Students take online classes in Pudong

Shanghai recently launched an online education program for all of its 1.435 million elementary and middle school students, including 350,000 in Pudong New Area.

The "Classroom on the Air" provides a total of 380 online lessons for students every week and include PE, music, art and labor courses.

The lessons, organized by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, were recorded by more than 1,000 accomplished teachers and over 200 technical workers in the city. Each lecture takes six to 10 hours to make. Nearly 1,000 videos have been made to date.

The program also includes regular eye exercises, as the courses require students to stare at their screens several hours.

The program is also available to students outside the city, including a local middle school student who went with her family to Hubei province to visit her grandma during the winter vacation and was unfortunately stranded there due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

The student has been watching lecture videos on her iPad, with the help of e-textbooks sent by her teacher in Shanghai.

To ensure everything went smoothly, the city tested out the videos on Feb 25 and 28.

The education department of Pudong also launched three online morality classes for teachers, students and their parents to improve their moral character.