User Guide to Notion for Education

Now Notion provides free Personal Pro Plan to educators and students. Through this guide, you will learn about what Notion is and how this productivity application can support your personal life, work and study. 

What is Notion?

Notion is a productivity application where you can create notes, databases, wikis, calendars and reminders, etc. All these features can be used individually or in collaboration with others. It supports multiple platforms (Windows / MacOS, IOS / Android) and desktop applications. The databases in Notion will be automatically saved and synced among different platforms and devices. You can download a desktop application via https://www.notion.so/desktop.

Create an account

Before you start exploring Notion, you need to create a Notion account with several steps:

  1. Click ‘Try Notion free’ on notion.so
  2. Enter your HKU email address and click ‘Continue with email’ 
  3. Receive a temporary Notion signup code via email
  4. Enter your name and set a password
  5. Select the plan for personal use 
  6. Click the provided link or copy and paste the code to verify your login 
  7. Click ‘Get free Personal Pro Plan’ on the bottom left corner

Then your Notion workspace is ready to use! Please click this link to watch a tutorial video if needed. You can set a permanent password in Settings & Members -> My account.

Upgrade to Personal Pro Plan

For first-time users

Different from the free Personal Plan designed for individual use, the Personal Pro Plan allows you to collaborate with more people. With the Personal Pro plan, you will have unlimited pages and blocks, guests and files uploaded. If you create the Notion account with your university email via HKU Portal, your account will be automatically upgraded to the Personal Pro Plan for free. To check if you are enjoying the Personal Pro Plan, go to the sidebar, then click on ‘Settings & Members’ and ‘Plans’. Besides, you can also manage your account information, notifications, connected apps, language & region, appearance, billing and integrations inside ‘Settings & Members’.

For those who already have a Notion account

If you already have a Notion account with your personal email, you can upgrade to the Personal Pro Plan for free by changing your login email account to the university email. To achieve this, please go to ‘Settings & Members’, ‘My account’, ‘Email’ then click on ‘Change email’.    Click this link to watch a tutorial video if needed.

Create Your First Page

After successfully logging in, you can create a new Page by clicking on the plus sign (‘+’) button on the sidebar. Click on this link to watch a tutorial video to learn some basic features, including how to add icon and cover to a Page, create Blocks, and adjust the layout.

Customise your Page with Blocks and Databases

If you already have an account and have started to use Notion, and would like to explore more on the design and customisation, feel free to check out the below content!   The Block and Database are characteristic features in Notion which allows you to create a multi-level hierarchy inside the Notion page for different purposes. You can design your page with Blocks and Databases like having LEGO bricks to build a LEGO castle. Please check out the following tutorials supported by Notion for more information: For blocks:

For databases:

Recommended In-app Templates

For first-time users, it is great to start your Notion journey with different templates provided by Notion. Notion provides more than 50 in-app templates that you can adjust and customise as your own. You can easily find the ‘Templates’ on the bottom of the sidebar, or click on this link for more information.

For Teachers

Notion is not just designed for individual use, it also shows the potential to enable team collaboration. There are some templates that can help with classroom management, or facilitate collaboration in your classroom:

Click this link for more information.  

For teachers, if you are interested in using Notion in the classroom but still need some help, you are welcome to book a consultation with Technology-enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) for more ideas. Contact via email: enquiry@teli.hku.hk. 

For Students:

You can use Notion to manage your study, personal life or other fantastic uses. There is a list of templates for your reference:

Click this link for more information.  

For HKU students who are interested in using Notion and would like to explore more, you can book a consultation with Digital Literacy Lab (DLL) via https://www.diglit.hku.hk/book.

