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ISSUE 8 / SUMMER / 2015
In This Issue
Directors’ Message
Go Code
Coding Workshop
Apps
IT Festival
VoCAL
Startup Support
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Welcome to the eight issue of cal gazette!
Time flies! This is the 8th issue of our CAL newsletter summarising the activities
happened in the 2014/15 Fall semester. The three core values at CAL are 1)
promoting coding to everyone, 2) engaging our CAL members via meaningful
projects, 3) supporting our members in their start-up adventure. We have new
development in each frontline, with the support from our over 400 active CAL
members, and 18 CAL management directors.
The Hour of Code HK Campaign has marched into its fifth month, expanded from
only one day (last Sunday of a month), to CoCoon (last Sat & last Sun of a month),
and will expand to other local institutions. "We Can Code", our signature project,
is also evolving into different forms, including "Ambassadors Can Code" for
British Consul General, and we are planning the next wave including "Lawyers
Can Code", "Bankers Can Code". This coming Sat, will be the last lesson of the
Go Code Junior class, consisting of 4 lessons in total. I am most delighted to tell
you that I could see curiosity, happiness, and teamwork from each student who
has joined this program supported by Sino Care program.
Internally, we are engaging more CAL members in CityU projects, including with
SDS, GSO, CityU Walk App, Criminology student discovery projects. We have also
received supports from HKTDC, and CityU KTO, Innovation Commons, for the
ICT Expo 2015 at the HKCEC. One key highlight is that our Robot App developed
by David Wong, has been featured in the closing ceremony of the IT Fest 2015,
with another CAL member, One man band. We expect via this growing CAL
platform, more students are able to unleash their potential, and demonstrate
their innovative work to HK citizens.
Finally, the new TSSSU funding for 2015 has been released, out of the 10
awardee teams, at least six teams are formed with our CAL members. We hope
that we are able to give appropriate support and mentorship to each member
who would like to learn from this start-up adventure, for both learning how to
succeed, and how to handle failure. Perhaps next issue, we will need a longer
space to summarise the key points.
Dr. Ray Cheung
CAL Director
[email protected]
http://appslab.hk
CityU apps Lab
@cityuappslab
02
DIRECTORS’ MESSAGE
Dr. Jessica Li
Associate Director (Social Innovation)
Crime Prevention Discovery Channel-Student Apps Forum:
Knowledge Creation across Disciplines
Crime Prevention Discovery Channel - Student Apps Forum on 2nd May was part of the teaching
and learning project of Crime Prevention Discovery Channel. Generously funded by our University’s
Office of Education Development and Gateway Education (EDGE) through the Teaching
Development Grant, and kindly supported by CityU Apps Lab and Hong Kong Police Kowloon East
Regional Crime Prevention Office, this project aimed at promoting an
interdisciplinary initiative that involves students and faculties from
natural sciences (EE & CS) and social sciences (CM and SS) in their
pursuit of innovation and discovery, as well as knowledge creation
and transfer so as to contribute to our society through Apps
product design for a safe and sustainable community. Dr. Jessica
Li from SS (the project principal investigator), Dr. Ray Cheung from
EE (the Director of CityU Apps Lab) and Dr. Chitat Chan from SS were
keen to offer students “something new” in this project. CityU students’
innovativeness had already drawn the interest of the Hong Kong Police
Department and the Customs and Excise Department; a group of officers
also came to CityU to support students in the Apps Forum.
Dr. Anna Ruokonen
Associate Director (Cultural Innovation)
Hello. I’m a visiting assistant professor at EE department. I come from Finland. My background is
on software engineering. I’ve been teaching software development and service-oriented systems
for several years. I originally joined EE department to develop education related to utilization of
public cloud services and platforms, like Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services. Recently
I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to join CAL community and management team. I’m hoping
to get to know you and work together on different projects. I’m already very impressed to have met
so many energetic and inspiring CAL members.
In addition to service-oriented systems, my research interests
include tools for end-user driven programming and development,
personalized service applications, and open data applications. I
also believe that different kind of learning applications will be
heavily utilized in the future. Thus, lots of interesting things
and applications can be developed on that side, as an example,
hour-of-code game developed for kids to support learning of
logical thinking and programming. I’d also like to see applications
utilizing open government data. Anyone interested? Please, come
to talk and share your ideas.
