Hong Kong, the amazing city that I call home, has featured in songs from many genres and decades. Over the years I have meant to put together a playlist of songs in which “Hong Kong” features in the lyrics, as a tribute to this amazing city, its history, people and culture. What I really like is the different ways in which Hong Kong is portrayed in the various songs: R&R stop, finance hub, travel stop.
After many false starts, here is that playlist. It’s a short start, but hopefully people will make some suggestions here, which I can add in. I am sure there are a bunch of songs that I have missed out, but these are the ones that come to mind, and the ones I could find online.
Having grown up in Hong Kong, thinking about colonialism and imperialism quickly gives me a headache. At the root of this is an unbridgeable sense of cognitive dissonance: on the one hand these two forces created an amazing city which I love as my home, and on the other I know that using force against others for your own gain is morally reprehensible.
Certain British historians have tried in the past to get around this by claiming that the British Empire was less brutish and more beneficial than other contemporary empires, but this seems to be skirting the issues to reduce collective guilt.
With this personal context in mind, I am immediately interested in any historical images of Hong Kong, especially older ones which might offer insight into what life was like under imperial rule. And so it was that the following image really caught my eye:
Viewing only the top half of the image it seems like some kindly old gentlemen on a rural day out, posing for a photo. Look then at the bottom half and witness beheaded humans lying in the dirt. Should we feel for the “pirates” who have been executed? Did they deserve their fate through wrong deeds, or did they simply upset the wrong imperialists? What are passers-by thinking: are they relieved that justice has been dealt, abhorred by the brutishness of these gwai lo (foreign devils), or fatalistically indifferent?
Of course, we will never really know the answers to these questions, but they are worth discussing all the same. I duly filed the image away for later use, shared it on Twitter and moved on. Much to my surprise, a couple of teachers (@vanweringh and @PaulGrace9) who are now in my PLN saw the image and started sharing and researching ideas on it.
Reading these articles is revealing. It seems like the pirates were genuinely dastardly, but they make up only 6 of the 15 beheadings. Also of interest is that some of the beheadings were carried out by a 15-year old boy. How times have changed.
Our collaboration finished up with suggestions to use HistoryPin and the image below to further explore this area. As was mentioned in our discussions, the topics of piracy and imperialism are so interesting to study as they are still relevant today.
This lesson aims to introduce students to the concept of misleading images, and to try and engender in students a certain skepticism when interacting with media. This lesson could potentially be used in a range of subjects including ICT, Media, History, Theory of Knowledge, PSHE/Pastoral etc.
In the past this has proven to be one of those lessons that really gets students sitting up, listening and discussing, as most of them have no idea they are being constantly manipulated by the mass media.
Misleading Images
In general we trust photos in a way that we would never trust words: we know that photos can be faked, but we don’t usually question what we see in the media and on the Internet. Let’s use some fun examples to see what we can and cannot trust:
The resources below look at how photos can be misleading, either through accident, doctoring, creative photography or omission. Digital photography and computer technology make this process much easier and more powerful, but it is important to keep in mind that these exact issues have been relevant since the dawn of the photographic era.
Of particular interest is the process by which images are “photoshopped” (i.e. digitally manipulated), and just how much transformation is possible. The videos below give an insight into this process (they are accelerated, it really takes much longer to do this, and lots of skill too).
We can look at the impact of misleading photos from different perspectives, including:
Political – what might a country gain by manipulating photos of its enemy at war?
Individual – how does unrealistically attractive portraits in magazines make me feel?
Society – how have misleading photos changed our expectations and measures of beauty?
In the end, how do we know what to trust if we cannot trust what we see?
This morning my wife, kids and I took a trip to the Hong Kong Railway Museum, located in Tai Po, just on the edge of the Kowloon-Canton Railway line. Although I pass it twice a day on my way to a from school, it is the kind of place that is easy to overlook and never visit. Mostly outdoors, and lying on and alongside an old segment of track and within an old station, the museum is well worth a visit. By far the best part is getting to board carriages from throughout the 20th century, enjoying a trip back through time to as early as 1911. Looking at how far technology (and our lifestyles as a result) has come in a relatively short space of time is fascinating and would be extremely educational for students of ICT.
Of interest to me from a school point of view are the exhibits on the Fanling-Sha Tau Kok Branch line, a narrow gauge line which ran past the school where I work, ICHK. The green loco in the gallery below is one of the actual trains from this line, and has an interesting life story behind it, having lived outside of HK for 70 years before being returned. Always a remote location, this train line would have brought the outside world to many remote farms and villages, well before a road was built. Some of the images on display (sadly my camera photos were too small to use here) show mountainscapes familiar to me from my daily commute, down to some of the now-abandoned rice terraces.
