Online classes bring joy to rural students
Technology helps supplement learning resources in poor regions
A teacher, a stick of chalk and a blackboard.
Such are the tools that have long passed for “education” in much of rural China, including Songxian county, a poverty-stricken area in Henan province.
Lately, however, with the country’s development of educational informatization, things have been looking up for county students who attend Songxian Siyuan Experimental Primary School, which now offers learning via tablets, a technology-enabled platform that gives students face-toface access with two additional ‘teachers’ in addition to the instructor in their classroom.
The big leap of this rural school is also thanks to TAL Education Group, one of the country’s largest education service providers, which is cooperating with local government to offer online courses, teachers and teaching experience to the school.
With years of experience in the field, these elite online teachers have a unique method of teaching, which makes difficult knowledge points easier for students to understand and grasp.
The Beijing-based company has also donated an information platform to the school to help teachers in data collection and test analysis.
The move is part of broader efforts of TAL’s public education program, namely Xiwang Zaixian, translated as Online Hope, to open more resources includ- ing online classes, courseware and databases to more students and teachers, especially those from rural areas.
TAL is also fathering more resources for the effort by using its sub-brand online courses and teaching products including XES online school, XES peiyou and Public School E-learning Product & Service Group.
“As an education company, our mission is to advance education through science and technology. In terms of charitable work, we hope to use technology to drive the balanced development of education,” said Zhang Bangxin, CEO of TAL.
“To do charity work, we should first fulfill our own responsibility. In the era of internet, it is better that we unite more powers and make use of our technological achievements to promote education equity,” he added.
For some time, the Beijingbased company has scrambled to integrate technologies and the internet into education to deliver a better study experience for children.
It finally found a winning formula in China, with its revenue and profit soaring by 66.3 and 198.4 percent respectively in its third fiscal quarter ending November last year.
As of now, it has promoted its public education program to rural provinces including Foping county from Shaanxi province and Jeminay county from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Jiang Xiaohua, deputy head of Jeminay, said: “The county has a relatively weak foundation in education and still lags behind in both economy and education.”
“We hope that TAL’s platform will open a new chapter in improving education quality.”
“We believe that TAL will inject fresh impetus into the construction of informatization of education, which will benefit both our teachers and students in the near future,” Jiang added.
As for future plans, the company said it will continue to promote intelligent education in Songxian, Foping and Jeminay counties and aims to help more kids from impoverished areas to enjoy high-quality education in the coming years.