To check out this blog post in Notion page: Link

Camtasia Video Production Workshop (Basic and Advanced)

[This round of workshops is a re-run of the Camtasia Video Production Workshop organized in March and May 2020, with new features of Camtasia 2021 added. You can also subscribe TELI YouTube playlist for recordings of previous workshops: https://hku.to/UseCamtasia]
Date:
1 December 2021 (Basic) Registration

3 December 2021 (Advanced) Registration

24 January 2022 (Basic) Registration

25 January 2022 (Advanced)Registration

26 January 2022 (Basic) Registration

28 January 2022 (Advanced)Registration
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Venue: Virtual Venue – via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Leon Lei, Ms Cindy Liang, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Ms Marie Tao
Number of seats: 30 per workshop
Remarks:The content of the three Basic workshops is identical, and the same for the three Advanced workshops. Interested participants can sign up for either one or both of the workshops based on your proficiency in using Camtasia.

Educational videos have become an important part of higher education. Educators can integrate multimedia content such as instructional videos for delivering content in many online/hybrid classes. The challenge for educators is understanding and exploring how best we might produce teaching videos and use videos as an educational tool effectively.

Upon completion of the workshops, participants will be able to identify the opportunities, challenges, and tactics of producing high-quality instructional videos for teaching and learning.

In the basic workshop, we will introduce:

  • download and installation of Camtasia with HKU Campus License
  • interface of Camtasia 2021
  • basic features of Camtasia
  • recording, editing and sharing your first screencast
  • video editing basics
  • audio editing basics
  • adjusting clip speed
  • using the PowerPoint add-in
  • exporting and sharing your first video

In the advanced workshop, we will introduce:

  • selecting area that you want to record
  • resizing your window using Sizer
  • adding annotations and transitions
  • creating advanced animations
  • making it snap with magnetic tracks
  • adding sound effects
  • leveling volume
  • including music
  • sharing projects with others
  • removing noise

eteaching4u: Copyright, Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources in Virtual Instruction

Date: 29 September 2021 (Wednesday)
Time: 12:30 – 13:30 (HKT, UTC+8)
Speakers: Ms Alice Lee, Dr Leon Lei

Registration

Copyright is meant to encourage creativity by conferring exclusive rights on authors and enabling copyright owners to make profits by distributing or licensing copyright works. Nevertheless, in reality, the copyright regime is too complex and technical for a layman to comprehend. In virtual learning, teachers are creators as well as users of copyright materials.
There are burning questions regarding copyright issues in teaching and learning. For example, would it be copyright infringement when teachers and students include copyright works like images or music into their presentations, teaching/learning materials or social media? Who owns the copyright for contents created during learning activities? How can we creatively and ethically use copyright works?
We would like to discuss the potential and affordances of Creative Commons (CC), Open Educational Resources (OER) and CC/OER-enabled pedagogies with some examples in training.

  • Copyright, OER and CC in teaching and learning
  • OER/CC adoption (e.g. how to search and adopt CC-licensed works)
  • OER/CC creation (e.g. deciding which CC licenses should be adopted)
  • OER/CC in general education, introductory courses and other courses

Through the training, participants can reflect on better practices and design considerations in CC/OER-enabled pedagogies. Upon completion, the participants will be able to:

  • Identify copyright owners and avoid infringement;
  • Identify the opportunities and challenges of adopting CC and OER in the curriculum; and
  • Use CC and OER to facilitate classroom learning and assessment.

Speaker

Ms Alice Suet Ching LEE is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, SFHEA (Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE), and convenor of the T&L Interest Group at the Faculty of Law. Associate Dean (Academic Affairs) from 2011 to 2020, she has received the University Distinguished Teaching Award and two Outstanding Teaching Awards from HKU, and a student-led Teaching Feedback Award. She chaired the HKU Teaching Exchange Fellowship Sub-group from 2017 to 2021, and led or joined a number of TDG projects including “Promoting Creative and Ethical Curriculum and Pedagogical Innovations through Copyright Education” (PI) and “Knowledge and Experience Generalisation through Daily Sharing by Legal Professionals to Break the ICE: Internationalisation, Common sense and Ethics education” (PI).

