NetDragon CEO Xiong Li's in-depth analysis: What is the second half of smart learning? | 10,000-word article

Recently, Leifeng.com launched the fourth public course in the "New Infrastructure for Education" series and invited Xiong Li, CEO of NetDragon Websoft, to be a guest in the online class. He shared his views on the topic of "The trend has not changed, but the volume has changed. The 'new infrastructure' will drive smart learning into the second half."

Xiong Li is the CEO of NetDragon Websoft Inc., Vice President of the China Education Big Data Application Research Institute, and Deputy Director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Education Intelligent Technology and Applications.

This theme sharing is divided into four parts:

1. Infrastructure construction and education reform

2. The "new infrastructure" in the field of smart learning has already begun

3. Users - the biggest variable in the second half of smart learning

4.Technological innovation vs conceptual innovation

The following is a partial review of Xiong Li’s course sharing, which Leifeng.com has edited without changing the original meaning:

Hello, classmates and netizens, I am Xiong Li, from NetDragon Websoft Inc.

First we need to understand what infrastructure construction is.

Infrastructure construction is a concept that is constantly changing and developing, and its connotations vary at different stages of social development. Take my country as an example. In 2014, Premier Li Keqiang presided over a State Council meeting on "private capital entering national infrastructure construction". The infrastructure mentioned at that time mainly refers to transportation infrastructure such as railways and ports; major clean energy projects such as hydropower, wind power, and photovoltaic power generation; oil and gas pipelines, gas storage facilities, and petrochemical industrial bases. The "new generation of information infrastructure" was also mentioned.

In 2018, when the Central Economic Work Conference determined the key work tasks for 2019, the term "new infrastructure construction" was used for the first time. At that time, "new infrastructure" mainly referred to "artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, Internet of Things" and so on.

Until April 20 this year, the National Development and Reform Commission gave an authoritative definition of "new infrastructure construction", which includes three aspects: first, information infrastructure, high-tech infrastructure and computing infrastructure, which include 5G, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet, blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technical fields with the most forward-looking and development potential; second, integrated infrastructure, which mainly refers to the upgrading and transformation of traditional infrastructure promoted by new technologies such as the Internet, big data, and AI; third, innovative infrastructure, which is similar to "science parks" and "industrial bases" for the convenience of scientific research and high-tech exploration. While giving the authority, the National Development and Reform Commission also pointed out that the definition of new infrastructure is not static.

Not only does the government's definition of infrastructure construction change constantly in daily management, but so does academia, where different disciplines have different definitions and descriptions of infrastructure construction. Combining the mainstream viewpoints and the current actions of various countries in promoting infrastructure construction, we can give a relatively broad definition of infrastructure construction - infrastructure construction is a combination of basic physical construction and basic service construction carried out by a country, city or region to maintain normal operation and development. Infrastructure construction can provide society with the general material conditions needed for survival and development.

Based on this concept, we can draw a relatively clear conclusion: infrastructure construction includes not only visible and tangible things such as water, electricity, communications, and transportation, but also "basic service construction" such as science and technology, medical care, culture, and sports. Education is one of the most important components of basic service construction.

Precisely because of the close relationship between education and infrastructure construction, there is a natural connection between them, which will produce a mutual influence effect: on the one hand, the development of infrastructure will promote the upgrading of certain aspects of education; on the other hand, the upgrading of education will also help the further development of infrastructure.

For example, the emergence of printing laid the foundation for knowledge to be passed on, and the seeds of education emerged from this; and the manpower gap caused by the industrial revolution sweeping the world directly led to the school and classroom teaching model we often see today. It can be said that every change in educational methods is backed by the upgrading of infrastructure.

Until the emergence and popularization of the Internet, education also began to face its own "unprecedented changes". To use an example to illustrate, the changes in education brought about by traditional infrastructure construction are a bit like how to improve saddles and stirrups so that horses can run faster and people can sit more steadily and safely; in the context of new infrastructure, the changes in education are "people begin to think about how to build a car or even an airplane."

Smart learning is simply about using new technologies to make people learn more "smartly". The development of smart learning from scratch is actually the result of the continuous impact of infrastructure construction on education. But before we start talking about smart learning, we need to start with the concept of smart learning environment.

