Nurturing HKs Young Tech Talent

Students are broadening their horizons by taking an advanced aerial photography and videography course designed to enrich their IT education.

The subject is one of the advanced classes offered by Cheung Sha Wan Catholic Secondary School which is participating in the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer’s (OGCIO) enriched IT programme.

Working with tech giants, the school organises cutting-edge activities that teach students about the latest technologies and how enterprises are run, as well as encourage them to innovate and network.

Student Jordan Fung has greatly benefitted from this progamme. He is now the founder and CEO of a tech startup company and actively promotes youth entrepreneurship in his school and society.

He said: “Our principal has been very supportive and my teachers have also been very supportive from the beginning. Very soon, within three years of our founding, we have already incubated startup companies. Some of them have reached profitability already.”

Jump-starting innovation

Students can quickly gain a solid understanding of IT through the programme, Cheung Sha Wan Catholic Secondary School Principal Calepodius Poon said.

“We can use the resources to buy lots of hardware, software and even services. And we can create lots of chances or opportunities for the students to join the activities.

“All these chances can help us to broaden the horizons of our students, help them to have a more complete view of the world.”

Secondary schools can also apply to the programme to organise enriching activities to stimulate their students' interest in IT.

Students of Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing Secondary School took part in an Internet of Things (IoT) workshop funded by the programme. Pansy Ma and her classmates were inspired to apply the technology to create the Sunshine Minibus Station mobile app.

With its real-time vehicle positioning system, the app shows commuters when the next minibus will arrive and even lets passengers reserve a seat before boarding.

Miss Ma said: “We use the IoT technology to transfer the data from the driver’s phone to the cloud.

“Then our mobile app will help retrieve the data from the cloud and send it to the passenger’s phone and the minibus stop.”

Creating impetus

The demand for tech talent is on the rise with the wide adoption of IT across different sectors.

To further enhance Hong Kong youths’ technological prowess, the Government has set up a $500 million IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme earlier this year.

It will provide up to $1 million from this school year to 2022-23 to each publicly funded secondary school so they can upgrade their IT equipment, such as optical fibres, broadband networks and cloud servers.

This will help schools organise IT-related extracurricular activities and hire short-term and part-time staff to implement such projects.

The programme will open for applications on December 1. Eligible schools will receive funding at the end of this year or in early 2021.

Additionally, the OGCIO has set up the IT Innovation Lab One-stop Support Centre to assist schools with IT professional services and extracurricular activities.