Themed Section: 16th Web Symposium Consortium Conference 2011

Citation

Tsang, P., Eustace, K. and Henri, J. (2012), "Themed Section: 16th Web Symposium Consortium Conference 2011", Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Vol. 9 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/itse.2012.36309daa.001

Themed Section: 16th Web Symposium Consortium Conference 2011

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Volume 9, Issue 4

This special issue contains the cream of the 127 papers submitted to the 16th Web Symposium Consortium Conference which, since 2006, has also been badged as the ICT Conference. 2006 was a pivotal year because of the lead role taken by the Open University of Hong Kong.

The 1st Web Symposium Conference, http://wcef.info/1stwebsym/, was held at The University of Hong Kong under the leadership of Prof. John Bacon-Shone and Angela Castro, who, with the support of a University Research Council grant, were able to deliver a high quality event.

The first editor of this special issue was invited by John and Angela to be a keynote speaker for the first conference where he also wore the hats of Director of the Internet Special Project Groups (CSU Australia) and Founding Member of the International WWW Conference Committee (IW3C2: www.iw3c2.org/). The International World Wide Web Conference Steering Committee (IW3C2) is the body that manages the WWW Conference series.

Unlike many other web conferences, IT conferences and IT competitions which began in the early 1990s or 2000s but then collapsed or stopped in the late 2000s, the web symposium has evolved and grown. It carries the concurrent new name while keeping the original one so as to show credit to all those dedicated founders. Having said that, it seems that the six years over which we have used the new ICT series title has flown by quickly, while the world of ICT has powered on at a remarkable pace.

When the new ICT Conference title was first employed in 2006, the sub theme Enhancing Teaching and Learning via Technology was used and that precedent has been used each year. In addition a catchy and pertinent sub theme has been added. In 2011, however, a decision was made to change the conference title to better reflect a focus on learning rather than on teaching. Thus, the title became: Enhancing Learning through Technology. Sub themes have continued to be employed. In this way it has become easier to promote the conference because of the focus on the centrality of the learner.

While 127 plus papers were submitted at ICT2011, only 60 made it to the conference proceedings and 23 made it to the conference book published by a very reputable European publisher. With the support of Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE), invitations were sent to authors of those 23 papers inviting them to submit extended and revised papers for consideration for inclusion in this special issue of ITSE 2012. Ten authors submitted their revised and extended papers for a further round of vigorous peer view. Three of these (from the original 127) papers were selected for their relevance and cohesiveness to the theme of ITSE.

We are extremely pleased to introduce the following papers to the readers of ITSE:

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  “Intelligent e-learning software for learning to write correct Chinese characters on mobile devices” – Vincent Tam and Chao Huang.

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  “Using Web 2.0 technologies: exploring perspectives of students, teachers and parents” – Mingmei Yu, Allan H.K. Yuen and Jae Park.

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  “Social competencies identification for realization of successful engineering practice” – Malinka Ivanova.

The paper by Tam is very timely because there are a quickly growing number of non-Chinese interested in learning about Chinese language. Many Chinese do not necessarily write Chinese characters in the correct sequence of strokes even though they can write the correct words. The first editor noted this problem when his five year old daughter recently commenced her Chinese lessons and was embarrassed to note that he had been writing “incorrectly” over the past 30 years. Of course, mobile devices have become more versatile as learning and daily tools for youngsters, and thus the focus of learning Chinese characters on mobile devices is timely. Technically, the intelligence that is built into the software, with its interactivity, fits the journal mission well. Readers who have not learned how to write Chinese characters will find this paper and the software useful in their learning. People who have learned writing Chinese characters informally or incorrectly will have a tool to assist them to fine tune their word sequence writing skills. Of course, nothing is better than a personal coach but not everyone can afford the cost or time for personal coaching and therefore this tool offers much help for the Chinese character writing learners.

The paper by Yu, Yuen and Park explores the use of Web 2.0 technologies from the perspectives of learners, teachers and parents. The paper is a result of a world class university led research study based on focus group interviews of students, teachers and parents in a HK secondary school. The paper uses innovative terminologies to report the unique roles of the three groups of learning stakeholders. Specifically, the research reports that the subject students used Web 2.0 technologies most frequently for social activities rather than for educational purposes. The parents were reported to know little about the web technologies, as one might typically guess. What did the study say about the role of teacher? Please turn to the text to find out in more detail. Of course, our readers are strongly asked to reflect on the findings and relate the results to their own learning landscape in their own institutes.

The paper by Ivanova provides a solid review of approaches and research studies concerning the concept of competencies. It then discusses the key set of existing and new competencies for engineers in the knowledge-based and social-oriented global environment. The social competencies model that was developed can be used as a reference when developing curricula. While the paper has an engineering focus, readers from other disciplines will find inspiration to carry out comparable research in their own field and instead, readers will find some core competencies apply across multiple disciplines.

Philip Tsang, Ken Eustace, James HenriGuest Editors