Educational Television (Hong Kong)
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Educational Television (Traditional Chinese: 教育電視), shortly known as ETV, is a series of educational television programmes jointly produced by Radio Television Hong Kong and Education and Manpower Bureau (formerly Education Department) of Hong Kong. ETV is an auxiliary mean for instructing primary and secondary school curriculum in attractive ways through the popularised television from early 1970s. ETV programmes change with curriculum from time to time, covering wide spectrum of topics. Programmes are broadcast during daytime non-peak hours on English channels of TVB and ATV from Monday to Friday, 32 weeks within school year. With popularity of the Internet, programmes can be viewed through world wide web on demand.
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[edit] History
ETV began with primary schools and developed gradually. In 1972, the first programme was for Primary 3. It extended one level up yearly and covered Primary 6 in 1974. In September 1976, ETV started to cover junior secondary school. It begins with Secondary 1 and reaches Secondary 3 in 1978. There is no major change in range until 1999. ETV extended to Primary 1 and 2 in junior primary and Secondary 4 and 5 on selected topics in senior secondary school. In 2000, the ETV begins to broadcast Teacher Resource Programmes for teachers.
[edit] Programmes
The programmes are closely tied with the curriculum devised by Hong Kong Government. Most of programmes are in Cantonese language. In early days, it covers the primary subjects Chinese language, English language and Mathematics, and secondary subjects Social Studies, Health Education (absent in secondary school) and Nature (later renamed to Science). Programme topics are changed weekly for primary school and biweekly for secondary school. The length of a programme is 15 minutes for primary school and 20 for secondary. Later the secondary subjects were merged to General Studies for primary school as the curriculum changed. Putonghua was introduced as the language is increasingly important in Hong Kong. Social Studies for secondary schools was renamed to Personal, Social and Humanities Education.
[edit] Media
In coping with the normal everyday school period, ETV programmes are being broadcasted from Monday to Friday (except some long school vacations like Christmas hoildays, Lunar New Year holidays, Easter holidays and Summer holidays) in free TV channels - TVB Pearl and ATV World, in a sense that one of which broadcasts programmes in the morning (8am - noon) and the other broadcasts them at the afternoon (noon-4pm) time slot. In the next academic year, their broadcasting periods swap.
Although each programme are broadcasted several times in a week, it is not flexible to school class schedule. For government schools and aided schools in Hong Kong, the government provides necessary television and recording equipment for reception of ETV programmes. The recorded programmes in video tapes can be viewed out of the broadcast time frame.
Some programmes are distributed in form of VCDs or interactive multimedia CD-ROMs to schools.
With the coming of the Internet age, ETV programmes and other materials can be obtained from ETV website eTVonline.