The birth of the Internet has greatly changed the social process of countries around the world and the development of many fields. Education is the most important and special field that has been changed. As early as 1993, the United States implemented the "National Information Infrastructure: Action Plan", which has a more popular name, namely the "Information Superhighway" plan. The action plan specifically mentioned "using information technology in education as an important way to implement education reform for the 21st century", so from 1996 to 2010, the US government has issued the "National Education Technology Plan" four times, continuously deepening the integration of high-tech such as the Internet with all levels of education.

Since the late 1990s, my country has also made "education informatization" a priority in the construction of educational infrastructure. By 2005, it had entered the stage of educational informatization construction centered on "application capabilities". Since then, it has been gradually improved, and my country has entered the fast lane of educational informatization development.

China and the United States have discovered some common characteristics in the process of exploring the application of the Internet in education. For example, the Internet will change the process of students learning new knowledge to a certain extent, will touch upon the teaching principles that some teachers are accustomed to, and will change the relationship between teachers, students, and teaching content. With the development of the education industry and the continuous advancement of Internet technology, more and more new functions are being applied to the teaching field. The characteristics mentioned above, such as changing the process of students learning new knowledge and changing the relationship between students, teachers, and learning content, are becoming more and more obvious. New teaching methods and new products such as "flipped classroom", "remote one-to-one teaching", "machine answering"... continue to emerge. Education experts summarize these changes as "digital transformation of the teaching environment."

However, no matter which country in the world, the teaching activities carried out in the digital teaching environment have not really changed the habits and patterns of knowledge transfer. Everyone simply digitizes the teaching content, or uses dazzling digital means. Learners are still required to accept and store knowledge as much as possible. These means can only achieve relatively low-level teaching goals such as cultivating learners to "recall, understand and apply" knowledge, but they are helpless when faced with high-level teaching goals such as helping learners master the ability of "analysis, evaluation and creation". At this stage, although the reform of infrastructure has brought a lot of help to the teaching reform, this reform seems to only stay in the "performance" form of teaching. In the traditional classroom teaching model, the process of "instilling" knowledge by teachers is only "slightly adjusted" to add some very cool-looking machines and products to help teachers "instill".

Let us recall the previous example of "horses and cars". You should be able to find that in the digital teaching environment, educational reform is still at the stage of improving saddles and stirrups. Although they bring new tools and experiences to learners in some aspects, they have not broken away from the existing teaching methods and models.

In order to fundamentally solve these problems, experts have proposed a concept based on the "digital teaching environment" that requires higher technical content and more groundbreaking teaching concepts - the "smart learning environment" we mentioned earlier . Experts and scholars engaged in relevant professional research at home and abroad have different opinions on the definition of smart learning environment, but everyone agrees on one conclusion - technological progress is the basis and prerequisite for the implementation of smart learning environment. So from this perspective, the concept of smart learning can be increasingly recognized by all sectors of society and continue to move forward. An important reason is that the "infrastructure construction" used in smart learning actually began long before the country made the call.

Building a smart learning environment is a concept with rich connotations. It not only proposes a highly feasible vision of future education, but also specifies a complete set of development paths to achieve this vision from a theoretical perspective.

Back to the topic of "new infrastructure", the three directions of new infrastructure currently proposed by the country are highly consistent with the technologies required to build a smart learning environment, and can be said to be tailor-made to promote the development of "smart learning". Next, let's take a look at how new infrastructure can further promote the establishment of a smart learning environment.

What we usually call a smart learning environment consists of six components: teaching resources, intelligent tools, learning communities, teaching communities, learning methods, and teaching methods. Learners and teachers interact and connect with the smart learning environment through different learning methods and educational methods.

Putting together the six elements that make up a smart learning environment and the three key directions of “new infrastructure”, we can clearly see that breakthroughs in cutting-edge technology fields such as information infrastructure, new technology infrastructure and computing power infrastructure can provide the driving force and foundation for the sustainable development of each element of the smart learning environment; and integrated infrastructure provides direction and policy guarantees for “education transformation” as a whole; innovative infrastructure brings new ideas and potential business opportunities for the coordinated development of education online and offline.

Finally, let's answer the question mentioned at the beginning of this chapter - what is "smart learning"? In fact, the concept of smart learning itself is not that important. Because the components of smart learning and the ways to carry out smart learning are mostly dynamic and will change according to the social development at the time and people's understanding of learning and education. What we should pay more attention to is the connotation of smart learning, because the connotation of smart learning actually explains the relationship between people and learning. If you understand this relationship, you can understand why the new infrastructure will have such a great promoting effect on smart learning.

