China:Chongqing
From WAET
Hong Feng
Department of Occupational Studies, University of Georgia
Jianhua Luo
Experimental Elementary School, Southwest Normal University, Chongqing Province
Contents |
In China, when people talk about hot and spicy food, they will think of Chongqing, which is located in Southwestern part of Sichuan basin. It has an area of 82,400 square kilometers and a population of 30.42 million. It is China's fourth municipality directly under the central government. It is also the largest city in Southwest China. In addition, it is a historical and cultural city. One uniqueness about the city is that it's a mountain and fog city. The famous “Three Gorge Project” is right in Chongqing.
 Figure 2. Chongqing Province |
The Three Gorges of Yangtze River extend 193 kilometers from the western Baidicheng in Sichan Province, to Nanjinguan of Yichang city in Hubei Province in the east. They differ from each other in sceneries.
 Figure 3. The Three Gorges of Yangtze River extend 193 kilometers from the western Baidicheng in Sichan Province, to Nanjinguan of Yichang city in Hubei Province in the east. They differ from each other in scenery. |  Figure 4. Yangtze River |
The city of Bebei
Located in the northwestern part of Chongqing is a very beautiful and quiet town called Beibei, which is also called the “Back Garden of Chongqing”. It has an Area of 573 square kilometers and a population of 630,000. Beibei is at the bank of Jialing River. During the War of Resistance against Japan, it was known as the secondary capital. It's also a beautiful tourist district and a newly rising industrial district with rich resources and energy. Beibei has been one of the three industrial bases of technical instruments in China. In Beibei there are many famous scenic spots. The famous Beibei Hot Spring is one of its great attractions. Beibei also possesses rich cultural scenery, which can be dated back to 423 A. C.
A well-known center of flourishing culture and technology, Beibei has 67 scientific research institute, 2 big universities, 35 middle schools and vocational schools, 137 primary schools, 14 culture centers, 11 TV relay and broadcasting stations. Chongqing natural Museum is also located here. Beibei Public Library has collected 300,000 copies of ancient books on literature and history. At present, many schools are undergoing educational reform focusing on developing student-centered lessons. Beibei's Bureau of Education is in the process of creating project unit, which aims to connect all elementary, and middle schools through the intranet to accelerate the educational development of the area.
 Figure 5. Southwest Normal University |  Figure 6. Southwest Normal University |
Southwest China Normal University
Located close to Beibei's downtown, Southwest China Normal University is a comprehensive normal university directly subordinated to the Chinese Ministry of Education. The university faces the winding gleaming Jialing River and has Jinyun Mountain Forest Part at its back. The campus, being covered with numerous green trees and lawns of poetic beauty, has been awarded the title of “Model Campus” by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Famous for its garden-like scenery, the university is the largest comprehensive normal university offering the greatest number of college courses in the southwestern part of China. It's also an important base for training teachers and specialists in other fields. In October 1950, Southwest China Normal University was established by the joining of National Women's College and Sichuan Provincial College of Education. Its history can be traced further back to East Sichuan Normal School, which began in 1906. It has now 37 college specialties, 25 research institutes and 25 research centers, with 53 subjects and specialties which confer doctor's degrees and master's degrees, and 23 key subjects of the provincial level. The subjects include Philosophy, Economics, and Law, as well as Education, Literature, Science, Engineering, History, and Management. The university has numerous specialists that form its capable teaching faculty.
 Figure 7. Elementary Primary School of Southwest Normal University |  Figure 8. School campus with green tree surroundings |
The Experimental Primary School
Attached to Southwest Normal University, Experimental Primary School of Southwest Normal University is the base for the university's educational research, experiment, and teaching practices. The school was moved to Beibei with former Southwest Normal College in 1952 when China conducted the adjustment of universities and departments. It has been rated as Chongqing's most Civilized Etiquette Demonstration School, Batch Green School, Advanced Unit in Hygiene, Audiovisual Education Demonstration School, and Information Technology Education Demonstration School. The school occupies an area of 6894.9 square meters with a forested area of approximately 3,500 square meters. The school campus has green tree surroundings with four seasons of fresh flower in full bloom.
 Figure 9. YiFu building |  Figure 10. Teaching platform |
At present, the school has 24 classes with 1660 students, 80 teaching and administrative staff. All the teachers have educational degrees above three-year college or undergraduate levels. 80% of the teachers are young teachers, 75% of whom are below 35 years old. With the mission of developing "well-rounded people”, the school has created good environments for the children. The school's educational facilities are continuously developed. The teaching building design is unique and the facility is first class. The Audiovisual Education Building and the Yifu Building have all kinds of specialized rooms including Music Room, Arts Room, Nature Room, Science and Technology Room, Computer Room, Gymnastic Room, Ping Pong Room, Language Audio Room, Dance Practice Room, Library and so on. All these rooms work well for school's teaching and learning goals. In addition, the school has established the "Star Television Station" and campus-wide television network. Computer demonstration platform and projector are available in every classroom. “Digital Campus” is in its initial stages. In addition, the newly built comprehensive building provides even better environment for students' study and development. The school's website opens a portal for the outside world to better understand it's mission and also extends the school's teaching and learning to broader areas.
 Figure 11. Computer class |  Figure 12. Computer class |
The school board has always put improving teaching quality at the center of its administrative focus. Educational research has guided and assisted teaching and learning to assure the continued improvement of quality. With the help of Southwest Normal University' strong research body of specialists and professors, the school has made great achievements by actively participating in all levels of research and experiments. In addition, the school has published separately or cooperatively some textbooks and supplementary materials.
With the combined effort of all teachers and staff, the school has formed excellent learning and teaching styles. It also has successively received specialists and scholars from America, Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.
