Community Outreach Merit Program

Although today weather is very cold, it doesn’t affect our mood to take part in this exciting event. I am very pound of our students, they all did a good job in this event.

Special thanks to:
Our Students: Li, Mary, Judy, KC, Chin Ho, Helen.
Without your help this event will not be successful.
Particularly Li, Mary Judy and KC they did so much work before the carnival.

Li and Judy: Help us create “Mak Sai”.
Mary: Prepare many art work, Mary spend so much time to make fake drugs.
Li and KC: “苦力”!!

My colleague: Alice, Edith ,Fung and Mark

Mark: The father of “Mak Dun”!

And also thanks our COMP faculty-in-charge, Dr. Stephen Chan, Dr. Vincent Ng and Dr. Grace Ngai for their support to this event!

Photos:

About
The i3Learn Group of the Department has been introducing innovative teaching methods through a series of innovative IT training workshops to local primary and secondary schools. During the last Xmas holidays, we’ve organized a two-day creative robots training workshop for 37 F.2 & F.3 girls from the Heep Yunn School. The workshop emphasize not only building and programming a robot, but also teamwork, fun and creativity as well as the university learning experience

The products created by the secondary students including the ping pong lorries, maze robots and Chinese lion dance robots have been put on display to the general public at the Heep Yunn Fun Fair on Jan 20, 2008. More than 1000 visitors participated in this sunny event.

Dates
29 Dec 2007 (Sat) Creative Robot Training Workshop - Day 1
30 Dec 2007 (Sun) Creative Robot Training Workshop - Day 2
20 Jan 2008 (Sun) Heep Yunn Fun Fair

Photos

Special Thanks to…
Tutors: Kennis Lam, Marco Chan, Rick Tong, Judy Chu, Jason Yu, Jennifer
Particularly Kennis and Marco who did much of the coordination and technical support in the Fun Fair!
And also thanks our COMP faculty-in-charge, Dr. Stephen Chan, Dr. Vincent Ng and Dr. Grace Ngai for their generous support to the event!

About
The Department has collaborated with Kowloon West Youth-Care Committee (KWYCC) and Hong Kong Police Force Regional Crime Prevention Office (Kowloon West Region) for several years. On this coming Sunday (27 Jan), there will be a Beat Crime Carnival which aims to promote anti-drug message. Moreover, the opening ceremony of the Department’s new project “Drug Abuse Resistant Teens (DART)” will be held at the venue as well.

There will be some booth games, performances and competitions. Our Department will perform “Lion Dance”… by our NXT and RCX robots!!

Date, Time & Venue
27th Jan, 2008 from 1:00p.m. to 5:00p.m. at Macpherson Playground,Mongkok,Kowloon(九龍旺角洗衣街麥花臣足球場)

Don’t miss the chance, join us at the venue!

About
Since 2005, we have worked with the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups on the Hong Kong FLL Robotics Tournament, which is an international program combines a hands-on, interactive robotics program and a research presentation.

There is a Challenge every year and it is based on a set of real-world problems facing scientists today. It has two parts: a robot game and a project. This year’s Challenge is “Power Puzzle”. For details please visit the official website: http://www.firstlegoleague.org

Dates
24 Nov 2007 (Sat) Briefing Session
05 Jan 2008 (Sat) Basic Training
19 Jan 2008 (Sat) Advanced Training
1 Mar 2008 (Sat) Tournament

We’re now recruiting helpers for the tournament, for those who are interested please email to cscomm@comp.polyu.edu.hk

Photos

We finally arrived Kowloon station at 1900 and the trip is over. Overall speaking, the trip is quite successful as 1.the network and the PC lab has been set up and 2. the kids have an general impression of what the computer is and they tried out some applications of computer such as MS Paint and wordpad. I wish after we go, they still have a chance to practice and explore things inside the computer. This is my first time to go to a place which the condition is far below from Hong Kong and interacting with kids there. Through this trip, I realize that I am able to do something for the kids except juz donating money to charity.

Today sees our last day in Dingxi for this project. We have succeeded in doing what we set out to do, even though there are some details that we will definitely have to come back and take care of this summer. But overall, I think that we managed to do what we had planned, and we have all learned a great deal during this project and feel that all the hard work was worthwhile.

Hopefully, sharing our experiences during this trip via blog will encourage more people to participate in these projects in the future. It is a very rewarding experience, and sometimes, I think that we benefit a lot more than the people whom we set out to serve.