To clarify the relationship between people and learning, the most important thing is to figure out how people can learn. Considering the complexity of learning itself, we can systematically examine this from two dimensions: one is the group attribute of learning behavior, and the other is the way of knowledge acquisition. Each dimension can define two different orientations: The group attribute of learning behavior can be divided into individual learning and group learning, that is, whether the learning process of a person is completely led by himself, or needs to participate in a group and complete it with everyone. For example, our online class today is a typical scenario of group learning; and the way of knowledge acquisition can be divided into indirect experience and direct experience. It is mainly to distinguish whether we master a certain knowledge through indirect channels such as books, teachers, APPs, etc., or through our own practice, such as observing the reaction phenomenon of hydrogen and oxygen to master a certain chemical principle, or actually testing the running results of the code after modifying a certain parameter.

Through the two dimensions of "group attributes of learning behavior" and "knowledge acquisition methods", we can construct a two-dimensional coordinate system, and the four quadrants in this two-dimensional coordinate system correspond to four typical learning methods, namely: individual self-study, seminar-based learning, practice learning, and work learning. In addition, there is another universal learning method - classroom learning. Why is classroom learning a universal learning method? Because to some extent, classroom learning is suitable for the development of various learning activities.

What do you think of the five typical learning styles above? Do you find it difficult to accurately classify your previous or current learning experience into a certain type? Or do you find that there are many overlaps in the specific scenarios listed according to these types?

For example, you may attend various workshops. Before attending, we will prepare our own opinions and materials according to the topic, and "self-study" some knowledge or learn the details of related fields. In the workshop, we participate in a process of discussion and exchange of opinions. After the workshop, we may face more situations: we may find that the impression of the content we learned before has been further deepened, other people's opinions in the discussion may bring you new inspiration, and you may find new topics worth thinking about due to your discussion, etc.

This feeling arises because the standard for classifying learning methods is based on the perspective of "learning situations". The purpose of sorting out learning situations is to help us find solutions to problems encountered in the learning process and to provide a unified thinking basis for the government to formulate policies and for enterprises to establish development directions. If we further dig into the essence of different learning methods, we can find that all learning methods will eventually be summarized into four factors, namely: learning time, learning location, learning method and learning pace. Each of these four factors is closely related to people. This is the essential relationship between people and learning.

As we mentioned earlier, the "new infrastructure" in the field of smart learning has actually already begun, because only with continuous technological breakthroughs can the many concepts of smart learning gradually become a reality. In the future, as the policy of "new infrastructure" continues to be implemented, we will see artificial intelligence, big data, advanced sensors, 5G, cloud computing... More and more high-tech technologies or products integrated with educational reforms, and this change will also allow the "digital teaching environment" mentioned above to further develop into a more advanced "smart learning environment."

The upgrade of the teaching environment from "digital" to "smart" is the core of the smart learning concept. Its "intelligence" is reflected in its ability to adapt to people's demands for learning at "any time, any place, any way, and any pace", fundamentally changing the relationship between people and learning, and allowing learning to truly integrate into everyone's life.

People are the core of all thoughts and actions of wisdom learning.

Through years of practice and demonstration, we firmly believe that "smart learning" is one of the "basic methods" that human society must have in the future. Because the smart learning environment required to achieve smart learning has organically integrated formal learning and informal learning, it can meet the lifelong learning needs of human beings, help humans better adapt to future development and changes, and meet the needs of learners in school learning, family learning and social learning, and ultimately truly realize the concept of "seamless learning".

The concept of "seamless learning" first appeared in the 1990s. The original purpose of this concept was to break certain limitations in students' learning process, such as in-class and out-of-class learning, so that students can succeed in the continuous learning process. Around 2006, with the vigorous development of mobile technology and related industries, some scholars began to combine the concept of seamless learning with mobile learning, and proposed the "4A learning model" that any student can use any available technology tools at any place and at any time to carry out learning activities. The 4A here refers to Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime and Any device.

Many things advocated by the concept of seamless learning are similar to those of smart learning. The two have a common core in their arguments, which is "learners". Or, to put it another way, whether it is smart learning or seamless learning, people or users are the most critical part.

