enables learning and playing anytime anywhere.

• Computer as interactive media for learning

• Text, sound, picture, animation and interactive exercise

• Content is moved from computer to mobile devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)

• Play and Learn anywhere, as short as several minutes

• Interactive exercise for immediate feedback

• Overall record and performance for each Chinese word

Innovative user interface for overview of 81 Chinese characters in single page (with picture view), simple touch for detail information.

Impact

Initially focus for the non-native speaker of school students in HK, so that they can learn the basic Chinese anytime and anywhere.  In addition, the eBook can also be accessed by some mobile users over the world, and let them to learn Chinese in a more structural, innovative and interactive way.