Huawei's Children's Day gift: from "one piece of chalk, one lesson" to VR participatory teaching

In order to improve the quality of basic education and provide rural schools with fair and high-quality educational resources, the Education, Science, Technology and Sports Bureau of Peng'an County, Sichuan Province, launched an education informatization project in 2015. Huawei, based on its own fiber optic network technology accumulation, helped the local government build an all-optical campus network, and has provided 80 rural schools in the county with "10G to the point, 1G to the school, and 100M to the desktop" fiber optic broadband connections, benefiting more than 72,000 teachers and students.

Qingxi Primary School in Peng'an County is located in a remote area. Three teaching areas share one principal and are scattered in different locations to provide teaching for students nearby. The school has a total of 132 students. Most of the children's parents work outside all year round, leaving them to take care of each other with their grandparents.

Fu Junren, a sixth-grade student, attends Qingxi Primary School.

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Fu Junren likes animation very much. "Animation can tell any story and convey many truths." Speaking of animation, he said: "It is not easy for Nezha to follow the Marvel route. Although it is very popular in China, its influence overseas is still very limited."

Before, he had never experienced VR teaching due to poor network conditions. When he first experienced the VR glasses provided by Huawei in the classroom, "I felt like I was falling from the moon!"

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He said: "I think animation can also be made into VR. I can't draw, but I can make up stories for animation. To make animation, you need to understand the logic of the story and various knowledge. For example, if you tell the story of the universe, you have to know what the universe is like. You can't just make up stories."

Through VR teaching, static images are animated, which greatly improves the teaching effect, stimulates students' interest and broadens their horizons. In places like Qingxi Primary School, the education informatization supported by the local education department and Huawei has not only narrowed the academic gap between urban and rural students, but also has a significant effect in narrowing the psychological, vision and thought gap.

"In the past, the level of development of rural education lagged far behind that of cities. Most of the children in our school were left-behind children. They only had a piece of chalk in one lesson, and the teaching method was relatively simple, so the children's abilities could not be well trained," said Tang Yufeng, a Chinese teacher at Qingxi Primary School.

Teacher Tang Yali has taught at Qingxi Primary School for seven years and has watched every student here grow up. She said: "Although the children grew up in the countryside, they have a strong desire for knowledge. Traditional teaching methods are somewhat restrictive for them. Advanced network and information technology can help children see and understand more things. I hope that all children can have the right to dream, or at least have the tools to explore their dreams."

Chen Sanlin, leader of the Education Working Committee of Peng'an County, Sichuan Province, said, "Through educational informatization and online courses, children can receive high-quality education in traditional weak subjects such as music, physical education, art, and English, just like children in the city, and can equally participate in online quality education activities. In addition, students can participate in various forms of learning with the help of informatization, which can improve their quality and ability in all aspects. At the same time, the intervention of informatization makes the content of students' ideological education more multi-channel and more diversified."

Technology has increased the forms of teaching and also promoted the evolution of teaching mechanisms.

Based on the fiber-optic broadband connection provided by Huawei, the local area has also established a support mechanism. "The high-quality schools in the urban area have the obligation to support every rural school so that their weak subjects such as music, physical education, art, and English can share the same network, the same set of resources, and even the same group of teachers. Using this network, classroom resources can cover every class and teacher and student in the weak schools in a timely manner, which will greatly promote the balance of teaching levels." said Shen Zhengrong, director of the Audio-visual Education Museum in Peng'an County, Nanchong City, Sichuan Province.

It is understood that the key to Peng'an's educational informatization is due to the construction of an all-fiber network throughout the county. If the village-to-village project a few years ago opened up channels for travel and trade, this all-fiber network is like the highway network and high-speed rail network in the information world, providing the necessary basic support conditions for the rapid, safe and efficient operation of various applications. Without such a network, all other excellent educational applications would be impossible.

At present, the all-optical education metropolitan area network and its management platform have been running for nearly 5 years, with no major failures so far, and have been continuously optimized and improved through follow-up services. As technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence gradually enter various fields of people's lives, as an education manager, "We expect Huawei to increase its R&D investment in the education field, and promote more and better basic education applications as soon as possible to help more students in remote areas." Chen Sanlin said.