As we mentioned earlier, smart learning can meet people's demands for learning at "any time, any place, any way and any pace", fundamentally changing the relationship between people and learning. The "fundamental change" mentioned here is a systematic project that requires long-term exploration and involves many sub-fields. Since smart learning will eventually have a profound impact on many social aspects of the existing teaching model, every step in promoting the implementation of smart learning can be described as "a move that affects the entire body."

If we regard the process of achieving smart learning as a game, then this game will last for quite a long time. And the stage we are currently in is the end of the first half of the game. The first half of smart learning is a competition of which contestants understand technology better. Because the emergence and application of new technologies are the basis for building a smart learning environment. Through observation of the current education industry, it is not difficult to find that no matter what the sub-sector is, the current education companies are generally exploring their business from two aspects: on the one hand, they are constantly combining new technologies with various aspects or types of teaching to launch new products or services; on the other hand, they are trying to commercialize educational products or services.

As one of the participants in this competition, NetDragon is also thinking about related issues, but our approach is different from other companies, which has led to different understandings and perceptions of NetDragon's education business in the industry. For example, from the perspective of some investors, they think that we are mainly engaged in B-side application development-related businesses. Although our direction is different from that of many companies, our goal is clear - to lay the foundation for building a smart learning environment.

At this stage, we have three main directions for business layout:

1. Promote the "new infrastructure" of education, lay the foundation for education transformation, and find the direction

2. Online and offline integration

3. Global strategic layout

Next, I will share some examples to help you understand our ideas more deeply.

Recently, NetDragon's "5G+AI Smart Education Application Demonstration Project" and "Global Digital Education Equipment Display Platform" were both selected into the list of key projects of Fuzhou's new infrastructure. The two projects selected by NetDragon this time will foster new momentum for the education industry. With the policy guidance of "new infrastructure", NetDragon will accelerate its development and further build relevant infrastructure for smart education, provide a new teaching model for education practitioners at different stages, and promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional education.

Although NetDragon is an Internet company, we also deeply understand that under current technical conditions, both online and offline have important value in promoting educational reform. Therefore, we are committed to promoting the implementation of related businesses from the perspective of building a platform. In addition to deploying a large number of products and services around the "Lifelong Learning Community" super online platform, we are also working on the layout of the digital education town super IP, projecting the online platform to the offline to achieve coordinated development.

We will take "digital economy + digital education" as the leading industry, lead traditional education towards a new pattern of future education by optimizing the traditional education model and building a digital education platform, build a diversified, open and shared characteristic town that gathers talents, dreams and wisdom, and create the world's largest education content production base.

Next, I would like to introduce to you NetDragon's "globalization strategy".

NetDragon has been exploring "cross-border" development for a long time. Since 2014, we have increased our strategic investment in education and carried out global education layout.

We acquired a wholly-owned stake in Promethean, a British listed company, which is the world's most powerful smart education hardware company. It not only has a rich product line, but also has developed channels. The acquisition of Promethean has helped us to build the hardware foundation required to deploy smart learning environments worldwide.

In addition, in 2018, we acquired Edmodo, a US-based company that is the world's largest K-12 education network and provides K12 schools with a communication and collaboration platform for teachers, students, administrators and parents. Through the acquisition of Edmodo and the subsequent series of functional upgrades, we have also initially established the software system required to build a smart learning environment around the world.

As of now, NetDragon's education business has covered more than 190 countries and regions around the world, more than 2 million classrooms, and benefited over 100 million users.

While continuously improving the hardware and software required for the smart learning environment, we have also invested more resources to improve the "learning content" circulated in the smart learning environment. We also have close cooperation with outstanding content producers around the world, including Disney China, LEGO Education, DreamWorks, Pearson Education, Tokyo Books and other internationally renowned brands.

The above is part of NetDragon's main work in the "first half" of the development of smart learning. We focus on building the environment required for smart learning. And this smart learning environment, in our own vision, is called "building a lifelong learning community."

In addition to the specific businesses mentioned above, NetDragon has actually put a lot of energy into the research and exploration of education itself. In addition to acquiring high-quality education service companies around the world, NetDragon has also been cooperating with top universities around the world to jointly invest in smart learning research and development. For example, the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University mentioned above. In addition, we have special research cooperation projects with East China Normal University and Central China Normal University in China.

In addition to domestic cooperation, we also work closely with many internationally renowned universities such as Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Helsinki, and University of Novi Sad to provide strong technical support for the integration of cutting-edge technology and education, and promote the sharing of advanced research results and high-quality educational resources on a global scale.

