The 2014 Discovery Festival opening ceremony cum Teaching Excellence Awards Presentation was held at Academic 1 podium floor on 3rd March. Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, Secretary for Transport and Housing of the HKSAR Government, Professor Way Kuo, President of CityU, Professor Arthur Ellis, Provost of CityU, Professor Horace Ip Ho-sing, Vice-President (Student Affairs) of CityU, and Mr Cedric Cheng Cheuk-him, Vice Chairman of Convocation of CityU, opened the ceremony explaining the aim of the festival, showcasing the strengths of CityU in teaching and learning, innovation achievements, the unique Discovery-enriched Curriculum (DEC), and its wide range of academic programmes.
The annual exhibition is now a major CityU event. This year the festival ran for three weeks, from 24th February to 14th March, providing a platform for teachers and students to share their experiences and discoveries with their peers and the public.
Three awards were presented to the winning teams of the “My Own Discovery Contest”. BBA year 2 Accountancy students CHAU Yin Chi and HUI Wing Sum, and BBA Economics and Finance year 2 student LAM Siu Bing, members of one of the winning teams formed by students of different disciplines in a General Education course, were excited to share their concepts. The project named “Transfriendly,” proposes to integrate a guiding device into the walking canes of the visually impaired. The user inputs a bus number and when the designated bus arrives, the device alerts the user by vibration or computerized voice.
When talking about the major difficulties encountered while conducting the project, the team had a unanimous answer – finding a suitable technology to support the proposed device.
“As none of our teammates specialize in the technological field, we had to put time and effort into research to understand the existing technologies. Luckily, our supervisor, Dr Eric Chan, referred us to Dr Ray Cheung of the Department of Electronics Engineering who gave us valuable suggestions,” said Chau.
Teammate Hui added:
“We hope that this device can encourage users to travel around, integrate into society, and also more generally to raise awareness towards the needs of the visually impaired.”
The winning teams were awarded funding support for the registration of intellectual property, and institutional support on how to further advance their concept, as well as a $3,000 bookstore coupon.
For more news reports on the Discovery Festival, please visit http://wikisites.cityu.edu.hk/sites/newscentre/en/Pages/201403031440.aspx