5G and Smart Education: Educational Reform Based on Intelligent Technology

The 5G communication technology serving a wide range of vertical industries is maturing, which provides a possible boost for the development of smart education and lays a foundation for solving the principal contradiction in current education. With the characteristics of ultra-high speed, low latency, low energy consumption, massive network capacity, and high reliability, the 5G technology is applied with other technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), big data, and blockchain to promote the application upgrading of intelligent education technology. This paper analyzes the intelligent education technology and its eight typical applications in the 5G era, which include smart safe campus, integrated learning spaces, synchronous cyber classrooms, teachers' professional development, robot learning partners, mobile and ubiquitous learning, virtual simulation training, and smart e-textbooks. Then, it discusses how intelligent education technology promotes changes in the modes of learning and teaching in the 5G era from three dimensions: individual learning, collaborative group learning, and classroom-based collective teaching. At last, the framework of smart education in the 5G era is proposed from the perspectives of intelligent education technology and its typical applications, changes in learning and teaching, and the new ecosystem of smart education.