In-depth cooperation with world-renowned academic research institutions has not only deepened our understanding of education, but also helped us find innovative development paths. For example, based on the discussions of experts such as Professor Keith Smyth of Scotland and the policy directions of many countries, we have improved and proposed NetDragon's own 3E education concept. That is, based on the nature of knowledge flow, a complete set of concepts for product development and service design has been constructed through the three dimensions of Engaging, Efficient and Effective. I hope to have the opportunity to share with you in detail.

Compared with the "first half" of the competition, which was centered on technology, the second half of smart learning is about who understands education and learning better. And users are the key to this stage of competition.

The biggest feature of smart learning is that it can use various new technologies to achieve effective connections between teaching scenarios and people participating in teaching activities, thereby helping everyone record the teaching process, identify teaching situations, and establish continuous teaching experiences. In other words, teaching activities can be completed at "any time, any place, any way, and any pace." The entire process revolves around "people." Therefore, only by allowing more users to enter the smart learning environment to learn and use smart learning tools or products can the connection between individuals and the smart learning environment be increased, and each person or user can also get more support . In reality, this step is very difficult.

这种困难不仅包括那种大家都会遇到的，还有一些在实际推进中不期而遇的。比如：教育业务本身在获客方式上的特殊性与成本，更重要的是由于智慧学习与传统教学模式存在一些显著的差异甚至冲突，所以如果想让更多用户通过智慧学习的方式进行学习，需要政府、学校、家庭等众多参与方的投入和协同。这些才是用户进入智慧学习环境难度较高的根本原因。

This is exactly the good news that the country’s launch of the “new infrastructure” reform has brought to the development of smart learning. Because the gradual implementation of the new infrastructure will bring new products and services in many fields, which will allow more people to start changing their cognition and life through high-tech technologies such as 5G networks and AI. These changes will help smart learning gradually enter the “second half” of development.

2020 is a special year. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year caught many people and countries off guard. But objectively, the pandemic has also led more users to try to use Internet-related products for teaching and learning, in order to achieve the goal of "suspending classes but not learning". Through the intensive use of a large number of new users around the world during the pandemic, as well as the subsequent continuous research and user communication, we have discovered some clues of market changes, including the following three points:

• 一是用户对通过使用互联网进行学习的接纳程度显著提升。越来越多的用户开始相信新技术和新产品是可以与传统教学模式融合在一起的；

• Second, the number of functions of related products used by users has increased significantly after the epidemic compared with before the epidemic, among which the functions related to learning effect analysis and feedback have seen the largest increase in usage;

• Third, users’ feedback and demands for product functions have increased. We have found that more users have begun to make requests for product functions and hope to see improvements;

These three changes can be seen as a microcosm of the change in users' acceptance of the concept of smart learning. We are also taking practical actions to improve our products and users' experience of smart learning. User perception is also changing.

In this way, when the new education infrastructure gradually completes the cultivation of user habits and cognition, a social atmosphere that is more suitable for the development of smart learning environment and seamlessly connects various user learning scenarios will be formed faster. Including teachers, parents, students, government managers, etc., users of various identities are likely to evolve into a new generation of learners. They will be more accustomed to or even like to learn in a smart learning way, and even communicate with others during the learning process. Smart learning will also truly enter the "second half" of the game.

I mentioned earlier that the second half of smart learning is about who understands education and learning better. So how will the second half of smart learning develop? From a business perspective, what new opportunities will emerge?

To answer these questions, we have to return to the topic of today's discussion - "The wind direction has not changed, but the wind volume has changed."

In recent years, the word "windfall" has been used to refer to business opportunities or trends. From this perspective, since the emergence of commercial cram schools in the 1960s, education can be regarded as the business "windfall" of the era at any stage. This situation has not changed today, and education is still a "windfall" with great development potential.

Let's take the 2020 survey of domestic education startups as an example. The statistical sample of this survey is 10,640. Among the companies that have received investment, the largest proportion is in the angel round stage, accounting for 37%, followed by the A round stage, accounting for 31%. The capital market is still optimistic about the future prospects of education companies. But a warning bell that needs to be sounded to everyone is that the investment amount is obviously declining. This can prove from one aspect that the market potential of these existing education companies has changed in the degree of recognition of the capital market.

