More tech giants react as the demand for online teaching in schools across the country increases dramatically amid COVID-19.
In order to help teachers with online assignments and remote supervision, NetEase’s Youdao AI open platform, Youdao Zhiyun (有道智云), has made available for free, its fastest version of the operating system to primary and middle schools nationwide today.
Youdao Zhiyun is a cloud service platform under NetEase Youdao, which provides developers, enterprises and government agencies with services such as language translation, text recognition OCR and other industry solutions.
Youdao Zhiyun’s newly developed faster version of an intelligent operating system is based on the original system. It is understood that this system integrates assignments, corrections, and other links online through the ‘Homework Teacher Assistant’ mini-program, which is convenient for students to upload assignments through electronic devices such as mobile phones and tablets. Teachers can also use the mini-program to grade student’s homework.
Specifically, Youdao Zhiyun’s new system covers the following functional modules: Firstly, it supports mobile self-service activation and invites students to join. Simple and rapid upload of assignments. Easy for students to submit their answers with real-time feedback from the teachers. It automatically generates homework reports, checks timeliness and fills in the vacancy.
This is not the first time Youdao Zhiyun has provided its products and services to Chinese students for free. Youdao Zhiyun initiated free distant learning systems on January 26 and as of February 21, it had received cooperation requests from about 2,800 schools and institutions across the country. The service covers more than 2 million students, with over 40 schools across Beijing, Xinjiang, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Hunan already accessing it.
On March 10, the official website of UNESCO released a report, which revealed that the coronavirus epidemic has affected nearly 363 million students worldwide from preschool to higher education.
In addition to monitoring the impact of the epidemic on education, UNESCO has also released a list of free learning applications and platforms for parents, teachers, students, and offline schools. Among the domestic-related application platforms, Alibaba’s Dingding and iCourse (爱课程) are on the list. It is reported that the iCourse website is a higher education course resource sharing platform commissioned by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance during the ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan’ period and commissioned by the Higher Education Press. Since its launch on November 9, 2011, it has successfully launched three landmark achievements: China University Video Open Course, China University Resource Sharing Course, and China University MOOC.
The epidemic has created a situation where online education firms can now show their potential. Other than online education firms, tech giants such as Alibaba, NetEase and Tencent have also pounced at the opportunity. As the epidemic spreads to other countries, we might be seeing these companies trying to gain overseas customers.