When school closes, take it home with you

A Chinese language instruction platform is teaching more than 22 million students and around 1 million teachers as the coronavirus keeps people pinned in their homes.

Called Edmodo, the platform is the leading communication tool in the world for K12 Chinese education and has seen users surge lately.

It has been praised as "Facebook in the classroom" because of its interactiveness and wide range of learning tools and resources and was selected by Egypt's education ministry for use in its K12 education system.

According to UNESCO, 56 countries have shut down their schools nationwide because of the COVID-19 epidemic, impacting 516 million young people. Seventeen countries closed some local schools, interrupting the education of around a million students.

UNESCO recommends 59 applications or platforms to compensate, including Ding Talk, Feishu and Edomodo, from Internet giants Alibaba, ByteDance and Netdragon, respectively.

According to UNESCO, these cover a wide range of subject matter, and have a strong user base and influence. Most are free, and some teach languages.

The products can help parents, teachers and schools promote students' studies, and provide social care and interaction during class suspensions, it said.

Italian student Mattia Riva said, "Online classes may not be as active as before, but they have more diverse forms. In addition to attending class, doing homework and participating in tests, we can read materials and watch interesting videos our teachers share, and discuss with them at any time, which can boost our interest."

An official from Edmodo said, "We opened our resources to the public and provided online interactive teaching services for free, first to students in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions when the epidemic struck. We are now thinking about cooperation with Egypt Knowledge Bank, one of the world's biggest digital libraries that includes many academic journals and exclusive educational resources.

"This intergration will give learners access to quality educational resources and promote online collaboration among people in the same field."

Xiong Li, chief executive of NetDragon, said the platform has gathered experience with remote teaching during the epidemic.

Based on advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, together with the accumulated experience in education, the platform has developed a complete set of products covering previews, in-class and after-class scenarios.

"We aim to help more teachers and students and want to contribute our bit to the battle against the epidemic," he said.

Huang Siyu contributed to this story.