THIS REMOTE CHINESE SCHOOL HAS JUST THREE STUDENTS, BUT WITH LIVE STREAMING TECHNOLOGY, THEY SHARE A CLASSROOM WITH HUNDREDS
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| Thanks to high bandwidth internet technology, the classrooms at Lumacha and other schools in the northwestern part of China are no longer quiet |
Ten years ago, the grounds
at Lumacha primary school in remote Dingxi, a farming village in the
mountainous region of China’s Gansu province, overflowed with 300 students
during class breaks. Today the schoolyard is a lot quieter: there are just
three students.
The plummeting
student population is a consequence of China’s urban migration, with millions
of rural residents having moved to big cities over the past decade in search of
higher paid jobs – most taking their kids with them.
Lumacha primary
school is one of over 1,000 rural schools in the province that have less than
five enrolled students, but as long as one student remains enrolled in the
school, it has to stay open, according to Feng Ping, Lumacha primary school’s
headmaster.
Now, thanks to high
bandwidth internet technology, the classrooms at Lumacha and other schools in
the northwestern part of China are no longer quiet – except that the chatter is
coming across a live streaming network that connects hundreds of students
spread across a vast area of China’s country side.
As part of Chinese
president Xi Jinping’s goal to eradicate poverty across the nation by 2020, the
central government has funded initiatives aimed at narrowing the gap between
the quality of education in rural and urban areas. In February Beijing
authorities announced they would boost internet speeds in rural schools so they
are on par with major cities within two years, with China Unicom, the country’s
second-largest mobile network operator, providing 100 Mbps cable service to
provincial schools.
Technology
development has also been a priority for the central government, with the goal
of improving the country’s living standards. At the Two Sessions meetings this
week Chinese premier Li Keqiang called for the strengthening of China’s basic
research capabilities, including the launching of a number of science and
technology innovation programmes, building national laboratories and
encouraging corporations to spearhead similar innovation.
"Rural children
are not any less bright than urban students. What they lack is knowledge of the
world,” said Wu Hong, chief education officer at Hujiang EdTech, the
educational technology company behind the initiative. “Internet and
live-streaming gives them access to experiences that they would never have had
before.”
The furnishings in
the main classroom at Lumacha are sparse – six wooden desks sit in the middle
of the room, and several long, cloth-covered tables along the walls display the
students’ arts and crafts. During the winter, temperatures dip below minus 10
degrees Celsius, and the classrooms get so cold that it is necessary to wear
thick outerwear, even indoors. Natural sunlight streaming in through the
windows each day is crucial because there is no lighting in the classroom.
But the school’s
simple furnishings belie the fact that Lumacha’s classroom is equipped with
high-speed wireless internet, a large smart touch screen display and a webcam,
secured to the wall with tape, as part of the Chinese government’s push to
provide better connectivity to rural schools.
Every day,
10-year-old Chang Wenxuan and his two classmates, walk almost an hour across a
canyon to get to school.
Once in the
classroom they eagerly turn on the touch screen display, which is connected to
a nearby computer that runs on the Windows 7 operating system. One of them will
expertly navigate the cursor on the screen and log in to an educational
platform titled CCTalk, Hujiang’s interactive online learning platform, where
the three students take part in live-streamed classes daily, raising their
hands to answer questions asked by the remote teachers.
Depending on the
day’s schedule, live-streamed classes for the students could include anything
from arts, crafts and music to lessons on mental health or personal safety, all
taught by teachers from neighbouring schools. It is during these online lessons
that the three students get a glimpse of the world beyond their village,
interacting with students from other schools.
Lumacha primary
school is one of 28 schools in four educational zones which are part of a
“Sunshine Classroom” initiative run by Shanghai-based Hujiang EdTech. The
initiative is part of Hujiang’s corporate social responsibility programme Hu+.
Established in February last year, Sunshine Classroom brings together schools
from four educational zones in Dingxi, allowing teachers to share resources by
live-streaming lessons to other schools.
Before the Sunshine
Classroom initiative, the three Lumacha students had never attended any arts
and crafts or music classes, according to school principal Feng, who has been
teaching at the school for over a decade.
