Microsoft and Hong Kong Education City Team Up to Build Future Ready Education Services

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Deepen educators and students’ knowledge on computational thinking and AI

December 13, 2018, Hong Kong –– Microsoft Hong Kong and Hong Kong Education City (HKEdCity) today announced a two-year collaboration to support HKEdCity in applying advanced Cloud development environment for building next generation education services.

According to a recent survey by the Global STEM Alliance of The New York Academy of Sciences, 97% of students like STEM-related subjects and 95% of students believed STEM-related subjects will be useful in the future. However, only 54% of students say they receive the important STEM resources they need. The survey also revealed that only 20% of teachers feel their school provides enough opportunities or support for their professional development. Meanwhile, 72% of teachers are keen to receive in-person training.

HKEdCity and Microsoft’s partnership aims to help over 750,000 teachers and students to learn STEM topics and promote related trainings to schools through monthly workshops, seminars, as well as online training content. Microsoft experts will explain and discuss the latest technology trends, as well as guiding teachers and students to learn more about coding, computational thinking, AI, analytics among other topics. All workshops, seminars and online training content will be sponsored by Microsoft and are complimentary to all school members of HKEdCity.

‘Schools in Hong Kong are eager to adopt innovative education solutions to enhance learning and teaching effectiveness and lessen administration works. To help schools keep pace with the latest technological development, we are glad to partner with Microsoft HK again to introduce cutting-edge technologies including cloud, AI and big data to schools so as to enrich students with future digital competencies.  We are confident that our collaboration will establish a role model of innovative education for future-ready schools,’ said Victor Cheng Pat-leung, Executive Director of Hong Kong Education City.

‘Lack of digital talents in Hong Kong has been a hot topic in recent years. As the industry leader in the technology sector, it is our mission to nurture the digital talents of tomorrow and inspire more students to pursue a career in STEM. With the right tools, teachers can spark students’ creativity and unlock the potential of every student. AI, Big Data and will transform our society and it is important for the education sector to embrace these emerging technologies to achieve more,’ said Cally Chan, General Manager at Microsoft Hong Kong.

As part of the collaboration, Microsoft will assist HKEdCity to migrate select Information Technology (IT) structure and education services to Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform designed to host huge amount of data simultaneously. Azure offers flexibility and wide range of solutions to ensure a high level of scalability and security, which are two major concerns when handling student data. It also features built-in security controls and intelligence so HKEdCity can identify and respond to threats and security gaps, protecting school data and assets from cybersecurity threats nimbly.

As the market facilitator and innovation leader in education sector, HKEdCity not only acts as a bridge between schools and technology sector to make use of the newest technology and enhance learning and teaching effectiveness, but also adopting the advanced Cloud environment to develop and upgrade education services for schools, especially with the use of AI and data analytic. This collaboration will establish an industry standard for Cloud environment amongst the educational institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hong Kong.

In addition, Microsoft has been a keen advocate in promoting STEM education in Hong Kong. One of the most well-received programs in Hong Kong is Minecraft: Education Edition, an interactive game empowers students to build with a variety of different blocks in a 3D procedurally generated world, requiring creativity, exploration, resources gathering, crafting and combat. Over 40 schools in Hong Kong have been teaching students about various subjects through Minecraft, including bible studies. After understanding the story about Noah’s Ark, students used Minecraft to design their very own version.

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Microsoft Hong Kong and HKEdCity today announced a two-year collaboration to support HKEdCity for building next generation education services. (From left) Mr Sunny Lee, JP, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hong Kong Education City; Mr Victor Cheng, Executive Director, Hong Kong Education City; Ms Cally Chan, General Manager, Microsoft Hong Kong; Mr Anthony Salcito, Vice President, Worldwide Education, Microsoft.
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Cally Chan, General Manager of Microsoft Hong Kong shared the company’s mission to nurture the digital talents of tomorrow in Hong Kong.
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Victor Cheng Pat-leung, Executive Director of Hong Kong Education City interacted with “Too Easy”, the HKEdCity AI Buddy powered by Microsoft AI technology.
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HKEdCity and Microsoft’s partnership aims to help over 750,000 teachers and students to learn STEM topics and promote related trainings to schools.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

About Hong Kong Education City

Hong Kong Education City (www.hkedcity.net), a wholly owned company of the Government of HKSAR, operates one-stop professional educational portal in Hong Kong. The portal incorporates information, resources, interactive communities and online services, and promotes the use of information technology (I.T.) in improving the effectiveness of learning and teaching.

 

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