I would love to see a group of humanities students gather together as much material on this branch line as possible, and find out exactly where it ran in relation to today’s road. Perhaps there are some relics out in the fields and jungle that surround the area.
Continuing this historical theme, it would also be interesting for students to investigate the changing coastline of Hong Kong, and to compare this to previous and current train and road routes. Time Magazine’s Google-powered time lapse satellite imagery could come in handy here, as could some old images, such as the one of Shatin (I believe) below, which seems to show a steam engine at work (top center-right of the image):
Notes & Credits: I am not a train spotter by any means, but as I get older history is becoming ever more interesting to me. I assume that the image above (one of my personal favorites of old Hong Kong) is out of copyright, and sadly do not have credit for it, as I picked it up from the Internet as a teenager (back when I had little respect for copyright). Hong Kong Railway Museum a first-class compartment of 1964 photo by Mk2010 on Wikimedia Commons shared under CC BY-SA, KCR BS locomotive photo by wyliepoon on Flickr shared under CC BY-NC-SA.
This collection of fantastic old images was shared with me by my father-in-law, and is too good not to share onwards. Sadly, I could not find a web-based version of the list, so I have decided to host them here. Enjoy, a visual feast of 20th century history.
Credits: Most of these images are old enough to be out of copyright and so are free to use. For the newer ones, I am sharing them under assumed fair use for educational purposes. The text has been copied from the original email. If you feel this post infringes your copyright, please let me know.
A boxing match on board the USS Oregon in 1897.
Construction of the Statue of Liberty in 1884.
The construction of Disneyland .
The Beatles meet Muhammad Ali.
Leo Tolstoy tells a story to his grandchildren in 1909.
Steamboats on the Mississippi River in 1907.
Construction of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
New York ‘s Times Square in 1911.
Child laborers in 1880.
The first photo following the discovery of Machu Pichu in 1912.
Elvis in the Army.
Bill and Hillary Rodem Clinton playing volleyball in 1975.
The 1912 World Series.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife on the day they were assassinated in 1914, an event that helped spark World War I.
The Beatles in 1957
Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.
The first McDonalds.
Disneyland employee cafeteria in 1961.
British SAS back from a three month long patrol of North Africa , January 18, 1943.
Hitler in Paris .
The original Ronald McDonald — played by Willard Scott!
A Japanese plane is shot down during the Battle of Saipan in 1944.
Winston Churchill out for a swim.
The Great San Francisco Fire and Earthquake of 1906.
A Native American overlooking the newly completed transcontinental railroad in 1868.
Nagasaki , 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945.
Martin Luther King, Jr removes a burned cross from his yard in 1960. The boy is his son.
Google begins.
The London sky following a bombing and dogfight between British and German planes in 1940
A different angle taken of “Tank Man,” the man who stood against a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square .
The last known Tasmanian Tiger photographed in 1933. The species is now extinct.
The Microsoft staff in 1978. (Bill Gates lower left, Paul Allen lower right)
Che Guevara
A shell shocked reindeer looks on as World War II planes drop bombs on Russia in 1941
It is amazing how one thing leads to another, and all of a sudden you have a crazy idea for a unit of work on your hands. I have recently been watching some video of old Hong Kong, and chatting about the footage with friends and family. My dad and I were wondering where one particular spot was, and threw a couple ideas around. This planted a seed in my mind, and I set out to see if I could use technology to find the answer. It seems that I have actually located the spot, and although it will be at least a few days before I can get out and see for myself, I am 99% certain that it is correct. I am looking forward to shooting some new footage to compare with the original.
Below I will share the steps I took to come to my conclusion, which can be replicated by secondary students relatively easily. The idea for the unit, then, is to give students some old footage and stills from an area they are familiar with (say a city, county, district, etc), and ask them to find as many of the spots as possible. All the confirmed spots can be placed into a Google Map, with the original image, and a link back to where it is found. Students thus build up their own map, putting historical footage in its place, and tying time and space together neatly. They can visit the spots for themselves, and see how they have changed. One of the tricky parts of the process (especially true in Hong Kong) is not only the rapid change of human geography (e.g. new buildings, roads, etc), but also the fact that areas of sea have been reclaimed, and so even large geographical features can change in a relatively short space of time.
