Internet classes help drive digital education

Thanks to the internet, students from a middle school in Kangding, Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Sichuan province, are able to attend classes conducted by teachers from Chengdu No 7 High School, also in the province.

It takes more than three hours to drive from Kangding to Chengdu, but with the help of information technology, students can answer their teachers' questions in less than a minute.

The interaction is part of China's broader efforts to promote digital education in recent years, in a bid to develop more equitable and quality education, while accelerating modernization in the sector.

The World Digital Education Conference, which opened in Beijing on Feb 13, is expected to further promote the digitalization of education in China and inject new momentum into the global development of digital education.

China has released multiple plans to better apply information technology to education, with the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China calling for the digitalization of education and the building of a society and country of learning in which lifelong learning is pursued by all.

In recent years, China has upgraded the facilities for digital teaching in schools. All elementary and middle schools across China have access to the internet, compared with 25 percent in 2012. Moreover, more than three quarters of Chinese schools have wireless networks, and about 99.5 percent of schools have multimedia classrooms.