03
Go Code
Go Code Exhibition 2015 at Olympian City encouraged
and promoted coding in the local community
Go Code Exhibition 2015 was held at the Central Atrium, North Wing of Olympian City 2 from
March 21st to 22nd (Saturday to Sunday). Ten apps, including the apps developed by both ‘Go
Code’ 2014 graduates and members of CityU Apps Lab, were exhibited. Around 1,000 citizens
have visited the exhibition at Olympian City.
In 2014, Sino Care of Sino Group offered a series of ‘Go Code Programming Pioneers’
elementary coding classes for 20 kids from grassroots families in Hong Kong. The ‘Go Code
Little Coding Pioneers’ Scheme has been launched in April, 2015, aiming to inculcate the
culture of coding in more kids.
04
Hour of Code & We Can Code
Extending ‘Hour of Code’ in Primary and Secondary schools
Since 2014 December, CityU Apps Lab and Let’s Code started the ‘Hour of Code’
HK campaign, offering coding workshops for the public to kick off their first
hour of coding. In April, the campaign received strong support from the
community. Supporting organisations include IEEE Hong Kong Section
Computer Society Chapter, Hong Kong Information Technology
Federation (HKITF), Hong Kong Software Industry Association (HKSiA),
Hong Kong Association for Computer Education (HKACE), Hong Kong
Information Technology Joint Council (HKITJC), Office of the Government
Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) - The Government of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Department of Computing of PolyU,
SME Creativity Center (SCC) and so on. Cocoon also became one of the venue
sponsors to extend more workshops to the public.
In April, CityU Apps Lab, St. Joseph's College and The Church of Christ in
China Heep Woh Primary School established and kicked off CAL
Ambassador Program through the e-Learning Carnival organized in
Baptist Rainbow Primary School. This unique collaboration between
university, secondary and primary schools served as an imperative platform
which significantly helped to promote coding. Heep Woh Primary School is
one of the schools which has paid much efforts to promote the ‘Hour of Code’
program in HK.
‘Ambassadors Can Code’ Mobile App Workshop
A group of representatives from the British Consulate-General joined the
‘Ambassadors Can Code’ Mobile App Workshop on February 27th, 2015
(Friday). A weather app was introduced and taught in the 2-hour workshop.
The app is specifically designed for Consuls of different countries who may
have frequent travels, allowing them to instantaneously check the weather
of their next destination.
‘As my first time of teaching coding, it was a great
experience to teach a group of honourable guests, ‘ said
Nelson Yau, a student from Department of Electronic
Engineering and the lead instructor of the day. The
bi-directional learning opportunity for the students was
highly treasured.
‘We Can Code at HKU’ Mobile App Workshop
A series of 3 mobile apps workshops was held at HKU in April.
Kenny, CAL Manager, has delivered intermediate level
workshops to HKU undergraduate students, and also to a few
exceptional bright high school students.
05
APPS
CityU Walk Contest 2015 Promoted
Healthy Walking Habit
Led by Dr. Ron Kwok, CAL Associate Director in
Business Innovation, CityU Walk mobile application is a
pedometer that counts your walking steps and records your
daily total step counts. The CityU Walk Contest was held from
15 March to 14 April 2015. The major aim of this contest is to
promote Healthy U through walking with the theme of "Walk for
your Unit (Department/Office) / Hall and Walk for your Health".
Prizes were awarded to all Top 3 walkers in different roles.
“I travel to CityU on foot almost every
day”, said Ben, a Year 3 student in
Surveying and also the 2nd runner
up of individual top walker. He
walked for average 27,000 steps per
day.“The path to university is rather
relaxing, taking around 50
minutes to reach there. Apart
from exercising, I could also take
this time to plan the schedule for the
rest of the day as well as meditate on
my life. Isn’t this great?”
Let’s walk together!
CityU Walk
ICT Expo showcased student products developed in Apps Lab
Apps Lab has joined the exhibition in Apps Zone of the Hong Kong International ICT Expo 2015,
organized by Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), from April 13th to 16th, 2015.
