停課不停學 不停教科研
Suspension of classes without suspending schools and researches
愚公在離開服務多年的銀行業後，過去12年不斷以不同角色參與區內的教育工作。雖然大部分時間留在香港，但也不時參與內地、甚至是亞太區的企業培訓、大學甚至是中學的教學工作，並擔任不少學界創科比賽的裁判。不過回顧近兩年，疫情下的教育工作挑戰重重，幸好有賴於不同科技夥伴向學界及時提供支持，得以做到「停課不停學、不停教科研」。
例如阿里雲就一直在內地提供現代化教學數字基礎建設。過去幾個月，阿里雲也為香港的大專院校界提供了免費的雲資源，讓大家在疫情期間可如往常一樣安心開展教學和科研工作。教職員及研究人員可以免費使用雲上遙距文檔共享神器 FileCloud 的 500 GB 容量，同時大專院校的學生也能享有免費的雲端伺服器。
科企所作的努力減低疫情的負面影響，但更令愚公感到鼓舞的是，學界對科技運用及線上教育的接受程度正日益提升。在傳統教育領域，香港學生過去一直在學術研究及學業成績方面表現理想。然而隨著當代經濟發展愈來愈趨向數字化，我在這十年間，不難看出香港學界的表現，無論在參與國際比賽、將大學的研究項目商業化，還是匹配學生的技能與商業社會需求方面，仍有較大的進步空間。這幾年的疫情變相促使社會加快數字化，我也正熱切期望著在一切活動復常後，香港學界能加倍努力，盡快趕上！
據我觀察所得，香港除了需要盡快利用現代化的數字基礎建設重構本地信息教育的生態環境之外，更應該深度融合目前已經在商業世界廣泛運用的雲計算技術，為大學、中學甚至小學生及老師們帶來便利。要知道，學習編程、鍛煉邏輯思維就好像學習外語、音樂甚至是體育一樣，越早接觸，就會帶來更好的效益。希望未來有更多像阿里雲這樣的夥伴，向本地教育界開放優質的科技資源，助老師和同學們在數字時代更高效地工作和學習。
After leaving the banking industry where I have served for many years, I have been involved in education in the region for the past 12 years in various roles. I have been involved from time to time in corporate training, university and even secondary school teaching in locally in Hong Kong, the Mainland and even in the Asia Pacific region. Moreover, I have been a judge for a number of academic innovation competitions. Fortunately, thanks to the timely support of our technology partners, we have been able to “suspend classes without stopping learning and teaching without stopping research”.
For example, Alibaba Cloud has been providing modern digital infrastructure for teaching in the Mainland. In the past few months, Alibaba Cloud also provided free cloud resources to the university community in Hong Kong so that they can continue their teaching and research work as usual during the epidemic. Faculty, staff and researchers can use the 500 GB capacity of FileCloud, a remote file-sharing tool on the cloud, for free, while students of tertiary institutions can also enjoy free cloud servers.
While the efforts of science companies have mitigated the negative effects of the epidemic, I am encouraged by the growing acceptance of the use of technology and online education in the academic community. In the traditional education sector, Hong Kong students have always performed well in academic research and achievement. However, as the contemporary economy becomes increasingly digital, it is easy for me to see that there is still much room for improvement in the performance of Hong Kong’s academic community in terms of participation in international competitions, commercialization of university research projects, and matching the skills of students to the needs of the business community during this decade. The epidemic of the past few years has been a catalyst for the accelerated digitalization of our society, and I am eagerly awaiting the resumption of all activities so that the Hong Kong academic community can redouble its efforts to catch up as soon as possible!
From my observation, Hong Kong needs to use modern digital infrastructure to restructure the local information education ecosystem as soon as possible, and to integrate the cloud computing technology, which is already widely used in the business world, to bring convenience to universities, secondary schools and even elementary school students and teachers. You should know that learning programming and training logical thinking is like learning foreign languages, music or even sports, the earlier you get in touch with it, the better the benefits will be. We hope that more partners like Alibaba Cloud will open up quality technology resources to the local education sector in the future, so that teachers and students can work and learn more efficiently in the digital age.