“None of the
teachers here, including myself, have any knowledge of music or art. We would
use the time to go over core subjects like mathematics or language instead,”
said Feng.
Shao Jintang, head
principal of the Lijiabu educational zone, which comprises 14 schools including
Lumacha primary, was the key official responsible for getting schools in the
nearby zones to sign on to the Sunshine Classroom initiative.
“In [Gansu] we don’t
lack teachers, what we lack are resources and teachers who are skilled in
specific subjects, like art or music,” Shao said.
Some of Hujiang’s
own teachers also participate in the initiative, giving classes to students via
live-streaming although they are based in urban cities.
“The quality of
education in the countryside is not as advanced as in the cities … many [rural]
teachers will leave for jobs in the cities when they’ve gained enough
experience. Now, we use technology and online classes to have good teachers who
are in the cities teach our students,” Shao said, adding that this will help
narrow the country’s gap between rural and urban education.
At Lumacha primary,
Feng also teaches English to the three boys, though he admits his understanding
of the language is limited.
“I specialise in
teaching Mandarin, but because there isn’t anyone to teach English here any
more, I have no choice but to try my best,” Feng said.
Among the 14 schools
in the Lijiabu education zone, there are just three music teachers compared to
611 primary school students.
“Before we started
streaming classes online I would often travel to nearby schools to teach the
students there,” said He Lijuan, who teaches music at Zhangwan Central School
in the town of Lijiabu. “For some schools that were too far to reach, and did
not have music teachers, the students never had such lessons.”
Now, He specialises
in teaching music to Primary 5 and 6 students, but instead of having around 10
students at a time, her classes are broadcast to more than 100 students across
the 28 schools.
“It was difficult at
first as many of them had no sense of rhythm or tone. If I managed to teach
them how to sing just two lines of one song, that was already a big
accomplishment,” she said. “They’re so much more confident now.”
But the benefits for
students in such rural schools are more than just learning about the arts.
According to Feng, taking part in live-streaming classes has boosted their
confidence in public speaking, and has even improved their spoken Mandarin.
“My three students
would often speak in their local dialect, even at school, but because the
live-streaming classes are all conducted in standard Mandarin, their spoken
language has really improved,” said Feng. “They look forward to every
live-streaming class and are always eager to answer the teacher’s questions.
The three of them aren’t lonely at all.”
When Chang is asked
if he would like more classmates, he shakes his head, grinning from ear to ear.
“No, because then we
each have more toys to play with,” he cheekily replied, adding that he has made
many friends from the live streaming classes.
Wu at Hujiang Edtech
believes that the biggest advantage of using the internet to live-stream
classes to rural students is that it gives them a peek into the world beyond
their village, and even to countries outside China.
In May, Sunshine
Classroom organised a live-streamed virtual tour in cooperation with the
Frederiksborg Castle Museum in Denmark, where students had a chance to interact
with museum curator Mette Skouggard.
Live-streaming is
just one of the many ways technology is helping to transform education in
China’s impoverished rural areas.
Shenzhen-based
start-up Pujiang Technology is another company working to help rural and
lower-income students improve their studies. The company works with smaller
schools in cities like Chengdu, Nanjing, and Zhuhai, which often enrol
“left-behind” children whose parents have moved to bigger cities and urban
areas in search for better-paying jobs, but leave the kids behind in the care
of relatives.
Pujiang Technology
developed an app called Zhiyu Education, which allows schools to digitise
students’ examination scores and academic evaluations. The app also allows
parents to record and send video messages to their children, who can then watch
them on their teacher’s smartphone.
“The Zhiyu app has
helped build a bridge between the school and parents, even if physical distance
separates them, allowing parents to better understand how their children are
performing academically,” said Chen Jianqiang, headmaster at Yingcheng middle
school in the mountainous regions of Yingde, Guangdong province.
Zhiyu Education is
already used in Sanya, a city on southern Hainan Island, after the company
signed an agreement with the local education bureau to connect all 100 schools
to the app, according to Pujiang’s 29-year-old founder Zeng Zhao. Nationwide,
the company is working with almost 500 schools and 300,000 students.
SOURCE: South China Morning Post
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