Apart from RobotDroid and Posture Check
App, exhibits also included 'Guitarie', an
app for guitar learner, and ‘Music
Lever’, a difficulty analysis system for
popular lyrics songs. 'The app aims to
provide an objective measurement by
analyzing different difficulty factors',
explained Jimmy, the developer of ‘Music
Lever’, and also a final year student from the
Department of Computer Science (CS). Louis,
the developer of 'Guitarie' who is also from
CS Department, has brought a guitar to
show the guests the way to learn playing
guitar with his app.
06
IT Festival
Digital Inclusion Let IT Play
Closing Ceremony of international IT Festival 2015
Invited by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) and
Commercial Radio, CAL was honored to have the privilege join the on-stage
performance for the Digital Inclusion Let IT Play x Closing Ceremony of IT Festival
2015 on April 24th, 2015 (Fri).
A total of five NAO robots were sent on stage in the Concert “Digital Inclusion Let IT
Play” during IT Festival. David Wong, a student from Electronic Engineering, is the
developer of RobotDroid. He made a breakthrough for the app as he managed to teach
the robot the main dancing steps of a Cantonese pop song which is performed by Hong
Kong girl idol group 'Super Girls'. Then, the group of robots were further trained to
synchronise all the motions for a perfect dancing performance with ‘Super Girls’.
Besides, Kenny Or, a student from Creative Media, who is also the developer of the
wearable device ‘One Man Band’, was sent on stage to perform a duet with the singer
Phil Lam (林奕匡) in the concert.
07
VoCAL
VoCAL - A Student-initiate Talk Series
VoCAL, Voice with CAL, is a student-initiate talk series. It aims to inspire CityU students
by showing interesting real life examples. Through interactive sharings, students can
be inspired and think out of the box, meanwhile the speakers can visualize their impact
and spread positive message.
The first VoCAL mini sharing was successfully held on April 15th, 2015 (Wed) by main
speakers, Hamza Zia and Jenny Kang. They enthusiastically shared about their project
RadiuX and Parle. In fact, they are a winning team of Hackathon @HKUST. Hackathon
@ HKUST is a 24 hour-coding event for all university students to make their ideas come
true. They stood out from the competition with their innovative app, Radiux, and are
currently working on a new project, Parle.
08
Startup support
'Pitch & Match Night' advocated
young entrepreneurs to share ideas
CityU Apps Lab has been highly supportive to incubate innovation
and promote entrepreneurship to youngsters. Aiming to advocate
CityU talented students to share ideas with each other, the ‘Pitch &
Match Night’ was successfully held on March 5th, 2015 (Thursday) for
potential entrepreneurs to enjoy sharing of innovative ideas and hunt
for talents from various backgrounds as their potential startup partners.
At that night, there were around 10 individuals and teams who
presented their own creative ideas of startup. In-depth discussion
was then enjoyed by idea innovators, specialists in programming
and designing, and explorers. The night was also joined by some
advisors who gave some insightful and valuable comments,
including Mr. Mingo Kwan, the CAL Advisory Board Member
and Former Head of Property Management of MTR
Corporation, and Ms Jessica Cheung, a representative from
Nest, HK’s only full-service startup incubator.
CAL Graduates Kicked Off Startup
Written by Leon Lo, TOM LAU, KEVIN HON, KEN KWONG
Four of us are the final year students of Electronic Engineering. At
the beginning, we just wanted to learn technical skills in CAL. Yet, not
only did we equip ourselves with excellent technical skills, but we also
met many experienced industry leaders, broadening our horizon and
changing our mindsets.
Soon after joining CAL, we have growing interest in the technology
industry and hence our enthusiasm drives us to start our own startup.
This year, we formed our company ‘ProHub’ with the financial support
from Technology Start-up Support Scheme for Universities (TSSSU).
We are developing an event management system called
‘EventCel’. It offers a comprehensive event
management service. By using Mobile plus Web
smart management system, EventCel aims to
provide an app platform for event publishing and
everyone’s participation. This is a solution to
handle
large
amounts
of
participants’
information, event details and operation process
data. Users and target companies will get access
to the information in a well-digested and
readable way. The tools in this app enhance
user experience during the event and,
more importantly, after the event!
Register
as CAL member