Dr Leon Lei is currently an e-learning technologist in the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from HKU. He has been working on remote/blended/MOOC learning initiatives in higher education and K12 education. His research interests include learning analytics, open licensing and education, and chatbot tutors. He was awarded with the Best/Outstanding Paper Award in IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) 2013, 2017 and 2020. He is an IEEE Senior Member and an Advance HE Senior Fellow.

Acknowledgement

This webinar is supported by:
– UGC Special Grant for Strategic Development of Virtual Teaching and Learning – Inter-institutional Collaborative Activities Projects
– IEEE Region 10 Education Activities Committee (2021 Region-10 Call for Capacity Building Workshop under Educational Activity; IEEE R-10 EAC’s Call for Proposal for “Reaching Local Initiatives”)
– IEEE Hong Kong Section and IEEE Hong Kong Section Education Chapter.

“Introduction to FinTech” course has reached a major milestone: 100,000 enrolled learners!

Hello all,

We are very happy to announce that the HKU / edX “Introduction to FinTech” course has reached a major milestone: we have officially reached 100,000 enrolled learners!

The course continues to be the most popular FinTech course on edX reaching learners in 209 countries / territories across the world – almost every country in the world. Now if we can only get the course to North Korea … The top regions where learners have joined the course are the US, Hong Kong / China and India.

We heartily extend our appreciation to all the course’s contributors and guest speakers who together have made this such an amazing course with incredible impact and reach.

Going forward, we will continue to enhance the content of the course as well as the HKU-edX Professional Certificate in FinTech with a diverse set of new speakers and contributors to push forward our commitment in keeping our learners updated on all relevant academic and industry insights.

To expand on our global engagement, we will be launching new Russian and Arabic subtitles in the coming months to “Introduction to FinTech” in addition to the existing English and Chinese subtitles.

Thank you all again and very best wishes from all of the course team!

Click to watch this “thank you” video from the HKUx Team

Douglas Arner
Kerry Holdings Professor in Law
University of Hong Kong

Why Gender is so important?

Enrol now

Why are we creating an online course about gender? More specifically, why does gender matter?
As you will be aware of from recent media coverage, gender is everywhere in society. Our daily lives are embedded in gender. From our social roles, to our attitudes and behaviours, to our interactions with others, and in our work, gender is ever present. Now with the call for gender equality gaining public prominence, we hope to give you the tools and lens for understanding what exactly is gender – moreover, to be aware of certain gender stereotypes and unconscious biases that are ever present.

Taught by over 20 HKU and industry instructors.

Let’s take this 6-week journey to unveil myths, taboos, and knowledge about gender together, navigating cross-culturally, historically, philosophically and sociologically. Some of the questions we’ll explore include: How do we define gender? What assumptions and biases emerge in our relationships within the family, work and politics? How does the media construct gender? How should we interpret the recent #metoo campaign? Sexual harassment, discrimination, sexual violence are gender relevant social issues that we will take you through.

solutions

What to expect after taking this course?
After six weeks, we guarantee that you will become an expert on gender issues, and be able to have your own critical perspectives about them to evaluate current events. Even more, to start having these conversations with your friends and family and make an impact!

A bit more about us…
‘Doing Gender and Why it Matters?’ is MOOC course offered by the University of Hong Kong. Led by Prof. Karen Joe Laidler from Department of Sociology, in collaboration with the Women Study’s Research Centre (WSRC), this course is a joint effort of scholars from different discipline such as law, history, culture, sexuality, who feel strongly about gender issues in Hong Kong, and wider globe.

Enrol now

How to use Weava to improve student research

Guest blogger
Vivian Seo, Research Assistant in the Faculty of Business and Economics

What is Weava?

Weava is a free productivity tool available as a browser extension and an iOS mobile application that supports students in their research and writing endeavours. Weava allows users to highlight information directly on websites and PDFs, annotate said highlights, organize research in folders, and collaborate with others. Weava was developed by HKU students, and is now used by more than 500,000 people around the world.

What Can Students Do with Weava?