I will close my post with two pictures from what I consider to be one of the most successful portions of our project: the video-conferencing session. As Lozen told us in his blog post a few days ago, we set up a video-conferencing session between the kids at JCPS and some Hong Kong schoolchildren. For all of the JCPS kids, it was the first time that they had interacted with somebody in such a manner, and I believe that it was the first time that many of the teachers had seen something like this in action, too. They chatted and sang songs with each other, and finally also drew a picture together, using collaborative software. The photo on the right below shows that picture in the process of being produced. The bottommost image is the completed picture. Can you guess which side did what?

On our schedule for today is a distribution of winter clothes to some remote villages. The organization that runs the school also sponsors a number of orphans who live at home (either alone or with relatives) and go to school in their villages. Several times a year, these orphans make the trek to the nearest village that is accessible by road, and the organization’s employees and volunteers drive over to those villages and meet them there, to distribute school fees, or clothing.

Our original plan had been for our team to split into three, and visit 12 villages in all. However, it started snowing last night, and there is a good 2 inches of snow on the ground now. Since many of these villages are very much off the beaten track, going over very mountainous terrain in unheated, shaky little vans, it was decided for safety reasons that the distribution would be cut short, with each team only visiting the closest village that could be accessed via a flat track.

It was a very cold trip, even though we were all squashed next to each other in the van and were bundled up warmly as well. The vans are very rickety and let in cold air all over the place, through the doors, windows and even the floor! Still, it was a touching experience, especially when seeing the children who had trekked through the snow (some of them for over an hour) to get to there. One boy had arrived with his grandfather — he arrived very late, and when we saw him walking, I knew why it had taken him so long — he was lame in one leg and walked with difficulty. Another girl had no coat of her own and her hair had frozen into icicles by the time she got to the distribution village.

Lozen is here!!! I have a break finally, to write on this blog.

It’s snowing outside since this morning. Well, as a person who comes from Northern China, I should not be such excited as Hong Kong Students and Yvette. Edith just recorded my words in DV: “香港的小朋友都看不到雪… 真可怜…”. But it really an excited day for all.

We almost have everything done today. This morning, Kobe and Grace worked out how to remote control those routers outside. In the afternoon, Esther helped Grace and Stephen train the local teachers with the topic of Project Learning. Kobe and I helped Paul, a local teacher who will be the administrator for the local networking and PC Lab, figure out what the exact things happened in the last few days. Yvette also help us by training him how to backup and restore data in PC Lab. The rest helped Edith teaching those Kids in PC Lab. We also set up a vedio conference for the kids here with Korris, Stephen and Prof. Lu’s daughters in Hong Kong. It is really excited. The kids here prepared a lot of questions, and asked by turn. Some kids were so shy to talk alound. They found back their confidence when singing songs to Hong Kong. At this point, personally I’m a little disappointed when not hearing Vincent sing a song.

We did not host any games for kids tonight, because we had a big buffet dinner(團年飯) with those kids and staffs here. The food is much better than what those kids have usually. The dean of student here required that one person can only take one piece of chicken leg, but I found that many of us just left that and other good food for the kids. Just as Alvin said, we will have a lot of chance to have it, but the kids here not.

Those kids here is impressive. I found it is much easier to communicate with a kid, rather than an adult. They are straight and simple. I’m really joyful when playing with them.

In the evening, Kobe, Yvette and I finished all the Documentation about the Network and PC Lab. So we can proudly say that we finished all the technical work in this trip. Too many thanks to my teammates. Without our all efforts, we cannot achieve this.

Now I’m having my Internet access in Alvin’s Room @ Dorm, through the wireless router installed in another building 100m far away @ Server Room. It’s a wonderful day. Best wishes to everyone.

Hopefully our blog posts have been giving you some idea of what’s been going on over the last few days. Here are some pictures to share, too.

	Making CAT5 cables is hard work!
	And trying to sort through and label a tangled mass of Ethernet cables in a dusty server room is DIRTY work!
	Kobe and I work on the N-series router…
	… while Esther and Ivy test out WLAN access in the school courtyard
	Lozen and Yvette give the teachers some IT training

11/1, Today, the networking set up is almost finished and the printer is ready for use. Also, the computers in the school can be remotely controlled from outside. ( I have great teammates.^^ Some of them even miss the lunch beacuse of the networking set up! )

早上10半, 定西下雪, 微微的, 這是行程的意外收穫小朋友,老師的IT課由昨天開始,
昨天的課,由最基本, 什麼是電腦, 電腦有那幾部分, 滑鼠使用方法, 最後用小畫家畫東西
上課的時間,同學非常留心, 反應十分熱烈, 大家爭著答老師的問題
3個半小時的課, 轉眼就完, 更有小朋友用小畫家畫了張賀年卡,準備送給他們的捐助者