I started my investigation by taking 2 screen captures from one particular video, and crudely stitching these together using some graphic editing software (Acorn in my case, as they give it free to schools, but Gimp or Photoshop or a dozen other titles would do). My interest in this spot was first sparked because of the unusual amount of flat land on the right hand side. Click on any of the images to see a full screen version:
I then searched on Google Maps, looking around Hong Kong to find locations which might be a match. Hong Kong’s numerous small islands and rugged coastline make this quite easy, as there are plenty of features to match. Turns out that my initial guess of near Plover Cove was wrong, and my dad’s of Sai Kung was correct. After making my initial location, I saved a screenshot of the relevant Google Map:
The next step was to search for landmarks along two intersecting lines, in the original image. The trick here was to cross-reference the map and the original image numerous times so as to pick spots which are distinct in both sources. This gave the following annotated version of the original:
These 4 locations could then be marked on the map, and joined by two lines. The point of intersection of the two lines must be where the original image was shot from (I believe this is not triangulation but is similar, although not being a surveyor don’t take my word for it):
Over this I then laid a semi-transparent version of the same map, with labels, so that we can easily identify the surrounding areas.
Turns out that the photo was taken not that far from my house. Closer inspection of the map shows it to be Wong Chuk Yeung, what appears to be an unchanged, traditional Hong Kong village, with some flat grassy land just to the north west. Surely, this must be “the spot”:
Even though I do not teach humanities, I am incredibly excited by this process: it very quickly makes old media viscereal, alive, important. I could literally jump in a car, drive right to this spot and look at the same view that these people enjoyed 50 years ago. What else could we find out using modern technology? Could we discover who these people were, where they lived and why they visited Wong Chuk Yeung on that day. Could we find them? Meet them? Hear their stories? Now, that would be a real history lesson. I wonder if this could be pushed back further in time, with studies performed on paintings left behind by Hong Kong’s first colonial settlers?
My plan is to run this unit with some humanities teachers in my school next year. I would love to see other schools run it, and hear how it went. If only this kind of thing happened more often. It really is the best way to plan a new unit of work.
Update 1 – The Visit
It turns out that my feeling of 99% confidence was 100% wrong: had I consulted an ordinance survey map, or studied the Google Map more closely, I would have seen that Wong Chuk Yeung is in fact on the wrong side of the hill for a view of Sai Kung. That said, the drive up their was more than worth it, as the village is not only huge, but seemingly entirely abandoned. As if stepping back in time, or into a movie set, the area is full of collapsing rice paddies, houses with no roofs, mailboxes stuffed full of mail, and tress growing out of houses:
Wong Chuk Yeung Overflowing Mail
Wong Chuk Yeung Silence
Wong Chuk Yeung Tree in House
Wong Chuk Yeung Ruins
Wong Chuk Yeung Ruins
Wong Chuk Yeung Interior
Wong Chuk Yeung Panorama
The potential for student learning is huge, as are the potential number of questions one could ask of such a place. One of the most amazing aspects of the whole place is finding a large village nestled in a hollow, half way up a mountain: what a defensible, peaceful place, but also, how remote?
Credits: images captured from the original video are copyright Michael Rogge, and used under fair use for educational purposes. Google Maps images are used under fair use for educational purposes.
The older I get the more interested I seem to become in the history of the place where I grew up: Hong Kong. Having read a few books on the subject (Hong Kong, History of Hong Kong, Diamond Hill and Gweilo), I am always delighted to find video footage to put images to text. Despite not being born until 1980, I feel a strange affinity for images and footage from the 1950s and before. Recently, my father-in-law (a Hong Konger from way back) shared the presentation below with me, and I thought it was worth sharing:
Whilst searching for an embeddable version of this file online, I also found the videos below, which are very interesting. Sadly, the two best videos, could not be embedded, but you can watch them here and here.
Credits: a big thank you to Michael Rogge for curating and sharing this amazing archival footage. Thumbnail image of Hong Kong by Shizhao on Wikipedia, under Public Domain
I created this visualisation for my students as an example of how their work on the High Tech Stuff unit might come out. Feel free to use it under the Creative Commons license.
I just put the finishing touches on a new ICT unit looking into the past, present and future of ICT, and how technology made us the species we are today. My aim is to get students away from the idea that high-tech is the only tech. Technology is everywhere in our lives, and we only live the way we do because of it. In short, without technology we would most likely be just another species of primate.
All the files need to run the unit are listed below. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or just want to have a chat.
Example Visualisation (this is not a “perfect answer”, but something to get students thinking.)