  • Highlight and annotate online articles, online PDFs, and locally stored PDFs
  • Organize highlights and notes in folders and categorize contents by highlight colors
  • Manage and revisit highlights quickly
  • Export highlights and annotations to other formats, such as docx, xlsx, csv and txt files
  • Generate and export citations
  • Clip images
  • Collaborate with others in real time

How Can Weava Be Used to Support Teachers?

In addition to suggesting students use Weava to improve their research and writing, Weava can also be a valuable tool for teachers. For example, with Weava teachers can:

  • Highlight and save articles and reports for future use in teaching and class discussions
  • Pre-highlight websites, news articles, or PDF documents for use in class reading lists
  • Include annotations and questions in PDF or online reading materials for student consideration
  • Clip photos and charts for future use
  • And of course, Weava is a great tool to help teachers with their own research and personal efficiency

How to Download and Install Weava?

You can download and install Weava from the Chrome Web Store.
You can also use Weava with Microsoft Edge:

  1. Navigate to edge://extensions
  2. Click “Allow” to the notification “You can also get extensions from the Chrome Web Store”
  3. Search Weava on Chrome Web Store, and “Add extension”

For mobile access, you can download the iOS mobile application from the App Store.

Premium Features

The free plan of Weava already provides a host of functions that are useful for teaching and learning, but Weava Premium offers additional features, such as:

  • Unlimited highlight colors
  • Unlimited sub-folders
  • Unlimited storage
  • Collaboration with others
  • Prioritized support
  • Image clipping

Additional Information

For more resources and tips on how to use Weava, visit the following links:

You can also watch video tutorials at Weava’s YouTube Channel:

Feel free to visit Weava’s website for more information or contact Weava at info@weavatools.com if you need any help.

Blending Digital Collaborative Learning Activities in F2F Classroom – Taking Miro as an Example

Date: 27 August 2021
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Venue: Virtual Venue – via Zoom
Instructors: Ms Cindy Liang, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Dr Leon Lei

Registration

Abstract
Over the past two years, all teachers have been exploring the potential of different e-learning tools to facilitate student collaboration and interaction online and adapt to the new teaching environments. Now we are preparing to go back to the face-to-face (F2F) classroom, and we are likely asking ourselves – are the e-learning tools we used for online mode still applicable in the F2F mode? Will we have to abandon the e-learning tools or can we deploy them in the F2F class to help students shift back to a more familiar classroom learning environment? Will students keep active participation and interaction with the help of online tools in the F2F manner?

This seminar aims to help teachers get ready for the F2F class in the upcoming academic year by re-visiting their course designs and brainstorming innovative uses of EdTech tools. We will focus on an online collaborative tool called Miro, recapping its basic features, and introducing how it has been used in both F2F and online contexts, to support effective teaching and learning activities and achieve different teaching needs and learning goals.

“Instructional Design Extension Assistant (IDEA)” Scheme

Since the early stage of the pandemic in early 2020, teachers have had to adopt online, hybrid flexible (HyFlex) or other new modes of teaching. Different support schemes had been quickly developed across the university. These schemes responsively helped teachers to build the capacity for their emergency remote teaching.

After a year of remote instruction, remote learning pedagogies have been widely adopted by teachers as the pandemic evolved. Furthermore, more teachers are excited to design learner-centred and sustainable online/virtual/blended learning experiences with cutting-edge learning technologies. However, teachers often need adequate technical/pedagogical support for the development beyond emergency virtual instruction.

“Instructional Design Extension Assistant (IDEA)” is a new scheme implemented by TELI from 2021 to 2023. In brief, instructional design assistants co-develop virtual instructional materials with teachers for blended learning and flipped classroom. The scheme supports teachers transforming their blended instruction in the next stage, based on the scholarly research from the learning science field. In the 2021-2022 academic year, the IDEA program aims to support ten (10) HKU courses on advancing teachers’ online/blended instruction.

