PolyU - UPretoria Joint Project

We are concluding another new  initiative - a joint project between PolyU and University of Pretoria.  Actually a project with 4 parties.  PolyU students (party 1) are teaching a group of students from Caritas Ma On Shan Secondary School (CMS, party 2) how to take 360 degree photos and videos.  They are also collaborating with students from University of Pretoria (party 3) and secondary school students from the townships near Pretoria (party 4) how to do the same in South Africa, even shipping the cameras and other relevant equipment to South Africa to enable them to do so. 

 

Then the PolyU students and learners from CMS go to Kowloon City Walled City Park, PolyU campus, and Tsim Sha Tsui, to take various footage on our heritage in Hong Kong.  

The Pretoria students and the learners from the South Africa townships will do the same from an animal park near their campus - the wild life of South Africa is world famous.  All the different footage are going to be edited into a movie integrating the different themes together.  Due to the COVID-19 infections, the shooting in the field in South Africa, which should have been doe already, has been delayed for 10 days.  We are praying that the shooting can be done in time, so that the final movie can incorporate the input from both Hong Kong and South Africa.  

Throughout, PolyU students have to learn how to use the 360 degree cameras, take regular photos and videos, write a story to integrate all the themes together.  Then they have to teach learners from CMS in Hong Kong and the Pretoria students how to use the equipment and to basic editing of the videos.  Finally, they also have to get the township learners involved in the process in some way.  

All of these have to be done over video conferencing, and various social media wherever possible.  The 4 different groups of students face different aspects of the digital divide to different degrees.  The PolyU students who have access to our campus have access to a wide variety of equipment and technical support.  PolyU students who are stuck at home, some away from Hong Kong in their home country such as Kazakhstan, India, Indonesia or Malaysia are at a disadvantage.  Pretoria students face challenges on limited bandwidth depending on where they are, compounded by the severe COVID-19 situation.  The learners from the townships face the more severe challenges.  Most do not have computers at home.  Initially they could access the computers on the Pretoria campus, which became inaccessible because of COVID-19.  Later they can only rely on basic mobile phones.  

All these realities of the digital divide and social issues pose almost insurmountable challenges.  At the same time, they present learning opportunities impossible to recreate in the classroom.  The different groups of students demonstrate enviable ingenuity, finding innovative solutions to tackle different challenges.  Everyone pulling together to help the least privileged members of the team to get involved as much as possible.  

It is a great lesson for everyone involved.  Those on the “have” side cannot leave those on the “have-not” side behind.  Without the contribution from all parties the project cannot be completed successfully.  Hopefully, the lessons learned can be useful for them later on.  In real life, the “have” countries and communities cannot trade with each other only.  The “have”s cannot completely ignore the “have-not”s, if only because they wish to trade with them.