At a time when the discussion of "county-level education" is hot, Zhao Puzheng said that not all students can learn from the best teachers in first-tier cities, and children in county areas lack access to high-quality educational resources. To a certain extent, the learning machine can make up for the lack of resources in some fields, and play a certain role in the reallocation of educational resources for universal education and education.
At the end of 2023, Zhao Puzheng gave a lecture on Xueersi learning machine. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Text丨Beijing News reporter Wang Chang.
Editor丨Chen Xiaoshu.
Proofreading丨Li Lijun.
This article is 4466 words and 9 minutes to read.
One day at the end of 2023, Zhao Puzheng received a thank you text message from his former student and current colleague. At this time, he is no longer the "Teacher Zhao" he was 15 years ago. A week ago, the learning machine business he led officially launched a new product.
During this time, almost every morning, he would be in an office called Jiaolong in an office building in Beijing's Haidian District, preparing for various meetings. His office is barely furnished, with a conference table that can seat more than a dozen people taking up most of the room. After serving as the person in charge of Xueersi learning machine, in order to do a good job in this learning terminal product, he is ready to brainstorm with colleagues in various departments at any time.
2024 is his 15th year at Xueersi. After graduating from Beijing University of Technology, he worked as an Olympiad teacher in primary and junior high schools at Xueersi.
Like all teachers, he unknowingly influenced the fate of many children. The current colleague who sent a thank you text message is a student brought by "Teacher Zhao". Fortunately, this child was later admitted to Peking University, and after graduation, he also came to work at Xueersi and became a colleague with "Teacher Zhao".
Xueersi's educational philosophy keeps pace with the times, and Zhao Puzheng also follows the company's footsteps in the internal flow. Over the years in Xueersi, Zhao Puzheng has gone from being a math teacher, to doing literacy business, and then to developing learning hardware, although the content of his work has been changing, he knows that he "has always been along the line of 'science and technology to help education balance and inclusiveness'".
There is no shelf".
In 2009, Zhao Puzheng graduated from university. At this time, Xueersi happened to be recruiting Olympiad teachers, and in order to reserve high-quality teachers, they were only recruiting graduates from Tsinghua University and Peking University, but the news reached him through his high school classmates. Although he is not a graduate of Qingbei, he has competition experience in middle school, and has won the first prize in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He came to the interview with the mentality of giving it a try, and finally "mistakenly" was admitted.
Like all teachers who teach on the front line of Xueersi, Zhao Puzheng has started teaching and research with his heart. Maybe it's because he grew up in a family with a relaxed atmosphere, and his parents' requirements for learning have never been strict. When he became a teacher, he didn't have much of a stand in front of his students, and many students called him "Pu Zheng".
Under the leadership of Mr. Zhao, many students have made a name for themselves internationally. He once led a class of 20 people, two of whom won the IMO gold medal (International Mathematical Olympiad) and one won the IPO (International Physics Olympiad) gold medal. With more and more students with good grades, Zhao Puzheng's fame is also increasing, and he is even gradually rumored by parents to be "one of the top ten famous teachers in Beijing".
The teaching at that time changed the trajectory of students' growth to some extent. Half a month ago, he received a message from a colleague in the company. The other party said that he had always wanted to see Mr. Zhao after joining the company, but he went several times but did not see him. This colleague has been studying in Shijingshan, Beijing, and the school did not even have a place in the Hua Luogeng Gold Cup Junior Mathematics Invitational Tournament at that time. In the fifth grade, this colleague entered Mr. Zhao's class to study Olympiad mathematics, and was pre-admitted to the experimental class of the High School Affiliated to the National People's Congress in the next year. When he was promoted to junior high school, he studied with Mr. Zhao for a whole year. Later, he was admitted to Peking University, and after graduation, he also came to Xueersi.
At that time, everyone believed that 'learning changes destiny'", Zhao Puzheng said, from 2003 to 2010, parents were willing to spend real money on their children's education, and the atmosphere of make-up classes outside schools was relatively prevalent. Later, as the post-85 generation began to become parents, the educational atmosphere of the whole society became more rational, and the educational philosophy of parents became more diverse, they not only cared about the results of their children, but also paid attention to their children's learning experience.
At this time, Zhao Puzheng has joined the quality education brand of Mobi, a quality education brand under Xueersi, and in order to motivate the children's learning spirit, he and his colleagues will lead the children to practice computing every day. If they participate in the exercise, the children will be able to exchange for "Mobi Beans", which can be exchanged for set prizes. When the award was awarded, the teachers asked the children to come up to the stage to receive them, "just like walking the red carpet".
