“The activities of module A lesson two will be handled differently this term. In an effort to lighten your workload due to the pandemic, you will not be performing your own case study interviews. You may disregard the pages titled “Week 3 Discussion: Share an Abstract of Your Interview” and “Interview Consent Form.” You will analyze the eight provided video case studies and participate in the associated discussion. You will also contribute to the page titled “Share Your Interview Questions” by Thursday of this week. Since you won’t be conducting the interview these are hypothetical questions, but I do want you to experience the exercise of generating qualitative case study interview questions.” – Course Announcement
1. What are some new educational technologies you have integrated into classrooms since the beginning of 2020?
the Smart Classroom from Xunfei
This service/product and many similar service providers are a significant change in Chinese classrooms during the past 2 years. This generation of Smart Classroom from Xunfei is composed of two hardware, i.e., iFLYTEK’s smart window and iFLYTEK’s smart student computer. With 2 types of hardware, the company Xunfei builds the integral teaching and learning e-systems for the modern Chinese grade 1-12 classrooms and even higher educations system. It’s more like a platform empowered by AI technologies, cloud computing services, and extensive databases.
2. Explain why do you choose the above technologies? What problems do you think these technologies have solved/alleviated?
Usually, the purchase of such platforms is at the school district’s decision. Before commercial platforms were developed, the post-secondary institutions in China typically had their own internal platforms with limited resources. The Smart Classroom from Xunfei guaranteed China has professional LMS with more significant potential in development for grade 1-12 education.
Also, with the built-in curriculums from renowned teachers, many inexperienced teachers and impoverished students in rural areas of China will be able to teach and learn with confidence as Xunfei’s mentra:”Broaden your horizons, learn to do well”.
3. During the process of integrating the above technologies, did you encounter any unexpected issues? Have you solved these issues? Or did you find alternative technological solutions?
Exploring and learning such a fruitful platform can be a long and bumpy journey. Xunfei has early development and a good reputation in speech recognition and translating products, making Xunfei stand out from other commercial LMS in China. Therefore, I tried out its speech recognition services during lectures. Based on the product presentation, this service can automatically recognize instructors’ speeches, simultaneously record them as course notes, then share them to iFLYTEK’s smart student computer after permission. However, during my trail runs, I don’t think it supports the class environments. Unlike many of its applications for conferences and lectures, the classroom environment is more casual, with many interferences. Also, for the instructor who has a dialect, which is very common in China, the quality of the notes is terrible…