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Hong Kong government misses the "Spark" on technology

"We may be losing out on talents because of gender stereotype, but the issue here is our government need to understand the importance of technology and make policy changes accordingly," said Charles Peter Mok, Legislative Council member for the IT functional constituency, last Sunday at a discussion panel. Four leading figures in the IT industry attended the SPARK discussion panel the other day commenting on gender biases and how to make technology meaningful to people in Hong Kong, including Mok, Esther Ho Yuk-fan, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Careers Masters and Guidance Masters, Liu Candy, general manager of the HKC Technology and co-chairman of the Hong Kong Computer Society FACE Club and Jacqui Speculand, course director at the School of Media and Performing Arts in Coventry University. Mok expressed that the slow changes on study curriculums’ policy were not encouraging enough students in Hong Kong because it has been starting to allocate funding to the innovation sector since last year’s budget. Speculand of Coventry University, who teaches in HK THEi, stressed that students were generally “single-minded” because the study environment in Hong Kong lacked “the freedom to choose.” "Some of my students once told me they were not as good as the others because they failed the exam (DSE) which was heartbreaking to hear,"  Speculand added. Ho emphasized that school curriculums need to change in a way which would help students make sense of their learning by building connections between the subjects they are studying and their future career. "You need to educate students that technology is a part of life," Ho explained.   According to  Liu, who first formed the Hong Kong Computer Society FACE Club together with her 9 other like-minded individuals, the significance of technology has actually been present in various fields of profession such as …