2019 Educational Innovation 100

One of the keys to the success of the 108 curriculum is whether teachers can apply new technologies in teaching. The Emerging Technology North Promotion Center, established at Yongchun High School, promotes the integration of emerging technologies such as AR/VR and AI into teaching through teacher training, experience courses, forums and other activities, changing the traditional teaching model and making learning more efficient.

It is summer vacation, but the emerging technology promotion base of Yongchun High School is full of busy atmosphere.

In the e-sports classroom, students are trying to modify the programming language to test whether the "robot Bobbi" dances as expected; in the computer classroom on the other side, the teachers are studying the "robot Cheng Xiaoben" and trying to Make text appear on the robot's display via a webcam. These two activities are both camps organized by the Yongchun High School Emerging Technology Promotion Center. One is a summer camp for students, and the other is a training camp for service teachers.

In 2018, Yongchun High School added three special classrooms, including a 3R technology classroom, a 3A e-sports classroom and a virtual photo studio. This is an experience center established by the Ministry of Education to allow teachers and students to experience the wonders of emerging technologies first-hand.

This experience center is built under the "Emerging Technology North District Promotion Center" to encourage teachers to use 3A─AR (augmented reality, augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality, virtual reality) Environment), AI (artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence)/big data, ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems, advanced driver assistance systems) and other technologies are integrated into teaching. Through these new technological tools, the abstract teaching in the past can be made concrete, thus developing innovative teaching models.

In the 108 curriculum, students are valued for their ability to master, analyze, and apply technology. Zhang Yunfeng, principal of Yongchun High School, believes that one of the keys to the success of the new curriculum is whether teachers can apply new technologies in teaching. Therefore, the mission of Yongchun High School is to fully assist teachers in preparing for relevant abilities.

Zeng Qingliang, a mathematics teacher at Yongchun High School and director of the North District Promotion Center for Emerging Technologies, mentioned that in traditional teaching, teachers speak on stage and students copy in the audience, which is not very interactive. Therefore, for teachers, learning to use new technologies to design courses can enable students to use easy-to-use vehicles, stimulate the senses, increase perception, and improve concentration. He explained: "The students' reaction must be much greater than before, because they can see and feel things."

As learned in the Chinese class "Farewell Cambridge" one Poetry, in past teaching situations, it was difficult for students to understand the author's state of mind. If students wear VR glasses, walk onto Cambridge, and feel the lake and golden willows, they may be able to better understand the softness of the author's heart when he thinks of Cambridge. Yu Chenhui, a student who has experienced VR introduction teaching, said that after wearing VR glasses, he can visit every corner of the earth, allowing him to clearly see the differences in different places.

Different courses and different units have the most suitable technologies to use. For example, when the geography class talks about terrain, MR (mixed reality) is used to project contour lines on the landscape to correspond to the real landforms, and then understand the meaning of the contour lines. When taking earth science class, it was difficult to figure out the relative positions of the eight planets. I took out my mobile phone and scanned the textbook. The solar system built with AR technology suddenly appeared in front of me.

Students experience VR in the experience center of Yongchun High School, immersing themselves in the real world and improving learning efficiency. Provided by Li Qiaorou

This summer, Yongchun is offering intensive teacher empowerment courses and experience camps. From virtual reality design and creation using AR/VR, Hiba program logic board game to understand computational thinking, to AI robot programming for learning programming, the courses are non-stop every week, and each session is more popular than the last. Talking about the registration status of the course, Zeng Qingliang was full of pride: "We often register in ten or twenty minutes and it is full." As of the end of July, the North District Promotion Center had held more than 120 teacher training courses alone. .

Zeng Qingliang believes that the key to the success of the North District Promotion Center is to proceed step by step. For example, last year we focused on AR/VR, this year we added AI artificial intelligence and big data, and next year we expect to add ADAS self-driving systems. Each stage is carried out steadily, gradually deepening and broadening, so that the curriculum expands systematically and sequentially.

It is hard to imagine that there are only five core members responsible for these activities. Zhang Yunfeng believes that the team was able to achieve such results because the Taipei City Education Bureau agreed to let teachers from each school be seconded to Yongchun High School, suspend their original coursework, and fully devote themselves to the tasks of the promotion center.

She explained: "The five of us can do so many things because he (the teacher) works completely zero hours and has no interference from other school tasks. Some centers may use existing teachers and invite him It would be very hard to save some hours to help."

Last year, the promotion center focused on raising public awareness of emerging technologies, but this year it returned to teaching.

The content of the course has progressed from AR/VR to AI, and it has also continued last year’s course to deepen and broaden the content. This year, teachers who participated in the study activities were invited to each provide a lesson plan on integrating technology into teaching, which was compiled into a book. Zhang Yunfeng said: "You make one yourself, but you can also get other people's lesson plans. If you can share it, everyone will go further."

Zeng Qingliang said frankly that AI has just started, and the courses It is still limited to helping teachers establish units of thinking logic, so there is no clear direction yet on how to use AI in teaching. For example, when I first started taking the AI ??course this year, a teacher asked the professor: "I have published the test papers for the first and second section exams. Can I ask the computer to help me draw a first-class exam based on past questions?" A good test paper for the three-part exam?" The professor answered directly: "It can't be done." Because the teacher doesn't know that it requires extremely complex settings and huge data, and the teacher's understanding of AI is still vague.

However, Zhang Yunfeng believes that after becoming familiar with the concepts, teachers can correctly capture AI technology and develop course materials. In fact, it is not only AI that encounters this dilemma. When promoting other technologies in the past, it was often found that teachers did not know which parts of their classes could use AR and which parts could use VR, because they did not understand the characteristics of these technologies at all. and functionality.

Zhang Yunfeng recalled that in the 1990s of the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education promoted the integration of PPT into teaching, just as today's promotion centers promote the integration of AR, AI and other technologies into teaching. She sighed: "Do you think any teacher can't use PPT now? Maybe in a few years, every teacher will be using AI, AR, VR, just like PPT."

"How to improve motivation? "The problem is actually that the center faces relatively big difficulties." Zhang Yunfeng mentioned that the biggest challenge faced by the North District Promotion Center is actually to expand the teacher class group. Judging from statistics, the number of new teachers is decreasing, and most of the teachers who will sign up to participate in activities have been fixed.

Therefore, in addition to spreading word of mouth among teachers and sending official documents, Zhang Yunfeng also tried to distribute relevant information in the principal group and launch parent-child courses to attract teachers to participate in enrichment courses.

After several years of promotion, teachers have gradually established their own communities, and the concepts and techniques of emerging technology teaching have gradually penetrated into teachers’ hearts. “The best situation in the end is that there is no center, and everyone The teacher is the center," Zeng Qingliang said happily.