The UN's Millennium Development Goals included the ambition that by 2015 all the world's children would complete primary school. This has largely been achieved: nine out of ten children are now enrolled. Alas, the figure is not as impressive as it sounds. Even though most of the world's children go to school, an awful lot of them learn pretty much nothing there. According to a recent World Bank study of seven sub-Saharan African countries, half of nine-year-olds cannot read a simple word and three-quarters cannot read a simple sentence. The reason is terrible teaching: only 7% of teachers studied had the minimum knowledge needed to teach reading and writing effectively.

Paying teachers more, in the hope of recruiting better ones, is not the answer. In poor countries, teachers are well paid by local standards—annual salaries are four times GDP per person in India. Nor does raising or reducing pay seem to make much difference: neither a sharp cut in Pakistan in the late 1990s nor a sharp increase in Indonesia after 2005 had any impact on learning outcomes.

Several recent studies suggest ed-tech can help. It seems to bring about big improvements in poor countries. In a study of a range of interventions in poor countries—including smaller class sizes, incentives for teachers and pupils—tech had the biggest effect.

Some of the scarce resources being spent on teachers could therefore be better spent on ed-tech. That does not mean dumping computers on schools in the hope that children will understand how to use them, a misconception on which plenty of money has been wasted. Instead, it means providing schools with software that children can use with minimal help from adults, that gets things right more often than the teachers do, that adjusts itself to the children’s ability, that sends teachers hints about what they are supposed to be teaching.

Technology is no cure all. Good traditional teacher are not out of date, and are never likely to be. And authorities need to hold teachers to account. But ed-tech can help greatly—by assisting the best teachers and, most importantly, making up for the failings of the worst.

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“Oh my God, buy it!” I believe that you are very familiar with Li Jiaqi’s phrase. Livestreaming marketing is a method of selling products on live video streaming platforms, which are now mainly Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin. On April 1st, 2020, Luo Yonghao finished his first livestreaming marketing on Douyin. Data showed that the total amount of payments reached 110 million yuan in 3 hours, which set the record of livestreaming marketing on Douyin.

One of the most popular functions of livestreaming is the “real-time connection”. Although traditional television shopping channels also allow viewers to instantly buy recommended items, they don’t allow hosts to respond to real-time comments, nor can television sales data be readily collected to analyze customers’ purchasing behaviors or performance indicators. With this feature, potential customers can get answers to pressing questions and gain a more comprehensive impression of the products, making promotional activities more convincing and effective.

Under the influence of the current epidemic, online shopping reduces direct contact between folks, having a certain guarantee for the health of residents. At the same time, many industries are hit by the epidemic. In this situation, many businessmen walked into the studio with the aim of recovering some of the damage for the business as much as possible.

Meanwhile, the expanding of 5G has created a favorable environment for livestreaming marketing. Supported by the technology of 5G, the image quality of the live stream is clearer, so more details can be showed to customers, which helps to provide them an entirely different experience. “With the arrival of the 5G era, livestreaming will be faster, allowing users to zoom in and out of videos to see more details of products,” said the general manager for e-commerce content at Taobao.