On the desks there are no textbooks or pencil cases — instead, there are tablets and styluses. In a fourth-grade math class, concepts such as "parallel," "perpendicular," and "intersecting" lines are no longer just ideas on a page; the teacher guides students to draw and compare on their tablets, and they quickly understand and remember them, said Sun Xinyue, a student at Tuanjie Primary School in Xifeng District, Qingyang City, Gansu Province. Today, smart classrooms that combine teacher guidance with student self-directed learning are appearing everywhere.
In recent years, Gansu has built an education private network and a provincial smart education platform, established a four-level education big data "cockpit" covering province, city, county, and school, and fully built a "cloud, network, and device" smart education ecosystem. It has actively promoted the use of artificial intelligence throughout teaching and learning, spurring a transformation in which digitalization leads to leapfrog educational development and students move from "leaving home to seek schooling" to "studying well close to home." A teacher at Heping Nine-Year School in Min County, Gansu Province, uses digital education equipment to teach students.
Classroom Transformation: From Experience-Based Teaching to Data-Guided Instruction
Walking into a seventh-grade Chinese language class at No. 3 Middle School in Linze County, Zhangye City, the teacher taps the screen lightly, and the smart pen-and-paper system gives real-time feedback on each student's progress and thinking process. In the past, student performance was judged by experience; now, data speaks — who is keeping up and who is stuck is clear at a glance, and this kind of classroom has become the norm. "Using the smart pen-and-paper system reduces the burden on students' eyes while preserving the traditional habit of writing with pen and paper," said Kang Biao, director of the information center at No. 3 Middle School in Linze County.
Smart classrooms have now reached 346 classes in 59 schools across 14 cities and prefectures in Gansu Province, with more than 14,000 teachers and students participating. Teaching and learning data are recorded and analyzed in real time, and teachers are gradually shifting from "teaching by feeling" to "teaching by looking at data," solving the pain points of traditional teaching such as difficulty in collecting data, diagnosing learning conditions, and implementing personalized instruction. At the same time, pilot projects for innovative "smart homework" applications have been carried out, with 127 smart homework classrooms built in 41 schools across 17 counties and districts in 9 cities and prefectures, helping students use artificial intelligence to improve learning efficiency.
In the mental health classroom at Lanzhou No. 1 Middle School, students immersively experience AI sandbox psychological assessment and can generate a mental health evaluation report, with the whole process feeling like playing a game. Teacher Liang Jin introduced that the AI sandbox can capture and record emotions students naturally reveal while building virtual scenes, and it is more easily accepted by students. "AI does not replace psychological counselors, but helps teachers efficiently identify students who need special attention, enabling early detection and early intervention," she said.
Building Bridges in the Cloud: From One-Way Support to Two-Way Capacity Building
In a classroom at No. 2 Middle School in Sunan Yugur Autonomous County, the teacher lightly touches the electronic whiteboard, and a three-dimensional animated scene of the text "Grassland" immediately appears on the screen: endless green fields with herds of cattle and sheep. Although the children grew up on the grassland, it is the first time they have "looked down" at their familiar homeland from such a perspective, and such scenes are quietly unfolding across vast Sunan. "With the full introduction of digital teaching, teaching results have improved significantly and teaching quality has been greatly enhanced," said Zhang Yanchao, a teacher at Sunan No. 2 Middle School.
The changes do not stop there. With support from east-west collaboration, Gansu uses regular, large-scale, and systematic "cloud connectivity" to continuously draw in advanced educational concepts, teaching resources, and teaching teams from Tianjin and Shandong, promoting collaborative support from "on-site blood transfusion" to "cloud-based blood production," and upgrading from "one-way delivery" to "two-way exchange."
The urban-rural education gap is like a threshold in many places. Now, a network cable and a screen are narrowing it, and even erasing it. Opening the Gansu Smart Education Platform, 1,334 master teacher studios, 653 cloud schools, and 1,310 "dedicated delivery classrooms" form a resource network covering the entire province, allowing teachers and students in remote areas to enjoy high-quality resources in the cloud at any time and take excellent lessons with master teachers.
The ability to weave this network depends on the "foundation." At present, Gansu has built an education private network connecting province, city, county, and school, and the province's education dynamics are displayed on a data dashboard. The Gansu Smart Education Platform has achieved "four connections" with the national smart education platform in resources, users, data, and applications. By the end of June this year, the province's visits to the national platform reached 1.957 billion. At the same time, the provincial platform has been connected with six city and prefecture platforms and is gradually being connected with county and district platforms and inter-school platforms, building an integrated smart education ecosystem across province, city, county, and school.
At the same time, relying on the provincial platform, 653 cloud schools, 4,007 "three classrooms," and 1,334 online master teacher studios have been built, benefiting more than 510,000 students at weak schools. Relying on the provincial platform's AI classroom evaluation application, training has been completed for 350 county and district primary and secondary school teaching researchers and 1,500 subject backbone teachers to improve AI teaching capabilities. In addition, eight normal universities in the province have carried out "digital support teaching," selecting 281 guiding teachers and 1,447 outstanding normal students to continue remote support teaching, covering 342 primary and secondary schools in 18 counties and districts across 9 cities and prefectures, offering 12 subjects including art, music, and English, with 504,600 student attendances.
Ecological Reconstruction: From Single Devices to All-Domain Intelligence
Digitalization is not just about installing equipment; more importantly, it is about how to use it and keep using it. Gansu's approach is clear: "application comes first." How is "use" guaranteed? Gansu has built a 185-member education digitalization expert pool, carried out digital leadership training and assessment for education bureau directors and primary and secondary school principals across the board, set no fewer than three class hours of teacher digital literacy training in "national training" and "provincial training" projects, and provided special training to 23,000 person-times.
Today, 646 research topics and 736 application scenario cases have turned exploration from isolated "bonsai" into a broader "landscape." At the same time, Gansu has fully built the Gansu education integrated e-government platform, education private network, education big data mobile cockpit, and school safety management and emergency dispatch command platform, actively promoting the implementation of "one matter for education enrollment," with digital tentacles reaching every link of education governance. In campus safety inspections, relying on the school safety management and emergency command platform on the Gansu Smart Education Platform, problems are uploaded by scanning codes and handled online in a closed loop, realizing a full online closed-loop process of "inspection records — rectification — closure" for campus safety risks and hidden dangers. The "education big data cockpit" has launched trial operation of the "mobile cockpit," obtaining in real time basic information, teacher and student data, and digital applications of schools within a five-kilometer radius, providing basic data support for business development and scientific decision-making.
"Smart classrooms, master teacher online courses, urban and rural children taking the same class across screens... We insist that 'application is king,' so that teachers and students like to use it, use it regularly, and use it effectively. With digitalization as the key, we are opening a new path to education modernization, and exploration in Gansu continues," said a relevant official from the Gansu Provincial Department of Education.