This phenomenon also fully demonstrates that although the trend of education has not changed, the "volume" has changed.

Education can become a continuous "hot spot" because it has a "rigid demand" attribute in a certain sense, and naturally contains great commercial value. In modern society, due to social transformation and technological development, the education industry has also shown a trend of professional segmentation. In order to better illustrate the business opportunities in the "second half", I will first briefly take you through the development history of education enterprises.

From a larger business perspective, the development of educational enterprises can be divided into three stages.

From the background of the emergence of educational enterprises, commercialized educational enterprises are the product of the development of modern education models to a certain stage. The earliest educational enterprises were actually the so-called "cram schools". Since the 1960s, traditional schools have gradually been unable to meet people's learning needs, so various types of "cram schools" have begun to appear. For example, the common "EF" was created because the founder of EF discovered the business opportunity in the 1960s when schools at that time could not provide language education for people traveling short distances.

At the cram school stage, educational enterprises are more like an extension and supplement of school functions. Although the subjects that can be "tutored" for users are all-encompassing, due to the limitations of technology level and market capacity, the services provided by educational enterprises at this stage are mostly for individual users with learning needs.

With the development of the Internet and other emerging technologies, starting from the 1990s - this time is roughly consistent with the time when the Internet entered the education field as we mentioned earlier. At this time, the development of education enterprises began a new stage. We summarize the characteristics of education enterprises at this stage as "super cram schools + campus upgrades", and this stage has actually continued to this day. Almost all education companies we see now also belong to this stage. Although companies at this stage of development have their own characteristics, they also have obvious commonalities. Traditional cram schools have expanded their scale through the Internet, changed their business methods, renewed their external image, and launched more innovative products or services to form "super cram schools". I think each of us knows something about such institutions. If you already have children, you may have a more real experience.

In addition, many companies have focused their business on helping "campus upgrades". These companies provide schools or educational institutions with a variety of new products and solutions to help them upgrade their teaching methods and management methods. Most of these companies have formed relatively complete business models, some for individual users, such as various online schools or online courses, some for schools or other educational institutions, such as various hardware or teaching management systems for teaching, and some for government procurement, which include more complex types of products. But in essence, educational companies at this stage are still supplementing and improving the current education mechanism based on the application of new technologies. Or we can also use a more fashionable term-these companies are using new technologies to "empower" traditional education mechanisms.

The vast majority of education companies in the market today are second-generation education companies. I can see from many aspects that second-generation education companies are gradually reaching a bottleneck in their development in some aspects. I am not saying that a certain type of company has encountered any problems in its operations, but that the "super cram school + campus empowerment" model we summarized earlier is gradually showing its limitations.

Educational enterprises in the second stage gradually let the development of teaching technology surpass the development of teaching models or concepts, but did not find a relationship between education and technology that can develop in a coordinated manner. These educational enterprises all believe that better technology can definitely solve problems in education and bring greater benefits to people. But is this really the case? At least in terms of educational equity, technological progress cannot solve all problems - relevant policy research institutions have come to a conclusion: what backward areas urgently need now is not a large number of information technology equipment, but effective training for teachers to truly improve the quality and level of teachers, so that students can truly develop.

Professor Li Mang of Beijing Normal University once pointed out when discussing the impact of technology on education: technology is not a neutral means or method, but a carrier of human values ​​in a specific society, so its content and form reflect the values ​​of society. The "values" mentioned by Professor Li are actually the "educational concepts" we have mentioned many times before.

This is precisely the core difference between the third-generation educational enterprises and the previous two generations of educational enterprises.

Finally, let's talk about the third development stage of education enterprises, which is also my opinion on the future development opportunities of the education industry. If the first development stage of education enterprises is to complete the supplement and continuation of educational functions, and the second development stage of education enterprises is to "empower" traditional education mechanisms with technology, then the third development stage of education enterprises is to connect the individual applications in various vertical fields at this stage, and finally build a smart learning environment and realize the concept of smart learning - enterprises are not pursuing breakthroughs and leading in a certain technical field, but from the perspective of the concept of smart learning, to achieve an overall upgrade of education and learning.

Let’s use the example we gave at the beginning to summarize. The first generation of educational enterprises solved the problem of finding more horses to meet people’s needs; the second generation of educational enterprises specialized in improving the way of training horses or the carriage system to increase the speed, but ignored the endurance and safety of horses. The third generation of educational enterprises in the future will make “cars”.

