Creativity: the LEAD Pilot Project
Creative education relies on letting children explore their world, experiment freely and express themselves through hands on experience with the objects that surround them. Increasingly that means coming to grips with technology. Kids love it, especially when it allows them to solve problems with computers, construct their own digital games and create robotic toys.

Through the Pilot Project for LEAD ( the acronym for Leading through Engineering, Art and Design ) that the Federation launched this week with partners from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the MIT Media Laboratory, children will be brought into this world of inventive digital creativity.

Encouraged to learn and innovate through projects involving mechanics, engineering, robotics, interactive art and film, they will learn core digital skills using MIT Media Lab software which lead onto higher level skills involving the design process, problem solving, teamwork and the feedback cycle.

The fundamental message in this learning process is innovative, creative thinking, made possible via a free environment reserved only for play in more traditional education. This meeting ground stimulates communication in a world where technology has given us the joy of instant contact. The LEAD project will give children the confidence to use digital creativity to understand the world in which they live and to communicate their ideas to others. Once they feel completely confident with this technology they will have the functional but flexible skills to succeed and prosper in the workforce of tomorrow.

Kung Hei Fat Choi to all our readers,
May you have a happy and prosperous Year of the Rooster

Creativity, responsibility and the Cyberworld
Young people these days are very aware of the problems and the joys of the Internet, as an article in this issue's Facts & Figures shows. Students who have taken part in the Federation's Creating a Healthy Cyberworld programme have demonstrated their grasp of the issues by creating videos and computer animations that air these problems. One of those young creators is Kitty, now in Form 5 at Belilios Public School. She told us how she got the idea for her story and about the process of turning that idea into reality.

I saw that computers can cause problems for some families. My brother and I are always playing with ours. I thought it would be a good idea to create an animation to show people what can go wrong and why.

Kitty used Flash software to create her graphics. She has computer monitors with mobile human expressions that talk about the problem of illegal downloading of music and Internet fraud known as "phishing". It was clear that Kitty' s grasp of the ethical and legal issues was unequivocal even though she was well aware of the temptations. As a result her animation sends a very clear message.

But it wasn't all plain sailing and there were times when she wasn't so confident in the results. But she persevered. When she had technical hitches, she talked them over with her brother and they solved the problem as a team. Now and then she asked her teacher, who had asked for volunteers for the Federation's Cyberworld competition, but she managed mostly on her own, by experimenting, at home, with the encouragement of her mother.

It was fun, just like playing, but at the same time I actually made something useful with the computer. That was very satisfying and in the end I was happy to be able to present the result at the competition.

Kitty was growing up at a time when computers were common enough, even at her primary school where she first used one. She's totally at home with them now and chose the elective in computer studies at her secondary school. Now she's preparing for the public examinations and 20% of the marks for this course go on project work. She chose to make an e-book which teaches people how to use Flash. Kitty says:

Taking part in the Cyberworld competition and making my first animation really helped when it came to working on a computer project at school. It gave me the confidence to try something new with the technical skills I had learned.

At the Federation we are delighted and proud to have been able to help Kitty, a physically challenged 16year-old, succeed in the challenge of creating an innovative, instructive video using animated computer graphics. She has managed to make the medium convey its own message on the complex topic of digital crime. Her next project? Something a bit more light-hearted she says - probably a computer game.

Bravo Kitty. More Federation programmes of a similar nature can do nothing but bring out the best in talented children. With the launching of the LEAD project this month we can hope that similar dormant talent in young people will be stimulated into life and brought to the same kind of fruition.

Kitty's animation interface

First year, female, bright and depressed

A University of Hong Kong web-based survey released last month revealed that over 20% of all first year tertiary students in Hong Kong are depressed, 41% felt anxious and 26.5% felt the effects of stress. Among the 8000 students polled at 10 institutions of further education, the female to male ratio of sufferers is 63% to 37% and those with top school grades studying law or medicine are the worst off.

Similar figures have come out of the US where again the incidence of depression among 1st year college freshmen is more common than among the general public and within that group the same ratio, female to male, occurs. In the UK 63% of universities reported an increase in psychological distress among students during the 1990s. Other telling figures show that 1 in every 500 women between the ages of 15 and 25 requires extensive treatment for anorexia, an anxiety disorder often linked with depression, the incidence of which has also been linked with high academic achievement.

Studying at university no longer means the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and where vocational studies are concerned, those who want to be high-flyers on top salaries feel stress much more keenly because of the competition, especially if they are females competing in a male-dominated environment. What young people need to balance the stress they feel is mental space, time to be creative and have fun. HKFYG programmes like LEAD, described elsewhere in this issue, are all about guided creativity. Our hope is that they can help young people create for themselves the vital balance needed for well being and equilibrium.

The abuse of intellectual property is a flourishing business and there are many culprits, not only the producers - many of whom operate on the Mainland - but also on the streets of Hong Kong where there are still numerous peddlers despite Customs crackdowns. At home there are other forms of piracy, especially tempting for young people.

The Intellectual Property Department commissioned a poll survey of 1214 people last November. Only 10% actually admitted to regular downloading of movies, e-books, music and shared files even though 95% of the same sample group thought it necessary to protect intellectual property rights. The real figure for Internet piracy at home is probably a lot higher than 10% and the majority of the self-confessed illegal downloaders are under 30, most being either secondary school or university students. The Department is investing HK$700 million this year promoting educational and publicity programmes intended to raise the awareness of young people about the laws and ethics of copyright.

Things have improved since the 1990s, when there were at least 1000 pirate copy stalls all over the city but there is no control over person-to-person sharing of songs and films. The music industry is trying to counter illegal downloading by creating legal, inexpensive fee-paying sites, where you can download your favourite Canto-pop hit for as little as HK$8. Meantime some of our top performers see their sales plummeting - a sure ingredient for plummeting creativity.

The Federation's Youth Exchange Unit holds conferences, competitions and exchange camps with the theme of Creating a Healthy Cyberworld. The problems of copyright over digital material naturally come within the ambit of our concern and we have interviewed the producer of the winning video of the 2003 competition who dealt with the subject in an innovative manner. See Lead Story above for details.

Giving generously: a young person's view of lai see

According to a recent survey about half of those aged from 15-34 will spend an average of $2,370 in the shops during the coming Lunar New Year Holidays. Where do they get all that the spare cash? In their lai see packets perhaps. Total spending on lai see by the same age group is estimated to be over $2,900 per person says the survey. However, only 7% of all age groups said they would put at least $50 in each packet whereas 70% reckoned on just $20 per packet. That's an awful lot of packets isn't it - between 58 and 145 per person to be precise. No wonder the red packet vendors are doing such a roaring trade!