"If your product doesn't have the word "wisdom", you are embarrassed to participate in the education exhibition!" This is the "feeling" of a white-haired industry person at the Qingdao Education Exhibition: from smart campus to smart blackboard and smart desk , and even in this educational exhibition, "smart lighting" sings a big show. However, under the concept of wisdom, few people understand what "wisdom education" is.
There is no doubt that the education industry will become intelligent. However, even industry leaders like INTEL admit that "smart education" is the future, and more news today is of the nature of "imagination". The center of the industry's efforts is still in the early stage of building computing, communication and big data infrastructure and striving to break through the shortcomings of AI technology.
However, this does not prevent manufacturers from promoting wisdom education as a "core concept" and selling point. Therefore, there has been a big boom in smart education in public opinion and marketing, and in practical applications, the contrast between the implementation mode of smart education is "not clear".
The concept is too hot, suspected of overdrafting future credit
For example, the concept of smart lighting is very good. However, the core functions still remain in simple "environmental adaptation" applications such as "health" and "relying on the brightness sensor to autonomously control the working conditions of the lighting system". The only change is that smart lighting puts more emphasis on network management, adds core central control, and greatly reduces system costs: "The technology is very advanced, but I can't see the real value improvement compared to traditional lighting"—— Industry insiders say that new schools are very interested in such a system, financially permitting, but existing schools will not be keen to invest in such renovations.
For another example, the smart blackboard product itself is hardly a new innovation: before this, many names including electronic whiteboard, interactive liquid crystal, nano blackboard, electronic blackboard and so on have been used. It is difficult for the smart blackboard to list the new functions after the built-in PC of the traditional electronic whiteboard: it cannot be said that the PC of the X86 architecture is not smart enough, the SOC of the ARM architecture is wisdom!
Even in the teaching process where the application of AI technology is relatively mature, the expression of the word wisdom is still limited. Applications such as facial recognition analysis (class learning and attendance, etc.), automatic marking, automatic speech and handwriting recognition are still in a state of "isolation" and "limited depth". The revolution that smart education completely changes the teaching process, improves teaching efficiency, and liberates educational productivity is far from what people imagine.
The concept has been popular for 5 years, but the real change has not yet begun. Even some products are already somewhat "pre-aging". Industry experts believe that the behavior of manufacturers focusing on short-term marketing benefits is likely to damage the appeal of the banner of smart education: the real development and construction of the smart education industry is not an overnight thing, and may require more than 10 years of continuous efforts and efforts. Innovation.
The industrial landing is subject to multiple difficulties, accelerating the breakthrough and calling for giants
In the face of the concept trend of the smart education industry, the performance of the market demand side is also a double world. On the one hand, finance has become an important constraint lever. Educational procurement is a government act, which has strong rules and is also constrained by economic capacity. In the context of not being able to come up with "truly changing" app explosions, the purchasing strategy is often "squeeze toothpaste" + "experiment". There are some so-called famous schools and well-known institutions, which are the first to try early adopters and become the main body of smart education procurement. This is very different from the characteristics of "large batches" of procurement in the traditional education market.
On the other hand, the education sector spares no expense on really good applications. In particular, education security, the most concerned and mature application of smart security, has almost become a nationwide procurement. In the past two years, in the aspects of classroom management, campus management, and smart scoring, the procurement of a single application system has also been on a large scale, and the industry has shown the characteristics of a harvest period.
This contrast shows that: 1. Educators are very enthusiastic and eager for new technologies; 2. They are very "pragmatic" in practice and will not pay for simple concepts. This seemingly rational market consumption pattern is not unexpected, but it is considered by industry experts as one of the bottlenecks that "the development of smart education cannot advance rapidly".
This is because, from the perspective of the core theory of smart education, this is an industry characterized by the application of "systematic data": intel's statement is "wisdom end-to-end, in every detail"; seewo's concept of small data aims to Designed to collect data on students' entire learning growth from early childhood.
Buyers are highly rational and are only willing to use mature popular applications - however, mature AI applications must rely on "reliable hardware system support" and "massive big data training": the smart education market currently lacks these two foundations. Smart campuses, smart classrooms, smart scoring, etc., mainly inherit the "non-educational special case" technologies such as face recognition and text recognition of security systems.
"It is difficult to find a model of 'smart education' that can truly connect every link from the scene space, teachers, students to parents, into a network, equipped with multi-purpose terminals, and capable of systematic data accumulation." Industry insiders believe that "the wisdom of education exhibitions is, in a certain way, 'pseudo-wisdom education' - everyone is under the banner of wisdom, and they are repackaging their original business sectors. Without systematic development, there will be no There will be true wisdom education."
Demonstration and pilot are the key, smart education calls for "decentralization" highland
"Good products must come from practice - especially for smart applications that rely on data training!" Industry experts pointed out that manufacturers can only create "fake smart education" by closing the door for research and development, and manufacturers must open the door to Only by integrating research and development with first-line education practice can a good smart education industry be created.
At the same time, users in the education industry should be more tolerant and supportive of smart education, and more importantly, more "participation". Some universities and vocational schools can participate in product innovation and development. In the real front-line teaching environment, we seek the iteration of R&D and design of smart education products, practice various ideas, and create real good applications with "experimental fields". In this process, the path needs to be wider, and the rights such as personnel, wealth, and other things need to be decentralized.
Smart education is not a product or an application: it is an application system supported by processes and data, which should be integrated into practice and actual scenarios from the very beginning, and then develop itself. Wisdom education is a complete change to traditional education. It is by no means something that can be created by tinkering with traditional teaching scenarios and processes, adding some products and technologies: without the spirit of starting anew and starting from scratch, wisdom education cannot be done.
"If smart education is just a concept hype, it will inevitably become a false proposition: whoever can go deep into practice can really handle smart education." This requires new industrial thinking, industrial structure, business model and ecological environment. In other words, not only will smart education create a revolution in the education industry; the process of innovating smart education is already a revolution in itself.
