News

For the IP Phone Services Competition which was jointly run by Cisco Systems and ICT/TY, students from ICT's HD in T&N took 1st and 2nd places in the student category, with T&N student Yu Hok Kwan also winning best entry in the overall competition.

IP Phone Betting (Yu Hok Kwan)

Home Automation IP Phone Service
(Chan Wing Hong)

{photo credits: PC Weekly}

On 23 April, 2003, BEA Systems, the world's leading application infrastructure company, announced that it has donated 150 BEA WebLogic Platform Developer Kits to the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) of the Vocational Training Council. The donation, which is valued at over HK$5million, will boost IT education in Hong Kong and will especially benefit development and deployment of web-based applications. It is an important step towards BEA's goal of helping academic institutions worldwide through its dev2dev University Program, and closely follows a 240 million RMB donation to China's Ministry of Education.

The donation will enable IVE to adopt BEA's advanced technology in the software engineering and computer systems administration courses conducted by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at the Tsing Yi campus. The technology will be used for teaching purposes, providing students with valuable hands-on experience with this highly effective tool for developing web-based applications.

In tandem with the donation, the BEA WebLogic ® Platform Laboratory featuring BEA's application infrastructure technology will be established in the IVE's Cyber-Technology Laboratories at Tsing Yi. This platform will be used for research and education.

Teachers and students will benefit from the software's key strengths: a single, unified architecture that reduces product support, maintenance and integration costs; simplified application development, deployment, and management to increase productivity; and open extensibility to leverage current and future technology investments.

"Today's students will one day lead the IT industry," said Jerome Leroy, Director - Hong Kong, BEA Systems. "Given the rapidly increasing importance of e-commerce, BEA Systems is cooperating with academic institutions to boost the development of web-based applications in Hong Kong and worldwide, through our recently established dev2dev University Program. This program makes it easy and cost-effective for college and university instructors to integrate BEA technologies into their courses.

"We are delighted that BEA has donated its latest technology to our students, as it has always been our goal to deliver quality vocational education and training with the use of the most advanced technology, and to ensure that what our students learn is directly applicable to the requirements of Hong Kong's business environment," said Professor David Lim, Deputy Executive Director (Academic) of the Vocational Training Council.

"Software systems integration is one of the most challenging areas in IT, and it has also been one of the ICT Department's strategic directions," added Dr. Y.K. Leung, Head of the ICT Department at Tsing Yi. "The donation will make IVE (Tsing Yi) the leading institution in offering high quality and state-of-the-art software integration training in Hong Kong. In particular, the availability of the BEA WebLogic ® Platform will enrich the content of two of our courses - the Higher Diploma in Software Engineering and the Higher Diploma in Computer Systems Administration, greatly improving the competitiveness of our graduates."

"With its open systems architecture and component-based model, the BEA WebLogic Platform is an ideal developer toolkit for application infrastructure, and our students will benefit from acquiring expertise in using it," said Dr. Clarence Lau, Senior Lecturer in the ICT Department.

The BEA WebLogic® Platform Developer Toolkit uses a component-based development model, which separates business logic from presentation logic. This compartmentalisation allows programmers to quickly retool large websites: new code modules can be dropped in as needed, avoiding the need to rebuild an entire system or search through a spaghetti-like code of scripts to find what has to be updated. This makes the software ideal for complex, future-proof web applications.

BEA recently donated application infrastructure software and IT training worth RMB2,400 million to China's Ministry of Education. BEA has also participated in course design and provided hands-on experience for both teachers and students. Prior to the donation, BEA showed its commitment to IT education by helping more than 20 of China's higher education institutions, including Beijing and Qinghua universities; many of these institutions have already begun designing courses based on BEA's leading technologies for application infrastructure, and will offer these courses in the very near future.

Our Department will receive an invitation from Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to attend their road show during which a souvenir to IVE(TY) and Certificates of Appreciation will be presented to us. This is the accomplishment of our Year 2 HD Computer Systems Administration students in the development of the Search Engine and Content Management System for the EOC Web site in their Project Work II.

(click for high-res. photo)

Our Department will receive an invitation from Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to attend their road show during which a souvenir to IVE(TY) and Certificates of Appreciation will be presented to us. This is the accomplishment of our Year 2 HD Computer Systems Administration students in the development of the Search Engine and Content Management System for the EOC Web site in their Project Work II.

(click for high-res. photo)

The hit-rate of the EOC Web site www.eoc.org.hk reaches 1000 visit per hour or exceeding 1,000,000 per month. Last fall, the EOC would like to add a Search function to their web site such that visitors can find information and EO related ordinances of their web site easier. They invited proposals from some software companies. As this is a good project for our HD CSA/SE Project Work II Module and is also a good opportunity for our students to learn through practical experience, We therefore approached EOC and successfully solicited an opportunity to allow 19 HD CSA year 2 students, breaking into 4 groups to do presentations to EOC as well as submitting project proposals, with detail work plan, good technical content and time line.

