Physical education teacher takes students to play with technology "Metaverse"

Author: Chutian Metropolis Daily News reporter Zou Hao Intern Xie Yuxin Correspondent Weng Tao

The physical education teacher takes students to play with the technological “metaverse”

Photo provided by interviewee Zhou Zhen

Zhou Zhen (first from right) takes students to participate in Hubei Province student digital literacy practice activities

Zhou Zhen takes students to shoot micro-videos

“Hi, everyone, I am ‘Duao’ from Duodaoshi Primary School in Duodao District, Jingmen City, Hubei Province…” On the screen, the digital virtual human “Duao” introduced himself in a childish voice. This is a scene from the online live broadcast of meteorological science knowledge in primary and secondary schools across the country at the end of last year. The virtual human “Duo Duo” is modeled after the students of Duo Dao Shi Primary School. With the support of motion augmentation technology and face augmentation technology, the body movements and expressions of the virtual digital and real people are consistent, bringing an immersive viewing experience to the audience. As soon as the live broadcast was released, it attracted 50,000 fans and received 2 million likes. This is the first “Yuanverse + Meteorological Science Popularization” project initiated by Zhou Zhen in cooperation with the Jingmen Meteorological Bureau.

In the past 12 years of teaching, Zhou Zhen has been able to teach children not only sports, but also scientific and technological knowledge such as programming, artificial intelligence, and “Metaverse”.

Teach yourself 8 software from scratch

In 2011, Zhou Zhen graduated from Central China Normal University with a major in physical education as the first free normal school student in the country and became a physical education teacher at Duodaoshi Primary School.

“Half of the bookcases in my home are professional books.” He is a graduate student majoring in physical education, but he is quite interested in information technology. On weekdays, Zhou Zhen often reads related books, thinks about how to integrate information technology with course teaching across disciplines, and conducts practical exploration. In March 2018, he presided over a project titled “Research on Automatically Generating Class Tables for Students’ Physical Fitness Monitoring Using Excel VBA”. By using Excel’s VBA programming technology, he successfully developed an automatic class table generation system, which provided convenience for the school’s physical education teaching. With self-improvement, he gradually emerged in the school’s audio-visual education field and became the director of the school’s audio-visual education center.

“My knowledge reserves must be kept up-to-date at all times, because only when you are constantly thinking fresh can you take the lead.” On the front line of school science and technology education, Zhou Zhen continues to improve his professionalism, participates in various trainings, and learns the latest and latest technology. Cutting edge expertise.

Recalling the birth process of the virtual person “Duoduo”, Zhou Zhen is still very emotional. “I taught myself 8 pieces of software from scratch.” Zhou Zhen said frankly that he “crossed the river by feeling the stones” all the way in terms of core technology research. At the beginning of the design, Zhou Zhen recalled the “motion capture” technology he learned in college, so he decided to apply this technology to meteorological science. This inspiration has been supported by everyone, but there are still many technical difficulties.

In order to implement his idea, he contacted a technology company in Beijing to purchase equipment. “They just provided the equipment, and we have to figure it out by ourselves when we come back.” After Zhou Zhen and his teachers worked overtime to study the equipment and wear it, they started to tackle the technical problems alone. “Many have never been in contact with it, and those who don’t know it can go to the official website to learn by themselves.” It took Zhou Zhen two full weeks to connect software and hardware, realize motion synchronization, connect to third-party platforms, and reproduce data… Seemingly simple technical operations.

Leading the team to participate in the national competition and winning the “Innovation Star”

“This requires a very strong heart. Persistence depends on the original intention of education.” Zhou Zhen’s job is a physical education teacher. Part-time audio-visual work has become his norm, and he even worked overtime until 6 in the morning.