We mentioned a point earlier: the second half of smart learning is about who understands education and learning better. Why do we say that? Because in the field of education, we not only need to use technology to find areas that can be improved in education and learning, but also need to return to the origin of education and learning, and think about which of the emerging new technologies is more suitable for us to improve education and learning. Leading companies like Tencent also believe that the real role of new technologies in education reform should be to ultimately promote the transformation from "teaching" to "education".

"Educating people" has never been a technical issue, but an educational issue.

Taking a step back, if education is really a technical issue, then the business reality before us may be even more severe, because among the three directions established by the "new infrastructure", whether it is AI, big data, 5G... these cutting-edge technology fields, or promoting the transformation of traditional education in many market segments, or promoting the integration of online and offline from the perspective of research and development. In each field, there are already one or more strong companies with comprehensive advantages. Small and medium-sized enterprises or entrepreneurial teams will face greater competitive pressure in such a context. It is also because of this that it is particularly important to find a new direction and balance point in technological innovation or concept innovation as soon as possible, so that you can upgrade to a "third-generation education enterprise" as soon as possible.

We know that the premise for smart learning is to build a smart learning environment. In the previous explanation, we introduced that the smart learning environment, that is, the "lifelong learning community" that NetDragon is committed to building, involves all aspects of people's lives, so it is an extremely large and rich comprehensive system. In NetDragon's planning, we always adhere to the principle of "teacher-centered". The establishment of this principle means that when we develop products and services, we can seamlessly integrate with traditional educational concepts. In addition to reducing some of the time-consuming and labor-intensive repetitive work of teachers, it also provides teachers with more tools and support to help them better and more completely understand their students, and thus fulfill their responsibility of educating people.

Helping teachers upgrade and transform their roles is one of the core tasks of the third-generation education enterprises.

This sounds easy, but it is really complicated to do. This is because it involves the essential issue of "the relationship between people and technology". We will not go too far into the topic. From a practical perspective, the business opportunities generated by the need to build a smart learning environment are already huge: the establishment of smart campuses and smart classrooms at the hardware level; the teaching, learning, research, and auxiliary systems at the software level; in addition, there are various types of learning content with huge demand... There are too many areas that need to be improved and supplemented in each field.

It’s just that the new generation of education companies should think about returning to the essence of education, examining and selecting technology from an educational perspective, and then transforming technology into useful products or services that constitute a smart learning environment, that is, a lifelong learning community. This is the most important feature of the third generation of education companies: the third generation of education companies not only value and use new technologies, but also pay more attention to the essence of education and innovative educational concepts. They not only focus on improving the efficiency of knowledge acquisition, but also build a smart learning environment so that everyone can not only master existing knowledge, but also learn how to use knowledge, and then master the methods of exploring and discovering new knowledge. It is also for this reason that the "users" facing the third generation of education companies not only include traditional to C, to B or to G, but more importantly to E, Education, that is, facing education itself.

NetDragon is committed to becoming a third-generation education company. Therefore, we build an open platform, hoping to have the opportunity to work together with partners in the global education field to explore the direction of smart learning communities. We also pay special attention to cooperation with teachers around the world, hoping to find the best fit for cooperation with new technologies with teachers, closely follow the educational philosophy, make the application of technology in education no longer cold, seize the opportunities of the times, and make education achieve a fundamental leap due to technological development.

Helping educational enterprises to upgrade themselves - I think this is the biggest help that the new infrastructure brings to the command learning and education industries.

Once again, I would like to thank Leiphone.com for building this platform, which gives me the opportunity to communicate with you all. Thank you!

Q: Human society has experienced many information technology revolutions, and industries such as communications, transportation, and consumption have all undergone major changes, but education is one of the industries that has been least affected. Do you think that "new infrastructure" will have a transformative impact on education? What impact will it bring?

A: In my opinion, every major technological change will definitely change various fields such as education and life. The reason why you ask this question may be that in the past ten or twenty years, mobile Internet has had a significant impact on everyone's life and work. Most of our needs are now met by mobile smart terminals or smart apps.

