Hong Kong primary students win top prize for smart school bag at CoolThink@JC Competition
- Team from Pui Kiu College wanted to help students with heavy bags after reading about spine health; invention corrects students’ posture and picks textbooks
- Competition was created and funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust and aims to promote computational thinking education for primary pupils
The OAC Coders from Pui Kiu College won the champion title in the App Inventor category at Hong Kong’s 7th CoolThink@JC Competition. Photo: The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust
After Clement Chan Yik-hong, an 11-year-old primary school student at Pui Kiu College, read an article about spine health and minors earlier this year, he immediately became concerned about the heavy school bags students must carry.
So he got together with two of his schoolmates, and the group came up with a radical invention: a smart school bag.
“After careful consideration, we designed this school bag, [which we hope will] reduce the weight of students’ bags,” Clement said.
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The bag has four specific functions: it helps students pick the correct textbooks, measures their posture, provides spine protection information, and has GPS positioning.
And it’s not just for students: teammate Oa-Yang Yee-ching, 11, noted that many Hongkongers – especially the elderly – suffer from a spinal condition called kyphosis, which can cause back pain and stiffness. He hopes the bag can help with the problem.
Their invention helped the students, who named their team the OAC Coders, win the top prize in the App Inventor category at Hong Kong’s 7th CoolThink@JC Competition, which aims to promote computational thinking education among Primary 4 to 6 students. Computational thinking is the process of formulating and solving problems by breaking them down into simple steps.
Professor Daniel Lai, Programme Director of CoolThink@JC from The Hong Kong Jockey Club, said the competition allowed students to practise coding and develop practical solutions to problems.
“Coding is just the tool: we advocate for computational thinking and problem-solving,” he said.
All three OAC Coders members said they had new ideas about computational thinking after the competition.
Yee-ching said it could boost his capacity for logical thinking, while Clement believed it would be handy for dealing with unforeseen circumstances.
Their teammate, 11-year-old Aaron Zhang Zi-rong, said the computational thinking skills he learned from the competition could benefit his academics.
This year, the competition attracted 312 teams from 129 schools and consisted of two categories: Scratch and App Inventor.
This year’s champion in the Scratch category was a team from PLK Gold & Silver Exchange Society Pershing Tsang School, who developed a game encouraging the public to learn about environmental conservation.
Stephen Cheung Yan-leung, chairman of the competition’s grand final judging panel, was impressed by the participants’ ideas, saying that “students are tackling day-to-day issues, day-to-day problems with innovative solutions.”
It is a key part of computational thinking education.
“[Presenting their product] requires teamwork, breaking down a very complex problem into small pieces, and [learning] how to solve the small pieces together,” said Cheung, who is also the President of the Education University of Hong Kong and has judged the competition for three years.
Computational thinking also helps students prepare for an ever-changing digital future. According to Lai, international surveys say employers rate computational thinking skills as one of the top skills they look for in job candidates.
“Problem-solving skills are needed in every discipline, [from] engineering to scientific research and day-to-day management,” Lai said.
CoolThink@JC Competition 2023 was created and funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, co-created by The Education University of Hong Kong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and City University of Hong Kong, and co-organised by Association of IT Leaders in Education and Hong Kong Association for Computer Education.
The Trust aims to sharpen students’ technological skills and has launched several innovation and technology teaching programmes in the city. Its curriculum has been adopted by 204 primary schools in Hong Kong so far, and it hopes to one day be a part of every primary school in the city.
“Innovative education should start at a very young age, such as what we are doing right now at the primary school level,” Cheung said.