As far as educational technology is concerned, every classroom is equipped with a computer, a projector, a 34 inch color TV, two blackboards. The computer is mainly for teachers to use tutorials and play videos. The document camera allows for the projecting of the content of the books or the process of operating learning tools. The TV screen is for the computer or projector. Every Friday, students watch one sequence of TV programs created by the school. One of the two blackboards is in the front of classroom and used for teaching, the other one is at the back and called “Blackboard Newspaper” displaying students' work or some texts and beautiful graphics to encourage students to study hard.
As for student evaluations, the school uses a “pyramid” evaluation method. For instance, students' homework is rated by “Star Evaluation Method” including “One Star”, “Two Star”, or “Three Star”. The more stars, the better the performance. The school is also creating a website called “Creation Garden” to demonstrate students works and provide a place for students to exchange information.
At this school, all the teachers are able to make use of modern educational technology to create tutorials to facilitate teaching and learning. Before teaching each class, each teacher makes detailed lesson plans based on teaching content and levels of student with reference to Internet information. Generally speaking, every teacher will create tutorials when needed to facilitate teaching and make class more interesting. Software such as PowerPoint, Flash, Authorware, Photoshop, and Premiere is used for creating tutorials. There are some other assistant tools like counters, small blackboards, oral calculation cards, etc. Students also have corresponding tools. Let's take a look at one model teacher at the school.
Mr. Luo is a Math teacher of second grade and is a typical example of teachers at the experimental school. He graduated from a three years' teacher college several years ago and has been teaching at the school for five years. In addition to teaching Math, he also teaches computer science classes. Every day he gets up at 7am. After having breakfast, he reads for a while before going to school. Before the class, he copies the tutorial he created to the classroom computer before preparing his lesson. Normally, he teaches three periods a day. He spends the rest of day correcting students' homework and preparing lessons. After school, he assists some slower students in his class. During the night, he reads books. He goes to bed at 12pm.
During his teaching, Mr. Luo always tries to connect knowledge with real world experience. Because of his excellent teaching methods and outstanding teaching effect, Mr. Luo has won many prizes in national and regional teaching competitions. He is also well loved by his students. The following is a scene when he was participating in a competition on classroom teaching design under web environment in Chongqing.
Mr. Luo is very good at transferring knowledge to students. He strongly believes relating students' life experience to subject matter and motivates them to learn is the best way of instruction. He is used to making good use of multimedia tools to facilitate his teaching. In addition, he always prepares detailed teaching plan. In the plan, he lists teaching content, teaching objectives, teaching focus, difficulty points, and facilitative tools; he also writes down the whole teaching procedure.
To better understand Mr. Luo's teaching, we can take a look at one period of his Math class. In this period he was going to teach students how to recognize time through clock and watch. This content was taught in the second semester of first grade. The objectives of this class is: to let students learn to recognize time (by the hour or hour with half an hour) through watch and clock and set up simple time concept by relating to students' own life experience; to lead students to observe, analyze, and generalize; to develop students' observation ability, language expression ability, and hands-on ability; to let students feel the close relationship between time and life by linking to students' daily schedule and to develop students' good habits of scientifically managing time. The teaching focus would be on recognizing time (by the hour and hour with half an hour) through watch and clock. The difficult point would be on recognizing time (hour with half an hour). Teaching facilitative tools are: multimedia, teacher's clock model, and students' clock model.
The whole teaching and learning process was divided into five stages. At the first stage, Mr. Luo introduced clock and watch through a riddle. The riddle was presented through a piece of music. Mr. Luo went on to tell students that clock could tell time and asked student to observe the moving direction of his watch's hands through the document camera. Next, he showed students all kinds of clocks and watches and asked them to say something about clocks and watches. Then he showed students a clock model and asked students to tell what were on the clock. He introduced the second hand to students. For this period, they were going to only learn about the thick and short hand, which is called hour hand.
At the second stage students got familiar with clock face by linking to practice. Through a tutorial made with PowerPoint, Mr. Luo showed students a scene where a cartoon character Xiao Fang was just getting up. Students were asked to tell the time from a clock. Later on he showed a scene of Xiao Fang's eating lunch and asked students to tell the time of the clock. Next students told teacher the time after watching Xiao Fang finish her school. Mr. Luo help students summarize the time in one sentence. Then he showed them the clock model and asked them to tell the time. Finally, he showed students two familiar TV programs and asked them to set the right broadcasting time on their clock model.
At the third stage, classroom activities are held on “making good use of time. Mr. Luo played a song called “Time Flies like Little Wagon” in the class. Students could sing and dance with the song. After that Mr. Luo informed students of studying hard and being the master of time.
At the fourth stage students' knowledge was strengthened through a series of interesting exercises. First students finished one exercise in the book and checked the answer immediately. Students were then shown some animals that reported the time on the clock. Students need to make judgment.
The fifth stage was where students' knowledge was expanded into practice. Mr. Luo gave students a topic: New Yeas' Eve is coming. If your group of classmates can go out together for one day, how will you plan to play? It is impossible to go out playing without a plan. Now, please discuss and draw a rout map marked with your arranged time. Mr. Luo participated in students' discussion. The class ended with both groups reporting their plans, while the rest of class giving feedback.
As we can see, Mr. Luo tries to integrate technology into his classroom when he felt necessary. His PowerPoint tutorial effectively helps students relate time concept with daily life. He was also very skillful at using models to let students get real experience. In addition, he was good at stimulating students' interest and engaging them in active participation through a series of activities.
Related Chapters
Chongqing
Chongqing is a province of China.
Citation
APA Citation: Feng, H. & Luo, J. (2005). China:Chongqing. In M. Orey, T. Amiel, & J. McClendon (Eds.), The web almanac of educational technologies. Retrieved <insert date>, from http://www.waet.uga.edu/