Because of good preparation of the students (they even rehearsed for the presentations), and among all the proposals submitted to EOC, we won the Project. We received comments from EOC that our students’presentations are even better than many companies which bided for the project.

Understanding that the search function will actually be used by a prestigious organization and launch to the public, these students see their importance and therefore are willing to work seriously to contribute to the Community. They are now much motivated and even volunteered to design poster on the new search function. This project provides a very valuable training ground to the students - not just learning the technical know-how, but a total solution to project management, including team spirits, contingency measures, presentation skills, quality assurance etc..

We are happy that we obtained support from the Compuware Asia-Pacific Ltd and the Hong Kong Society for the Blind. Compuware, in addition to letting us to test the system for EOC with their software testing tools, they also send their Regional Senior Consultant to train our students to use the tools. The Hong Kong Society for the Blind, after meeting with our students and testing our system, gives us very useful comments and suggestions to improve the accessibility for the visually impaired and blind users. Our students have incorporated all these comments and suggestions into their systems. This gives the students good concepts of equal opportunity in IT and good understanding of accessibility.

After some months of hard work and good co-operation with EOC, the search function and web content management system will be in place by 2 March 2003. The EOC appreciates much the good work of our students and is going to present a souvenir to IVE(TY) and Certificate of Appreciation to the project students, in their public event where Legco Members and District Officer are present. As such, the EOC will invite our Principal and our Head of Department. to the event.

Furthermore, two photos of the students can be found in the "This Week in EO" section of the EOC website.

Professor Arthur Li (Secretary for Education and Manpower of the HKSAR), Mrs. Fanny Law (Permanent Secretary for Education and Manpower of the HKSAR), and Mr. Philip Chok (Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower of the HKSAR) visited the TY Campus on 28 August 2002.

Professor Li was particularly impressed by our programs with companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, CSL, Fluke, Tycos, ASM, and Compuware.

Visit by Top Officials of the Education and Manpower Bureau

In September 2002, our ICT department has secured an ITF grant through a partnership with the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) and Hong Kong Wireless Technology Industry Association (WTIA). The sponsors of this project include two mobile phone operators, the HKCSL and the People, and another ten mobile /
location-based services developers and providers. The total value of this project is $7.07 million. The main objective of this
project is to develop a method to estimate the location of mobile devices (such as mobile phones) solely with the data that can be obtained from the wireless network. No extra hardware is required in to add onto the existing wireless network. Such a system would be most useful in big cities with urban canyons like Hong Kong since Global Positioning Systems (GPS) do not work well in these areas.

In December 2001, with the kind donation of $5 million software testing tools from Compuware Asia Pacific Ltd, our department has set up a Compuware Software Testing Laboratory. The purposes of this laboratory include
a) Provide students with quality and state-of-the art software testing tools in learning practical software testing technique;
b) Strengthen the quality and facilities further development of Software Engineering Education in ICT/IVE(TY); and
c) Support downstream R&D of Software Quality Assurance in the ICT/IVE(TY).
This Compuware Software Testing Laboratory is the first of this kind in Hong Kong

First Year ICT/TY students Wat Kai Kwong, Wong Kin Ho, and Kwok Miu Ling from IVE(Tsing Yi) won the Bronze Award in the SmartApps-to-go Competition in April 2002. The 2.5G Mobile Applications Development competition was organized by the Hong Kong Productivity Council and sponsored by Ericsson.

The ICT/TY entry, entitled "WAP EYE," is an integrated hardware and software package that enables WAP phone users to view video images at their home or other designated sites. The system also allows users to control camera positions remotely and alarms the user by sending a WAP PUSH message to the user when an unexpected event has been detected at home.

Group photo of organizer, sponsors, and top three groups (City U, HKU, IVE(TY)).

On 21 March, 2002, thirty students and five teaching staff our of department visited the Zhongzhan Universtiy in Guangzhou.

We were welcomed by the head of the Department of Applied Statistics and Computing when we arrived. Students from the two institutes gave presentations to one another. Our students and their students also participated in a group discussion session. We were impressed by the mathematical strength of their students and they gave us compliments on our presentation and communication skills.

The lecturers of the Zhongshan University had shown their appreciation on the practical aspects of our curriculum. They look forward to future collaboration with us.

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and the Hong Kong Statistical Society (HKSS) have decided the all graduates of Higher Diploma in Applied Statistics and Computing will be exempted from the Ordinary Certificate Examination of the Hong Kong Statistical Society. To be eligible for the exemption, graduates must obtained an overall credit or above and must have passed a statistics-based final year project.

If students go on to pass the next stage of exam, the Graduate Diploma, he/she will be hold a qualification equivalent to a British honour degree.

updated 29 Apr 2003