Millions of students home-schooled due to virus outbreak

By Shan Jie Source:Global Times Published: 2020/2/6 13:38:44

Wang Guan, an English teacher in Binzhou, East China's Shandong Province is giving a class to her students through livestream on Wednesday. Photo: cnsphoto


At 8:00 am in her own bedroom, Ai Ai, 18, is ready for her school.

Starting from Monday, Ai, a senior student of Jinshan High School, Chaozhou of South China's Guangdong Province, would have eight classes each day online.

Due to the spread of the novel coronavirus across China, Ai and millions of other students are kept at home for the start of the new semester.

With only four months until Gaokao, or the college entrance examination in China, Ai could not slack from preparing for the exam.

In the morning, she learned parametric equations, English reading skills and knowledge about the virus on her computer. She takes notes while watching the video recorded by teachers.

The school has sent its students a timetable, on which Ai has eight courses every day, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, six days a week.

"Studying at home, I'm less sleepy and more focused," she told the Global Times, "But I still miss school, where the atmosphere of studying is better."

The Ministry of Education in China has postponed the opening day of schools in the country. There is no information on when schools will open again nationwide.

Meanwhile, the ministry has been advocating the policy that "although school is suspended, teaching and studying should not be." It promotes schools and afterschool organizations to provide online courses for students.

"The city education bureau has been organizing top teachers to record course videos right after the Spring Festival," Xiao Chungang, a geography teacher at Jibei High School in Ji'nan, capital of East China's Shandong Province, told the Global Times.

Only for the first week of the semester, which will begins on February 9, Ji'nan education bureau has recorded 500 clips of courses for primary, junior high and high schools. Videos will be distributed to those who live in remote rural areas,  newspaper Dazhong Daily reported.

A student is having a class via livestream in Yuncheng, North China's Shanxi Province on Tuesday. Photo: cnsphoto

Li Yujia, a junior student at University of International Business and Economics, will start her new semester online at the end of the month. "Most courses are livestreamed; some even asked for microphones," she said. "It's a pity that I could not attend my fencing and folk music classes."

"Online courses are great. I can record the classes, and it's safer to be at home," Zhao Shi, a university student in Guangdong, said. "The only big problem is that we do not have textbooks."

The situation even has contributed to an overall rise of e-learning industry, which saw an average increase of 5.34 percent on Wednesday.

Tech firms' chances

To answer the call of the ministry, many technological companies in China have joined in to build and offer online platforms for students.

DingTalk, a digital way of working for enterprises and organizations under Alibaba, launched a "school at home" project, which has attracted at least 220 education bureaus in more than 20 provincial regions, covering 12 million students from 20,000 schools, according to a statement from DingTalk to the Global Times on Tuesday.

The "online classroom" function of DingTalk is free for students from primary schools to universities. It also covers schools in rural areas, Fang Yongxin, vice president of DingTalk, also a partner of Alibaba Group, told the Global Times.

According to Fang, teachers and students can interact during livestreams. To better serve the schools, the software has provided the function of a 302-people video teleconference for free. Students can reach the courses on mobile phones, tablets, computers and televisions.

Meanwhile, to summarize the health conditions of students during the virus epidemic, DingTalk developed a smart health feedback function, allowing students to report their body and travel conditions.

The novel coronavirus epidemic happened during China's Spring Festival holidays. In order to develop and maintain the new function, DingTalk's group has also been working online every day through the software's functions of "working at home," said Fang.

However, some students have logged onto the app store to rank the lowest one star for the software. "Previously, there are only video games in my life of holiday, but now I have to study thanks to DingTalk," one wrote.

"It's the nature of children who want to play," Fang said, "But you can see, more students feel curious and fresh about using DingTalk to study, and they would love to participate."

He also called on more companies with resources to join in the project, as well as provide convenience for education and children studying during this special time.

Youku, a video website, is working with DingTalk on the "schooling at home" project.

Liu Yang, the general manager at Youku's livestream center, told the Global Times that Youku gained experience of high-concurrency and large-scale livestream technology from broadcasting the FIFA World Cup in 2018.

"Currently the difficulty is to communicate with schools and teachers, as many teachers had never tried livestreaming before," Liu said, "Our goal is to realize 'one-click livestream' to make the operation as simple as possible."

"To ensure the study of children, everybody is working overtime. But we feel it worth it," he said.

Beijing-based Xueersi Education Science Co, a leading out-of-school educational training agent, has offered various afterschool courses on platforms such as Xuexiqiangguo, a widely used Party theory learning app, according to the company.

The courses are taught by top teachers in the country. "Most of the courses are livestreams. Many teachers teach the course in their own home," an employee at Xueersi told the Global Times.



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