Xueersi's educational philosophy keeps pace with the times, and they believe that encouragement can greatly improve children's motivation to learn. Zhao Puzheng agrees with this concept, he recalls his own experience, when he was young, he was criticized by teachers many times in public for being "naughty", and often invited parents. When he was a little discouraged, the teacher in charge of the competition continued to encourage him, and the positive interaction between teachers and students stimulated his motivation to learn. Even in the face of setbacks, he can deal with them calmly, and during the college entrance examination, he played a little abnormally and was finally admitted to Beijing University of Technology. But this did not affect his mentality, "learning is a lifelong thing".
In November 2010, the 15th "Hua Cup" ended, and Zhao Puzheng led the team to participate. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Be a learning machine, be a product person.
Zhao Puzheng was first fascinated by mathematics in the 90s of the last century. At that time, Duan Yongping created the first generation of products known as the ancestor of learning machines - "Xiaobawang" learning machines. However, around him and his classmates, few people use it.
At that time, he and his table mates were "competing" to progress together. Almost every day, he had to compete with his table mates to see who could do the problem faster. For students, factorization is the first hurdle in the algebra learning process. Throughout the holidays, two little boys soaked in the library. After the start of school, he could complete a test paper with a time limit of one hour in four minutes, while his table mate was faster, about two and a half minutes.
Now in his opinion, the "Xiaobawang" learning machine at that time was a product that "rubbed" the concept of learning machine. However, he did not expect that after more than 20 years, such an "ancient" product as a learning machine can still be found on the market, and it seems to be more and more popular.
Since 2020, the epidemic has lasted for three years, and online teaching has also become popular.
A year earlier, iFLYTEK had taken the lead in opening the learning machine market, which was considered by the industry to be the beginning of "AI pie entering the learning machine". In 2020, Xiwo, a company that started with smart hardware, also launched a learning machine. In 2021, Lenovo also launched a learning tablet. Some K12 Internet** education companies have been affected by the policy and have also begun to transform.
As AI became a general trend, the education sector began to embrace AI. Xueersi, which started with offline teaching and training, has also begun to seek change. In April 2022, the Xueersi hardware team built a prototype of the learning machine, and after internal testing, it was found that the usage rate was not good. In May of the same year, Zhao Puzheng became the new head of the intelligent learning hardware team under tremendous pressure.
In the era of science and technology, it has become a possibility to improve the efficiency of education rapidly. Zhao Puzheng, who has been in the front line of education and training for a long time, began to re-learn hardware and product knowledge, combined with the current learning characteristics of students, and thought about what kind of problems can be solved by learning machines with science and technology as the highlight.
Working overtime and staying up late has become a common occurrence for the entire team. Soon, he and his colleagues found out the problem, although the recording and broadcasting of the prototype machine is of high quality, but when the children use the learning machine, they are often self-taught, without teacher guidance, without parental supervision, and not as interactive as the live broadcast, and the learning effect is greatly reduced.
Xueersi has previously developed interactive AI lessons, the teacher recorded a half-body screen, and the curriculum focuses on the story line, which is guaranteed in quality and fun. Xueersi strongly supported the introduction of the learning machine, and although it was a very important teaching asset within the company and the cost was expensive, it was added to the learning machine after splitting the knowledge and adding new exercises.
Good content is very important, and Xueersi has an advantage in this regard. Zhao Puzheng said that during the preliminary research of the hardware team, it was found that the traditional learning machines in the past often had an idle rate of almost 50%. The reason for this is that they are basically "patchwork content plus outdated hardware".
Just like the colleague who sent him a private message, many children may not have such good educational resources when they are young. Now, with the help of science and technology, the high-quality educational resources that Xueersi has reserved for a long time have been put into the learning machine and become a think tank for children. He believes that the learning machine is an educational institution for 20 years of teaching and research precipitation, more than 3,000 teaching and research personnel participated, and the teachers who walked into the screen were the best of the best, and such educational resources were very rare.
These teachers spanned every grade and every subject from primary school to high school, and the Xuepaipai team at that time contributed 20,000 intensive lectures and added to them. In addition, in order to keep up with the times, this content is updated on a weekly and monthly basis. "Knowledge comes alive", Zhao Puzheng made an analogy, saying that the learning content in the learning machine is like a big tree that continues to grow, and each branch grows strong and powerful, and is connected to each other.
