On November 14, Tencent Education officially announced that it will host the first MEET Education Technology Innovation Summit (“MEET Education Summit”) on December 4 at Shangri-La Hotel, Beijing. Guided by education authorities and co-organized by Tencent and partners, this year's MEET Education Summit aims to gather the forces of industry, learning, and research to explore ways in which technology can help education.

At that time, including Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent Group, president of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Business Group, Rose Luckin, professor at the University of London (UCL) School of Education and head of the London Knowledge Laboratory, and Zhang Quanling, the young chairman and founding partner of Ziniu Foundation, more than 100 education authorities from all over the country, and nearly 1,000 experts, scholars and industry representatives in the field of education at home and abroad will attend the summit to discuss how cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, 5G, and blockchain can help accelerate education modernization.

MEET comes from the English abbreviation for Modern Education Empowered by Technology, meaning that the summit will adhere to the core concept of “technology to help education” and explore how “education+technology” can create future education. The first MEET Education Summit was held under the theme of “Photosynthesis and New Students”, with a total of 1 main forum and 6 thematic sub-forums. At the same time, there is also a large-scale interactive exhibition area for intelligent education on site, showcasing the hottest innovative achievements in the field of education technology.

Major Issues: The Real Value and Boundaries of Education Technology

While education and technology are deeply integrated, they are also developing rapidly. The Ministry of Education previously pointed out in the “Education Informatization 2.0 Action Plan” that informatization has greatly increased its role in promoting education reform and development, while the rapid development of technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, 5G, and blockchain will profoundly change the demand for talents and forms of education.

This year, Tencent Education won the bid for the Shenzhen Luohu Smart Education Cloud Platform, becoming the largest software-only project in the vertical field of education in China. It also means that the informatization of education is moving from a hardware era that focuses on investment in equipment to an era of software that focuses on how to truly stimulate scientific and technological wisdom to help education and teaching.

In stark contrast to the situation described above, in recent times, various pseudo-educational technology products that harvest “IQ tax,” such as “speed reading training that can easily cost tens of thousands of yuan and can read tens of thousands of words of quantum fluctuations in one minute,” have also sprung up endlessly, triggering many disputes and reflections on the integration of education and technology.

What is the essence and boundary of education technology? How can technology really help education and promote the organic integration of technology and content? How can education informatization accelerate the individualization, fairness, and intelligence of education? At the main forum of the summit, Rose Luckin, Zhang Quanling, and many other education experts and industry leaders will conduct in-depth analysis on these topics.

Core focus: Tencent Education will release a major annual plan

With rapid technological innovation, education has entered the intelligent era. Technology is playing an increasingly important role in improving the allocation of educational resources, helping educational institutions and schools manage intelligently, and promoting personalized teaching, and has gradually penetrated into the entire “teaching, learning, examination, evaluation, and management” industry process.

In the process of technology+education, it is inevitable that some problems have also been revealed: such as the phenomenon of information silos caused by inconsistent data; the endless emergence of intelligent education products, but the lack of integrated campus solutions; the information literacy of education practitioners needs to be rapidly improved to adapt to the changes brought about by intelligence; we will fully enter the era of intelligence, and there is an urgent need to educate and cultivate intelligent talents that match them. In response to many industry pain points, Tencent Education will also release an education technology strategic roadmap, new industry solutions, and authoritative big data reports and interpretations to help the education industry develop with the power of technology.

In addition to the main forum, the MEET Education Summit also set up six themed sub-forums, including children's enlightenment education, basic education, youth artificial intelligence education, higher education and applied talent development, digitalization of education enterprises, and the application ecosystem of intelligent education. At that time, each sub-forum will invite experts, scholars, agency representatives and other guests from various vertical fields of education to discuss the current situation and future development of the vertical field of education.

The most complete progress: Tencent Education officially announces new developments for dozens of products

At the summit, all of Tencent Education's major business lines (education enterprise cooperation, smart campus, Tencent WeChat, Tencent University school-enterprise cooperation, Tencent classroom, penguin tutoring, Tencent ABCmouse, Tencent English, Tencent English, Tencent Ding, Tencent Education Innovation Center, etc.) will also be showcased at the first MEET Education Technology Innovation Summit, showcasing solutions for all age groups and scenarios from preschool to adult education. All major product lines will also release new upgrade plans.

In September 2018, Tencent established a cloud and smart industry business group, and also reorganized more than 20 education products previously scattered across 6 BGs, forming a new “Tencent Education” business segment. In May of this year, Tencent's education strategy was officially announced — using Connection (connection), Content (content), and Commonweal (social responsibility) as starting points to help achieve fair, personalized, and intelligent education.

Up to now, Tencent Education has served more than 400 million people, served more than 17,000 schools, covered more than 300 provincial and municipal education bureaus across the country, and served more than 70,000 educational institutions.

“Education is a century-old project. Tencent respects all practitioners and partners in the education industry. Tencent hopes to become a digital assistant for the intelligent upgrading of the education industry.” Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent Group and president of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group, emphasized that education is a very complex and specialized field, and Tencent's own strengths may not be able to cover all needs. This is also the original intention of Tencent to join hands with all parties in the industry to host the MEET Education Science and Technology Innovation Summit. “We look forward to working with more high-quality partners to create an era of intelligent education through the windows of Tencent Education and MEET Education Summit.”