Using mobile-based interactive e-books in K-12 Chinese as a second language classroom: Opportunities and challenges

Tianchong Wang
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

Shuting Liu
German Swiss International School
Hong Kong SAR, China

Yu Gao
Vocational Training Council
Hong Kong SAR, China

The educational affordances of the new interactive e-books (compared to the conventional PDF e-books) on mobile devices — especially iBooks on iPads — have drawn great attention from different stakeholders. However, their implementation in K-12 Chinese classrooms as a second language (CSL) at international schools in Hong Kong has so far been relatively slow, although such a context is often considered as technology-enriched. A preliminary investigation found that teachers had concerns about the difficulties they would face when creating their own interactive e-books for mobile devices while few publishers offer their intended teaching materials in this new form. This paper reports a case study involving three Mandarin Chinese language teachers who were interested in utilizing technologies in their classrooms at an international school in Hong Kong. New tools — such as Apple iBook Author and Kindle Textbook Creator — were introduced in order to enhance the educational experience and support the attainment of student learning outcomes. These tools are expected to enable teachers without high-level technical knowledge to create and disseminate their first-hand interactive e-books with diverse forms of multimedia contents and various interactive functions. As an evaluation, qualitative data were collected through interviews, focus group meetings and direct observations. The problems teachers encountered, as well as the additional efforts made, were documented, and all the data were analysed by a content analysis approach. The results of the study, and the possible implications and recommendations, are given. They are expected to not only contribute to understanding the challenges in producing interactive e-books for learning on mobile devices in today’s K-12 classrooms, but also serve as practical examples for teachers’ future effective adoption of the technology.