But looking back at education itself, we will find that the core of the education model is still to use classroom education as the main mode, whether in developed or developing countries. I think this may be related to the field of education itself. To give a simple example, the reason why mobile Internet products can be developed in so many fields is that their TO C nature is very obvious - their users are the payers. But in the education industry, the learner cannot decide what content he learns, at least not in the K12 stage; the payer is not the learner himself, and he cannot decide what the child learns. It is a complex scene composed of multiple stakeholders such as students' parents, teachers, and education authorities. For this reason, it may lead to everyone seeing that technology has not produced particularly obvious subversive changes in the development of education as a whole in the past decade.

Therefore, the new infrastructure can be said to provide a hard foundation for the combination of education, digitalization, the Internet, and artificial intelligence from the national level, the government level, and the social infrastructure level. Therefore, we believe that on this basis, the second half of smart education in the future will undergo a qualitative change.

Q: Although online education has achieved explosive growth during the epidemic, it has also exposed problems in my country's education informatization construction. In your opinion, in what aspects should new infrastructure construction be deployed in the education field in the future?

A: This problem is not just about education. During the epidemic, after the country proposed to suspend classes but not learning, our teachers and students were forced to switch from offline education to online education. This process will definitely bring pressure on the original infrastructure, and this pressure is more prominent during the epidemic. My personal understanding is that the epidemic has made more teachers, students and other participants in the teaching process use online education. Through use, we know where the product needs to be improved and optimized, and ultimately it is more suitable for everyone.

Some time ago, most educational companies were doing technological research and development, and we were thinking about what technology could bring to education. The process of mandatory online learning has made more teachers and students put forward more requirements to us, and made us think more about teaching concepts.

In my opinion, we cannot say that the outbreak has exposed the problems of information infrastructure. Just like when everyone picks up their phones to make calls, there will definitely be network problems. We believe that the development of 5G or artificial intelligence, along with the further construction of new infrastructure, will surely make our educational products smoother, and ultimately truly improve educational efficiency and provide effective help for teachers and students.

Q: NetDragon's education business initially relied on acquisitions to expand the market. Will these acquisitions produce good educational content?

A: As you can see, NetDragon combines two methods in its entire education model: one is self-development, and the other is investment and mergers and acquisitions. In content-related businesses, we rely more on self-development, that is, we use NetDragon's traditional advantages in Internet games and content products to develop and research more digital education content software. Investment and mergers and acquisitions are to realize the foundation of building a smart learning environment as soon as possible, and at the same time to solve our own shortcomings as an Internet game company, such as hardware research and development and production, and the establishment of overseas communities and communities. Therefore, our business model is to provide users with a full range of service models through a combination of mergers and acquisitions and research and development.

Question: People are the core of smart learning, but people’s needs are the most difficult to achieve. Can technology and tools change people in teaching?

A: This question has a philosophical meaning. Let me briefly share my views with you.

I agree with the point mentioned in the question - people are the core of smart learning. Therefore, in the process of promoting smart learning, the technology or tools used will inevitably have a close relationship with people. But when talking about this relationship, it may not be possible to simply say "Can technology and tools change people in teaching?" My personal understanding is that in the past 20 to 30 years of development, especially in the Internet era, the rise of new technologies, the development of technology has completely surpassed the development of teaching concepts and teaching methods.

Today is a live class. I have attended many forums and shared many things. But this is my first time trying this kind of live open class format, which is also a challenge for me personally... As you can imagine, for traditional teachers, they are used to using ordinary blackboards or ordinary PPTs to communicate with students face to face. When teachers are really asked to use our digital products today to teach, it is also a huge challenge for them.

My personal understanding is that in the future development of smart education, the development of teaching concepts and the development of teaching technologies are a complementary process. We hope to use teaching concepts to choose teaching technologies, rather than using the development of teaching technologies too much to reversely promote changes in teaching models.

Q: NetDragon’s education business is currently focused on 2B and 2G. Will it expand to 2C content in the future?

A: From the perspective of the nature of education, education is a 2C business. Although some of our products and businesses seem to be 2B or 2G, in fact, a large part of our business is 2C. For example, in China, our 101 Education PPT is a software that helps teachers prepare for teaching with one click, which is a 2C product; products such as Online Education that help improve the teaching system or build a teaching platform are also used by 2C users.

More importantly, our 2B and 2G products are designed to build a more complete intelligent learning environment, and the effects of these products will ultimately be reflected in individual users.

Therefore, 2B or 2G are both business model choices made to achieve phased goals, ultimately allowing C-end users to benefit from teaching through our products and services, and allowing learning to be closely integrated with everyone's life. This is how our products contribute to this society.