Session 1 Activity - Write profile of yourself and your professional interests relevant to this module and program

My name is Hou Xiyun, and usually I prefer to use Penny on campus. I accomplished my undergraduate study in Northwestern Polytechnical University, mainland China, and specialized in the language of English. Comparatively, my experience is much simple. I graduated this summer,
and then chose HKU and ITE for my further study. During my college years, I did have some internship and part-time working experience, assistant teacher, tutor, translator and seller. However, few of them related to IT. In our university, as we were language learners, the ICT facilities we used most often were language labs, where we utilized some teaching and learning software and systems for arranging classes and sharing resources and materials.

It seems that this program is a little far from my previous education background. But the motivation is that I plan to be a teacher in the future, and I think the traditional pedagogical mode cannot fulfill the increasing demands of modern education, and the needs of students, teachers and society. Although I have little understanding of ICT in the past, I am quite curious about and interested in information technology in education, for instance multimedia, e-learning etc. I believe that if we could make good use of IT in teaching and learning, the classes must be more interesting, informative and efficient. In addition, I think ITE is a quite practical and sophisticated program, which could enables me and maybe my future students to keep pace with the fast development of society. As for this module, I hope I could have a deeper and better understanding of ICT, meanwhile, learn how to take technology and various methods into teaching and learning practice.