Clement Chan, an 11-year-old student at Pui Kiu College, read an article about spine health. He immediately became concerned about the heavy school bags students must carry.
So he got together with two of his schoolmates, and they came up with a new invention: a smart school bag.
"We hope it will reduce the weight of students' bags," Clement says.
The bag has four functions. It helps students pick the correct textbooks, it measures their posture, it provides spine information, and it has GPS.
And it's not just for students. Teammate Oa-Yang Yee-ching says that many Hongkongers suffer from back pain. He hopes the bag can help with the problem.
More logical thinking
This invention helped the students, who named their team "OAC Coders", win the top prize in the App Inventor category at the CoolThink@JC Competition.
The contest promotes problem solving among Primary 4 to 6 students. The best way of solving problems is by breaking them down into simple steps.
Professor Daniel Lai says the competition allowed students to practise coding and find practical solutions to problems.
All three OAC Coders members had new ideas about problem solving after the competition.
Yee-ching says it could boost his capacity for logical thinking. Clement believes it would be handy for dealing with unforeseen events.
The third teammate, Aaron Zhang, says the skills he learned from the competition could benefit his academics.
Solve problems together
This year, the competition had 312 teams from 129 schools. It had two categories: Scratch and App Inventor. This year's champion in the Scratch category was a team from PLK Gold & Silver Exchange Society Pershing Tsang School. They invented a game encouraging people to learn about environmental conservation.
Stephen Cheung, one of the judges, was impressed by all the ideas.
"Students are tackling day-to-day problems with innovative solutions," he says. "It requires teamwork, breaking down a complex problem into small pieces, and learning how to solve the small pieces together."
Problem-solving skills are needed in every kind of work, from engineering to science and business.
"Innovative education should start at a very young age," says Stephen.
Fun facts
Coding is a very useful skill. There are more than 700 different pro-gramming languages. If you want to explore the world of coding, some good choices for kids are Scratch, Python and Java.
Quick questions
- If every team had three members, how many students would have taken part in the contest?
- Why was Clement Chan worried about heavy school bags?
- How would you improve your school bag?
