Access to education still remains difficult for many children in the world today, especially in remote and hard-to-reach areas. Schools in isolated regions routinely suffer from inadequate teaching resources and incomplete curriculum, resulting in a serious lack of high-quality education. Moreover, isolated teachers and students face even more challenges adapting to the digital age.
Under-resourced schools can be found in many places around the world, hindering the development of both students and teachers. Fortunately, new technologies are carrying superior educational resources further, providing students in secluded areas with more effective instruction while transforming the ways that teachers organize classes.
Making a difference in Yunnan
Spanning nearly 400,000 square kilometers, Yunnan Province in southwest China is home to about 48 million people, some of whom live in remote areas. This region proved to be an ideal setting to deploy a new approach in distance learning technologies.
In November 2019, a Hikvision project team delivered the first batch of equipment to the Central Primary Schools in Cangling, Chuxiong Prefecture in Yunnan. In this first step, Hikvision donated 16 sets of video-based distance learning equipment, allocated to four cities and counties in Chuxiong with under-equipped primary schools in their remote areas.
Host equipment was set up at the central school and remote display equipment at three of its auxiliary village schools. The three remote sites were networked to the central school, enabling interactive recording and broadcasting as well as distance learning sessions. This innovative approach began providing high quality sessions for students to learn online, overcoming limits of time and distance. In addition, education departments can also use the online classroom platform for evaluation of teacher performance and training.