Technology company iFlytek showcased its Tongchuang AI Blackboard at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai from July 17 to 20, Xinhua reported.

Teachers write on it with a smart pen as they would on a traditional board, then tap once to clean up their handwriting. A rough sketch of a triangle snaps into a standard shape and flips into a rotatable 3D model.

The system pulls up related teaching materials on its own and records lessons for students to review later.

iFlytek, a strategic partner of this year's conference, says the board is in routine use across 33 provincial-level administrative regions and more than 1,400 districts and counties.

The company says its wider education products reach over 60,000 schools and 160 million teachers and students.

China's 15th Five-Year Plan, covering 2026 to 2030, calls for integrating AI into every element and stage of education, Xinhua reported.

Five central government departments led by the Ministry of Education jointly issued an "AI Plus Education" action plan in April, requiring primary and secondary schools to fold AI into local curricula and universities to make it a basic public course, China Daily reported.

Bloomberg reported in June that the State Council followed with a five-year blueprint making AI a core capability for every student, aligning the education system with Xi Jinping's campaign to dominate advanced technologies.

The ministry said in July that China has roughly 430,000 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens serving 220 million students, staffed by 15.77 million full-time teachers.

Students are pictured during a Chinese class at Changchun Street Primary School of Wuhan during a government-organized media tour, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, Sept. 4, 2020. Photo by Reuters

At Liaoshen Street No. 2 Primary School in Shenyang's Dadong District, calligraphy students photograph their brushwork and upload it for instant AI scoring, according to Xinhua.

On the athletics track, computer vision clocks sprint times and breaks down each student's running form. Heart-rate monitors flag exertion levels during physical education.

"Smart classrooms, intelligent displays, AI calligraphy tools and smart PE systems have all become part of everyday learning for our teachers and students," principal Yuan Weiqi told Xinhua.

At Beijing No. 13 Secondary School, an AI agent processes weeks of student data before a math lesson begins, weighing classroom participation against homework and quiz results.

It produces tailored question sequences and individual assignments within minutes, which teachers then review and revise before use.

The same system identifies gaps running across a whole class. One teacher there, Zhang Meiya, used it to build lesson material on smart-home privacy disputes and the spread of AI-generated fake news for a class on citizens' rights.

At Beijing No. 35 High School, an agent now handles the first pass on student programming assignments.

"Previously, we had to examine each student's code line by line, which took a tremendous amount of time and effort," programming teacher Dong Yue told Xinhua. The hours recovered go into lesson planning and professional development rather than repetitive grading.

Every primary and secondary school student in Beijing takes at least eight class hours of AI courses a year, Li Yi, director of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, said in April. By the end of 2025, he said, AI adoption across the city's schools had reached 87.7%.

Hangzhou, home to AI developer DeepSeek, set a higher floor of 10 hours, Global Times reported. In Wenzhou, in eastern Zhejiang Province, students in AI literacy classes build digital avatars that introduce their city's culture in the local dialect.

China connected every primary and secondary school to the internet in 2020.

Vice Minister of Education Wang Jiayi has said the technology points toward individualized learning pathways replacing a one-size-fits-all model, with more flexibility and greater learner autonomy.

Current systems still misjudge some kinds of writing, including travel essays, and struggle to follow how a student reasons through a math problem, Xinhua reported. Data does not always transfer cleanly between competing platforms.

Yu Shengquan, a professor at Beijing Normal University, warned that handing AI the tasks designed to build children's thinking could produce what he called a "cognitive short-circuit" at a formative stage.

Ma Zhanyu, a professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said AI functions as a tool when it organizes information or returns feedback. Problems arise when students surrender their own analytical and creative roles to it.

"That is precisely why the role of teachers has not been diminished but rather strengthened," said Wu Chunhui, vice principal of Beijing No. 13 Secondary School.

"AI is an assisting tool. It cannot replace teachers in providing values-based guidance, inspiring students intellectually, or engaging empathetically with students in complex situations."