Recently, as a representative of a technology education company, Tian Mi, CTO of TAL Education Group, was invited to attend the 2020 Yunqi Conference Digital Intelligence Interconnection Summit. In his keynote speech titled "Love and Technology Make Education Better," Tian Mi shared his insights on the relationship between technology and education, the exploration path and technical system layout of TAL's technology education, and presented the achievements of TAL's education and technology practices, including Xueersi Online School. He also introduced the progress of the construction of the National New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform for Smart Education, calling on all parties to work together to build a collaborative innovation ecosystem for smart education through open source and openness.

Tian Mi, CTO of TAL Education Group, delivering a keynote speech"Three-step" Exploration of the Integration of Technology and Education.

Whether it's the "Xueersi Online School AI Teacher Chinese Learning System" that helps Yi children in Daliangshan, Sichuan overcome language barriers in Sichuan's Liangshan region, or the "Support Initiative" by TAL that provided free cross-grade, multi-subject courses for students nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic while offering online classroom platforms for public schools and educational institutions to ensure uninterrupted learning, these innovative measures rooted in compassion and addressing real-world educational challenges have been driven by technological advancements to successful implementation.

AI teacher helps Yi children break through language barriers

In the process of empowering education with technology, TAL's technological exploration has developed a "three-step" path of integration of technology and education, which involves online dual-teacher system, digitalization, and intelligence.

The first step, the online dual-teacher system, divides "teaching" and "practice." Traditional education is based on offline mode, with one teacher completing teaching and answering questions in the classroom. TAL has pioneered the concept of dual teachers: one teacher focuses on teaching to refine a lesson, while the other focuses on tutoring, guiding students' pre- and post-class exercises, and providing more motivation and care.

The dual-teacher model has been widely used in TAL's offline and online classrooms, breaking the barriers of time and space. The high-quality teaching resources radiate across the country, ensuring the learning experience and effectiveness of every child, making the scalable high-quality educational resources a reality.

Massive dynamic multimedia materialsThe second step, digitalization, lays the foundation for large-scale personalized teaching. TAL has digitized 17 years of teaching and research, creating a digital library of over six million premium questions and massive dynamic multimedia materials, serving as a treasure trove for teachers' lesson preparations.

Digitalizing teaching makes the teaching process more structured, providing teaching guidance at appropriate times and evaluating teaching quality to assist teachers in optimizing their teaching. Datafication of the learning process enables personalized learning by collecting students' learning behaviors before and after class, creating individualized student profiles for large-scale tailored teaching.

The third step, intelligence, deconstructs "teaching" and "education," returning to the essence of education. Regarding the AI courses that have attracted widespread industry attention in the field of intelligence, Tian Mi stated that AI courses require three essential elements: 3D engines, AI technology, and adaptability to address the three critical issues of automated mass production of content, student interactive input recognition, and personalized learning. This ultimately allows AI teachers to complete the "teaching" part, freeing human teachers to focus on the essence of education and students' growth.The live demonstration also showcased TAL's application of artificial intelligence technology, achieving high-precision virtual teacher simulations, including movement, facial expressions, and mouth shape identical to those of real teachers, as well as the generation of clear and understandable animated solutions from a handwritten complex question.

Highly realistic virtual teacherFrom online dual-teacher system to digitalization and then to intelligence, TAL is promoting a more equitable and higher-quality education through the deep integration of technology and education.

Open Source and Openness, Co-creating Smart Education

The substantial investment in technology research and development and its in-depth application has transformed TAL into a true technology education company. TAL has developed a unique set of technology systems, including artificial intelligence, big data, live streaming, and cognitive neuroscience, covering the entire teaching process from pre-class to post-class.

Supported by such a technological framework, TAL Education Group has accumulated hundreds of customized AI capabilities for education, over a dozen smart education solutions, and massive educational scenario datasets encompassing images, audio, video, and question banks. Tian Mi showcased TAL's independently developed smart education software and hardware, including the "Chinese and English Oral Expression Ability Evaluation,” which evaluates children's English and Chinese speaking ability, the "GodEye Classroom Quality Assurance Solution,” which evaluates students' learning behaviors and teachers' teaching behaviors, as well as the deployment of AI chips in terminal devices such as classroom hosts and IP cameras, significantly reducing the threshold for smart education hardware deployment.

AI evaluation system for teacher practiceWith its solid technological capabilities and deep understanding of smart education, TAL was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology to build the National New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform for Smart Education in 2019. This platform aims to promote industry openness and sharing, help small and medium-sized enterprises grow, and support intelligent upgrades in the education industry.

Tian Mi stated that TAL will provide comprehensive support across all scenarios, processes, and cycles through three dimensions—technology, solutions, and industrial services—for educational institutions, edtech companies, educators, R&D personnel, and developers. This initiative aims to drive intelligent upgrades in the education industry, integrate stakeholders from industry, academia, research, and application, and build an open-source, open ecosystem of collaborative innovation in smart education characterized by "coexistence," "mutual growth," and "co-creation"