NetDragon rolls out world's first AI teaching assistant

The teacher controls the classroom through intelligent voice technology, while facial recognition software allows students to register online. 101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant provides customized homework assignments and correction of the assignments once they are turned in. Voice detection and smart Q&A handled by a virtual character, in tandem with other highly-advanced new and emerging technologies, often referred to in Chinese as the "black technologies", were developed by the company and are making industry watchers more enthusiastic about the future of intelligent education.

AI as a teaching assistant

The voice control-enabled intelligent classroom

"Attention, please! Teacher Chen will be here within three seconds. Remain quiet and get ready for the class to begin!" As the bell rang, Qiqi, the character's name for 101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant, appeared instantly on the white board installed in the classroom. Soon afterwards, the teacher walked into the classroom.

"Teacher Chen, based on the results of face matching, every student is present and accounted for today." Before Qiqi's voice had completed the statement, the white board had displayed the attendance sheet. During the class, Teacher Chen, with Qiqi helping in the background, held a poetry appreciation and reading class for the second-grade students.

The teacher delivers a "live" lesson on the classical poem A Tranquil Night

"Girls and boys, today let's study the poem A Tranquil Night." Soon after the voice finished speaking, a virtual depiction of the scenery described in the poem appeared on the white board.

"Do you want to see the Fairy Poet Li Bai?" Teacher Chen pointed out Li Bai amid cheers. Qiqi had been transformed into the avatar of Li Bai on the white board, walking slowly towards the students. The famous poet not only spoke and engaged in a discussion with the teacher and the students, but also gave an on-the-spot evaluation of the performance of the young pupils.

To further test the students' mastery of the poem, Teacher Chen arranged exercises and the students answered via their tablet. Through real-time data capture, an analysis of the students' answers appeared on the screen.

"A concept such as this classical piece of poetry is distant from children's lives. 101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant created an immersive atmosphere in the classroom, giving the students an opportunity to engage with Li Bai and get a feel for the persona of the famous poet, which is very helpful for their expansive learning," Teacher Chen said. She believes that AI and other intelligent approaches will bring positive changes to education.

According to Fang Zhenhua, development director at NetDragon, 101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant not only enables real-time feedback on classroom data, but also tracks the data after the class has concluded in a timely manner. The teaching assistant will arrange exercises customized for each student based on their classroom data, and follow up with suggested corrections online to help improve their performance after class.

Give every AI a body

NetDragon makes one teacher and a thousand teaching assistants a reality

The rich array of functions that has been built into the world's first AI teaching assistant demonstrates the infinite possibilities that lie in store for the future of intelligent education.

The seemingly complicated "black technologies", including the facial recognition and voice evaluation functionalities, are easy to operate. 101 Education PPT is at the core of the AI teaching assistant. At its most basic, it is a professional lesson preparation and teaching software ensemble for instructors.

"AI, which is ever-evolving, can fully assist the instructor in creating a unique two-teacher classroom, making the concept of one teacher and a thousand teaching assistants a reality," Fang Zhenhua said. AI allows 101 Education PPT to create personalized lessons, the material to be taught and the homework assignment as well as provide automated correction of the homework assignment, voice evaluation and advice about the teaching process itself.

Without seeking to change the instructor's pedagogical style, 101 Education PPT creates a world-class education resource platform, based on an extensive trove of teaching resources covering multiple stages in the educational cycle, including preschool, K12 as well as middle, high and vocational school through cooperation with top content producers, among them Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Tokyo Shoseki and Disney. The platform now has nearly 50,000 resources and is being added to at a rate of thousands of new resources each month.

With an extensive materials base and a strong human model base, 101 Education PPT helps instructors create high-quality content for each course quickly, allowing for easy lesson preparation and efficient teaching while deploying AI technology to meet the needs of teachers before, in and after class.

The AI technology that is at the core of 101 Education PPT gives every AI-created persona a body through the concretization of IP characters such as Li Bai and Han Meimei. Teachers can feature any AI teaching assistant they want in different classrooms and environments, turning the classroom into something with unlimited possibilities and making all the more interesting by the wide array of available personalities.

The use of AI makes it possible for a classroom to fully meet personalized needs. Big data collection helps provide more intuitive and targeted feedback and advice for teachers, giving them the information they need to fully up their game without losing the personalized touch that they bring to the classroom.

101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant will become available this June

Available to more than 5 million users across China within the year

NetDragon, an established player with many years of experience in the field of education, has successfully applied AI into this most needed of areas, in line with the company's original plan to leverage AI for the benefit of its customers.

Liu Dejian, the founder of NetDragon and one of the earliest internet entrepreneurs in China, saw, as soon as he started NetDragon, how the internet and AI, among other technologies would bring disruptive changes to human society, and, with that foresight in mind, aggressively developed NetDragon's AI business.

Since entering the education market in 2010, NetDragon has established a big data and AI laboratory and directed the R&D team from very early on to develop products that leveraged AI for the benefit of education, referring to the initiative and the products that were created as a result as "AI + Education". The company launched the first intelligent teaching robot in 2014, causing a huge stir across the educational sector.

In 2017, NetDragon, in concert with Beijing Normal University, Tsinghua University and other centers of higher learning, established the National Engineering Laboratory for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology, in a move to advance cyberlearning intelligent technology and provide technical support for the development of the industry.

NetDragon CEO Dr. Xiong Li said that 101 Education PPT – The AI Teaching Assistant is another milestone in the company's "AI + Education" product family. Still under development, the product suite is scheduled to launch in June of this year and will initially be available to existing 101 Education PPT users across China. It is expected to serve more than 5 million users by the end of this year.

NetDragon sees no end in sight for its expansion into the educational sector. Its "AI + Education" roadmap calls for the creation of the world's largest, most advanced and most intelligent lesson preparation and teaching software and education content distribution platform, with the aim of serving more than 10 million teachers, 100 million students and 100 million sets of parents worldwide, diversifying the world's education ecosystem.

Following the acquisition of Cherrypicks, Promethean and JumpStart, NetDragon announced on April 8 the 100% acquisition of Edmodo, a leading global learning community with over 90 million users in 400,000 schools across 192 countries. The announcement marked a further step in NetDragon's global expansion and AI education strategy.

(The 101 Education PPT can be downloaded at http://ppt.101.com/)

SOURCE NetDragon Websoft Inc.