Education and Information Technologies 8:2, 147–164, 2003.  2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands. The Introduction of a Computerised Network to Support Educational Change in Hong Kong WING WAH KI, SHEK-KAM TSE, MARK SHUM and HO-CHEONG LAM Department of Curriculum and Educational Studies, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Abstract In 1998, there was a major shift in the medium of instruction in Hong Kong secondary schools from English to Chinese. This change had many educational advantages. However, its implementation was not without problems, and many of the problems were non-trivial. This article reports the work of a computer network, specifically established to support the educational change and discuss about the strategy to provide effective support to edu- cational changes through computer networking, including issues on service positions, content provision and the development of network culture interaction. Keywords: language of instruction, teacher development, network application, learning community 1. Introduction In 1998, a year after Hong Kong was restored to Chinese sovereignty. There is a rapid change in the junior secondary teaching in Hong Kong. About three-quarters of Hong Kong secondary schools began using Chinese instead of English as the medium of instruc- tion. Before then, many teachers had unofficially used Chinese to supplement lesson input and it was hoped that the change would bring much educational benefit. However, many teachers soon encountered difficulty in implementing the change. There was a lack of quality, locally published curriculum materials in Chinese and, although most Hong Kong teachers are native speakers of Chinese, few were very proficient at using Chinese for aca- demic purposes as most had received their own education in English (Tsui et al., 2000). In addition, few teachers were skilled in using information and communication technology (ICT) to prepare lesson materials in Chinese. One government initiative was to sponsor the Department of Curriculum Studies in the University of Hong Kong to set up ‘The Chinese-medium of Instruction (CMI) Centre’. The Centre was asked to introduce and make accessible to teachers via Internet a range of curriculum materials, activities and support mechanisms since Autumn 1998. The number of potential teacher users was large and they needed help urgently, but the strategy to address their needs was not immediately clear. This paper is going to describe a strategy adopted by the Centre that tries to integrate teacher support and professional development and highlight a number of important factors for the successful use of computer network to support teachers in educational change.