That morning, the sky was just slightly bright, and the first batch of students for the morning physical education training had already entered the school. Only then did Zhou Zhen turn off his computer, leave the campus and go home to take a shower and change clothes, and hurried back to school to continue his classes. “Although it is hard work, you must work hard to break through technical difficulties.” Talking about the difficulty that touched him the most, it was the preparation process for the national student information literacy promotion practice that ended on July 25 this year.

“From March to July 26, I didn’t have a good rest.” In March this year, after Zhou Zhen got the project mission statement, he began to slowly streamline it, constantly optimizing algorithms and debugging. Then assign programming tasks to the students, and the students practice to complete. “As a tutor, I mainly provide guidance and guidance. In fact, it is more about the children learning, exploring and improving themselves.” During this process, Zhou Zhen was moved by the students’ persistence in studying technology. “The children are amazing. They sit all morning and study these things with a sinking heart.”

Even though school was on holiday on July 6, Zhou Zhen was still busy with tasks. As soon as the holiday was over, he rushed to Chibi to take the students to participate in provincial training. After the training, he only stayed home for three days, and then immediately led the team to Zhuji, Zhejiang to prepare for the competition. In the end, the Daodaoshi Primary School team won the “Innovation Star” award in two projects: Creative Intelligent Manufacturing and Intelligent Museum.

“We have two daughters in our family. The eldest daughter is 10 years old and the younger daughter is 4 years old. Sometimes she will send a video saying that she misses me.” Talking about his family, Zhou Zhen said that his wife is also a teacher, and she understands and supports his work very much.

Set up a science and technology club to build a science and education first school

As the director of the school’s audio-visual education center, Zhou Zhen, with his love for science and technology education, focuses on resource integration and “hierarchical” education and training, making the school a pioneer in science and technology education.

He created the “four systems” science and technology education mechanism of club system, tutor system, points system, and talent evaluation system. In management practice, he gathers resources from high-tech enterprises and science popularization bases, actively contacts science and technology tutors outside the school, trains school science and technology counselors, assists various forms of science popularization education clubs in the school, and encourages students to use their hands and brains and actively participate in practice.

In September 2022, during the inclusive artificial intelligence education and training, Zhou Zhen invited Mr. Peng Xianqing, an expert of the provincial maker team, to give a special lecture. Practical training was carried out for participating teachers around the outline of artificial intelligence, database construction and “AI teaching board”. Through expert lectures, interactive Q&A, tour guidance and other links, the teaching level of participating teachers was improved. In November of the same year, the science and innovation education course of Duodaoshi Primary School - an inclusive course of artificial intelligence education was officially launched. After participating in the training, teachers organized student group cooperation through inquiry activities and guided students to carry out AI programming design. With the help of the AI board, students learn and experience functions such as text recognition, image recognition, and speech recognition. Some students also got started with simple robot programming and successfully instructed the robot to complete activities according to instructions. Through real experiences, students deeply felt the powerful functions and unlimited potential of artificial intelligence robots, which also inspired their desire to explore technology.

In addition to science and innovation education courses, Zhou Zhen organizes various forms of science and technology club classes every week to create a lively atmosphere of technological innovation with teacher-student interaction. He led the team to open MakeX smart cars, programming drones, computer painting, 3D intelligent manufacturing, fun programming, micro video shooting, controlling the future, creative manufacturing, aircraft models, underwater robots, meteorological observation and other technology clubs; through years of "hierarchical "Through the progressive training exchanges, teachers have also mastered scientific operating skills, which has promoted the integration of information technology and curriculum. Some teachers have also mastered advanced concepts such as Steam, AI intelligent programming, and makers.

With the advent of the era of AI wisdom and the promulgation of the National Education Informatization 2.0 Action Plan, big data, cloud computing, virtual technology, 3D printing, robots, etc. have affected and changed education. Talking about the significance of science and technology to primary school education, Zhou Zhen said: “Primary school is a critical period for children to absorb new knowledge, and providing them with technology education will help them become competitive innovators and leaders in the future; Technology education can promote students’ creativity, innovation and independent thinking ability.”