Student Work
The way I run this unit allows students to use any number of tools to present their final answer to the four guiding questions. Whilst many students opt for a simple word processor or presentation application, others are more adventurous. In the past students have used tools as diverse as Tiki-Toki, EdCanvas, Storify and Prezi. The work below is a very strong piece of work submitted by one of my students, Adrien. What makes this work stand out is the excellent understanding Adrien shows for the big picture concepts covered in class, and his feeling for the effect of technology upon us. My feedback for improvements was for Adrien to include his sources and a Creative Commons license, and also to proof-read for minor errors.
Creidts: Thanks to marfis75 on Flickr for the thumbnail.
I love comics, and am often amazed not only by how funny they can be, but also how much can be learned from them. Growing up I was a regular reader of Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side and Mad Magazine. As I grew older I began to appreciate the intelligence and sophistication of Dilbert and XKCD. From this reading I developed my own sense of humour. More than this, however, I learned to question and reflect on the world around me, to understand that different situations could be understood in different ways and that I was not alone in my feelings and views on the world and its inhabitants.
Whilst many children love comics, too many teachers and parents dismiss them as childish distractions from serious reading and learning. If you are of this opinion, I ask you to read this short strip and see if it changes your perspective on this issue. Whilst reading comics can be beneficial in the ways described above, creating comics provides an even richer opportunity for learning. Consider some of the following ways in which comic creation can be used in the classroom:
Discovering the joy and power of remixing and mashing up the work of others.
Drafting stories before writing.
Encouraging creativity and self expression.
Character development to extend understanding of texts.
Learning about graphic design and layout.
Learning about persuasion.
Honing online research skills.
Learning computing skills.
Developing an understanding of issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright.
Digital storytelling.
Summarising complex ideas.
Putting events into chronological order.
Learning about visual literacy, social conventions and suggestion in the media.
Interestingly, these ideas apply to almost all subjects. If you are teacher, stop for a minute and consider the multitude of ways in which this could be applied to the subjects you teach. Certainly within both of my subjects (ICT and ESL) I can see plenty of scope for applying these approaches. In fact, in terms of promoting multiliteracies, I can think of few more powerful tools.
Computer technology provides us with some great tools for quickly and easily creating comics. These technologies afford one great advantage to users: they lower the barrier to creating great work because they do not require traditional artistic abilities, such as drawing. The following are four pieces of software that can be used to empower students:
Comic Life is the premier comic creation software in terms of ease-of-use and pure joy. It focuses on arranging existing images and applying effects to them. It is desktop software, and runs on Windows and Mac OS. Unfortunately, payment is required, although it is very reasonable, especially when purchasing in bulk. The 30-day trial is completely free and unrestricted, so this is a great place to start.
Comiqs is an online alternative to Comic Life, with comparable functionality: it seems extremely promising, but is in beta and currently seems to have some bugs. Hopefully these will be ironed out in the near future. The service is free, and there is no need to install any software onto your computer.
Pixton is an extremely flexible online comic creator. Unlike Comic Life and Comiqs, which are primarily concerned with working on existing images, Pixton allows users to create and edit their own comic characters. This is a great tool that is worth some serious exploration, and whilst it does seem a little tricky to use, it does provide a huge range of flexibility. Pixton is free for individual users, but there is also a paid educational version with enhanced tools for teachers.
BitStrips works along the same lines as Pixton, but is somewhat easier to use. That said, you do not get quite as much flexibility in terms of creating and manipulating your creations, although the results can be just as good. I would recommend this for use with younger students. As with Pixton, it is free for individual users, but there is also a paid educational version with enhanced tools for teachers.
Having sung the virtues of comic creation, I will end with a cautionary note: as with any tool, it is essential not to overuse this approach. Whilst kids will love the novelty and freedom that these activities can bring, if they do it every year in every subject they will very soon lose interest.
If you adopt any of these ideas in your classroom, please feel free to send over some student work, which I will gladly post on this page.
Having grown up in Hong Kong, thinking about colonialism and imperialism quickly gives me a headache. At the root of this is an unbridgeable sense of cognitive dissonance: on the one hand these two forces created an amazing city which I love as my home, and on the other I know that using force against others for your own gain is morally reprehensible.
This morning my wife, kids and I took a trip to the 
I just put the finishing touches on a new ICT unit looking into the past, present and future of ICT, and how technology made us the species we are today. My aim is to get students away from the idea that high-tech is the only tech. Technology is everywhere in our lives, and we only live the way we do because of it. In short, without technology we would most likely be just another species of primate.
I love comics, and am often amazed not only by how funny they can be, but also how much can be learned from them. Growing up I was a regular reader of 
