Posted: 2/17/2020
The more than two thousand year old classroom format of teaching is coming to an end thanks to the Internet and other technologies! We should thank the new coronavirus for expediting this process!
I am quite sure this will not be limited to primary education, but that similar efforts are taking place in China regarding secondary education.
“The news: China has launched a national cloud learning platform and started broadcasting primary school classes to ensure the country’s 180 million students can still keep learning even though schools are closed, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. A new school semester, scheduled to start today, has been postponed indefinitely as part of measures to combat the coronavirus.
School on TV: The approach differs by age. Primary school classes are being broadcast on one of China’s state TV channels. Junior and senior high school students in China can use an online learning platform which has 169 lessons covering 12 subjects for the first week, based on the national curriculum. Teachers will keep updating the platform with new materials as needed.
Bandwidth: The government has enlisted China's biggest telecoms operators and tech companies like Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba to back up the platform with 90 terabytes of bandwidth and 7,000 servers,so that up to 50 million students can use it simultaneously.”
Of course, e.g. Australia has several decades of experience with making school programs available over TV to its sparsely distributed population.
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