Examples of possible developments include, but not limited to:

  • Collaborative learning activities through Google Suites, Microsoft 365, Miro, or other tools
  • AI-facilitated teaching and learning, including Chatbot
  • OER-enabled pedagogies and renewable assignments
  • Inclusive and accessible learning resources
  • Digital assessments

If you are interested to co-develop virtual instructions together, please contact Dr Leon Lei (culei@hku.hk) for more information.

Resources for Creating a Teaching Video with Camtasia

After experimenting with a year of virtual learning, teachers may be more familiar with creating a screen-capture video with Camtasia. For those who would like to create a more polished video product, the resources in this blogpost will be helpful in supporting you in upgrading your talking-head style lecture video or demonstration video.

What is Camtasia?
Camtasia is an easy-to-use, all-in-one screen recorder and video editor. It enables teachers to create teaching videos with screen recording functions, and allows for easy editing of recorded videos for sharing with your students.

How to Download and Install Camtasia?
Check out this installation guide for HKU staff and students – http://moodle-support.hku.hk/download-and-installation-camtasia

What Resources are Available?
The following resources include a list of how-to videos on Camtasia and the recording of two levels of hands-on workshops with handouts and exercise files tailor-made for HKU staff and students. The Basic workshop content is foundational for first-time Camtasia users and the Advanced workshop content is leveled up for teachers who would like to learn more advanced functions in Camtasia.

Links to resources:

  1. How-to videos and hands-on workshop recordings (Basic/Advanced) – https://hku.to/UseCamtasia
  2. Hands-on Workshop (Basic/Advanced) Handout:
  3. Hands-on Workshop (Basic/Advanced) Exercise Files:
  4. Multimedia/Filming Support

Where Can I Find Support?
For HKU staff, please feel free to contact Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) if you have any questions or need any help on using Camtasia.

For HKU students, you can book a consultation session with the Digital Literacy Lab (https://www.diglit.hku.hk/camtasia) for further support.

Additional information
You are also welcome to visit the Camtasia comprehensive support website for more information: https://support.techsmith.com/hc/en-us

Advanced Cardiac Imaging: Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR)

Registration

About this course

This course is for radiologists, cardiologists, radiographers/ technologists and other health professionals who want to learn more about cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR). Previous experience in CMR is not required.

Learning outcomes:

  • Introduction of advanced techniques such as T1 and T2 mapping, feature tracking and exercise CMR.
  • The different sequences used in cardiac MRI imaging and the physics behind these sequences.
  • How to acquire the cardiac imaging planes.
  • How to assess the ventricular function, late gadolinium enhancement and T2* for iron overload.
  • PUnderstanding the normal appearances of the pericardium, heart muscle, valves and vasculature.
  • Understand how different cardiac pathologies result in different forms of cardiac remodelling.
  • An overview of the main cardiac diseases, such as coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathies (eg. hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy), valvular heart disease, cardiac tumours and congenital heart disease.

WEEK 1: Sequences, Acquisition, Contrast Agents and Basic Physics
This MOOC will begin with a course on the common cardiac MR sequences, the physics and application behind those sequences. We will also learn how to acquire cardiac MR imaging planes.

WEEK 2: Cardiomyopathies, LGE and T2
In this section, we will teach you how to assess and analyse ventricular function, LGE and T2*. We will also give you an overview of the main common cardiac diseases, such as coronary artery disease and cardiomyopathy.

WEEK 3: Coronary Artery Disease, Aorta, Pericardium and Valves
CMR techniques such as stress perfusion imaging, CMR sequences and methods for assessing aortopathy, pericarditis with or without constriction and valvular disease will be covered in this section.

WEEK 4: Congenital Heart Disease and Paediatric Scanning
This section will cover the role of CMR in congenital heart disease. You will also learn scanning techniques and common indications for babies and children.

WEEK 5: Advanced and Future Developments
In the last section, we will cover exciting advances in cardiac MRI, such as exercise CMR, T1/T2 mapping, artificial intelligence and feature tracking.

Clinical Cases:
You will also have hands-on experience to review clinical cases (eg. stress CMR with x-ray catheter angiography correlation) with tutorial videos every week.