The Shanghai Education Commission on Wednesday released a plan for the digital transformation of the city's education system.

The plan was unveiled after Shanghai was approved in August by the Ministry of Education to be the only trial city in China for educational digital transformation, which is expected to provide references for other places.

The plan has set a goal to make Shanghai a landmark in digital transformation in the education field in the whole country by 2023, with a series of experiences and scenarios that can be promoted elsewhere in China.

The application scenarios will cover 10 categories, including teaching, learning, management, assessment, research and school-family interaction.

The city will build 100 benchmark schools for educational digital technology application. It will explore artificial intelligence-empowered individualized and explorative learning models, immersive or experiential learning with the assistance of virtual reality/ augmented reality technologies, as well as multi-point collaborative teaching with 5G support. It will also innovate teaching and learning by integrating online and offline strengths.

Resource sharing It will develop digital applications for experiments, training, facility management, infrastructure security, environmental monitoring, proper sports activities, nutrition management and school-family cooperation. Each district will build a digital base for local schools for data and resource sharing and coordination.

"Previously, schools developed their own digital platforms, which led to a waste of costs and resources, as well as isolation of data," said Li Yongzhi, deputy director of the commission.

"With the shared digital base, we will better integrate school and social resources to benefit students and develop digitalized records of students' learning and growth, which will make digitalized assessment possible."

Digitalization is not for school students alone, but also for senior citizens. The commission will develop programs to teach older people how to use digital devices and adapt to smart life.