Should the Government Widely Promote the Use of Byod (bring Your Own Device) Scheme in Secondary Schools in Hong Kong?

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After researching online, I found various articles about improvements in students’ learning after implementing BYOD scheme. These improvements cover areas such as students’ engaging learning attitude[6], a limitless boundary of learning at any place and anytime2, and long term learning practices being trained[7].

Drawbacks and Limitations from schools

However, a few articles also mention several drawbacks and limitations of BYOD scheme from being widely implemented amongst schools that are not directly provided with an answer. Local newspapers point out that little Hong Kong schools are equipped with sufficient Internet access in classrooms[8] and that Hong Kong is not as eager about e-learning as other countries[9].

Policies for schools

It is mentioned in articles that policies are available to students from disadvantaged families[10] and that officials from different bureaus are willing to share their resources in terms of digital learning for schools to move towards BYOD learning[11].

Though the above articles do mention a few policies for schools, the details of these policies are not elaborated with detailed information for accessibility. Besides, the advantages and difficulties mentioned are not merely focused on secondary school students and thus cannot fulfill my curiosity. With the findings and ideas provided from the above articles, interviews, questionnaires and site seeing will be conducted to prove and double check whether the information stated is correct. Thus, results in the following study to evaluate whether the government should widely promote the use of BYOD scheme in secondary schools in Hong Kong.

Research Method

Questionnaire

Primary School

Secondary School

Target Groups

Students

(P5-P6)

Mobile-teaching teachers

(secondary schools)

Students

(S1-S2)

Organization

- Methodist School

- Baptist Lui Ming Choi Primary School

- United Christian College (Kowloon East)

- 10 mobile-teaching teachers from different secondary schools

- True Light Middle School of Hong Kong

- United Christian College (Kowloon East)

Number of Respondents

- 88

- 23

- 51

Reason for Method

- Study further discussions for BYOD adoption in secondary schools

- Easy to analyze students’ ideas and opinions

- Secondary school teachers are studying target

- Easy to analyze majority of teachers’ opinions

- Secondary school students are the studying target

- Easy to complete online

- Easy to analyze students’ ideas and opinions

Interview

Primary School

Secondary School

NGO

Organization

Baptist Lui Ming Choi Primary School

United Christian College (Kowloon East)

Web Organic

Background

- Undergoing their fourth year of BYOD

- Selects a group of students to enter the iClass in primary 4-6

- Using individual iPads

- Launching their first year of BYOD

- Only to secondary 1 students this year

- Using individual iPads

- Government supported local NGO

- Help students from low-income families

- Provide support for eLearning and web-related education

Interviewee

Ms. Man

Ms. Cheung

Mr. Lau

Mr. Lok, Mrs. Cheung, Mr. Ho

Mr. Jeff Ng

Position

Head-teacher of BYOD

mobile-teaching teachers

Head-teacher of BYOD

mobile-teaching teachers

Program Manager

Details

- January 19 2015

- Meeting room

- 10:30am-11:10am

- March 24 2015

- Staff room

- 1:18pm-1:26pm

- March 2 2015

- Conference room

- 10:50am-11:25am

- January 26 2015

- Telephone interview

- 5:00pm-5:20pm

Reasons for Method

- To examine whether primary school students using BYOD can have better knowledge in technology when trained from a young age

- To observe whether adaptions of BYOD from primary school helps students adapt to BYOD in secondary school better