At the end of 2023, Zhao Puzheng gave a lecture on Xueersi learning machine. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
AI technology has made personalized education possible.
Even if he has made learning hardware, Zhao Puzheng still believes that no matter how far AI develops, learning machines will never be able to replace the role of teachers, "It can only be said that love and technology accompany growth." ”
Good content is just the foundation of the learning machine. He has repeatedly introduced that there is an "impossible triangle" in the field of education, that is, "high quality", "personalization" and "large-scale". Since its establishment in 2003, Xueersi has been looking for ways to solve the "impossible triangle". Over the years, with the reserve and polishing of high-quality teachers, Xueersi's offline and online classes have gradually achieved "high quality" and "large-scale", but "personalization" has always been a difficult point to achieve.
With AI technology, personalized learning is possible. Xueersi has been having an exclusive AI team since 2020 to tackle key problems with automatic problem-solving technology. The latest Xueersi learning machine released in December 2023 has a higher-performance hardware configuration, and also has intelligent tools such as AI question shooting and AI correction. The biggest highlight is the carrying of the Xueersi Nine Chapters Model (MATHGPT). This large model will identify the weak points of knowledge through "Q&A interaction", and add exercises in the subsequent learning process, so that each child who uses the learning machine has the possibility of achieving one-on-one personalized learning.
Considering the children's concentration in the face of the tablet learning machine, Xueersi learning machine has also designed a variety of ways to make children fall in love with learning. Zhao Puzheng said that minute-level high-frequency interaction can make children pay attention in the learning process, "It's like getting out of class, every time the children raise their hands to be paid attention to by the teacher, and every time they answer a question, they are encouraged by the teacher." Based on the children's psychological satisfaction, the learning machine has also designed a set of global incentive systems, including starlight values, medal systems, future treasure boxes, etc. Every time you learn and ask questions, you're motivated.
To do a good job of a learning terminal product, there are more things to consider. A senior industry figure once suggested to him, "If the learning machine uses a consumer flat panel electronic display, it can't protect the eyes, and parents may not be at ease to consider it." ”
For a time, the learning machine project was suspended. If you insist on using the eye-friendly "paper-like screen", it means that the cooperation with 3C manufacturers will not be able to continue, because 3C manufacturers do not have a "paper-like screen" product line. In order to meet the three characteristics of eye protection, handwriting and lightness at the same time, his colleague Yu Lei looked for glass resources everywhere, and finally jointly developed a screen display solution with the screen module factory, that is, "paper-like screen + high resolution". Four months later, the test was successful, and the pixel density of the paper-like screen used by Xueersi learning machine reached 246ppi, becoming the top configuration in the learning machine product line. And now the second generation of Xueersi learning machine is equipped with 1235 inches 2The screen with 5K resolution and support for a 120Hz refresh rate makes it clearer and smoother when studying** or reading study materials. What's more, it has also obtained TUV Rheinland low blue light certification and flicker-free certification, and has built-in 30 intelligent eye protection functions to effectively reduce eye fatigue.
At a time when the discussion of "county-level education" is hot, Zhao Puzheng said that not all students can learn from the best teachers in first-tier cities, and children in county areas lack access to high-quality educational resources. To a certain extent, the learning machine can make up for the lack of resources in some fields, and play a certain role in the reallocation of educational resources for universal education and education.
He said that Xueersi Learning Machine hopes to become "a good teammate of mothers and good friends of children" and truly help families. "Science and technology help education equity", he believes that education is balanced and inclusive, not only relying on education services, but also relying on science and technology, from productization to commercialization. He said that from Xueersi online school to Xueersi publishing, and then to Xueersi hardware, they have actually been advancing along the line of science and technology to help balance and benefit education. In addition to storing timely updated information, the learning machine also has AI technology to formulate different learning plans for different people, providing convenience for personalized learning and creating social value.
Before the launch of the learning machine, at the insistence of Zhao Puzheng, this product was named "Xueersi", the three words "Xueersi" are the three words with the heaviest volume within Xueersi, and they are also the most cherished brand of the company's owners. On December 19, 2023, Xueersi officially released the new XPAD flagship series of learning machines. "Science and technology change the world, education makes the future", in the era of AI changing the world, Xueersi makes education embrace science and technology and lead the "science of learning".