Sony launches new product to tap China's education sector

An education solution developed by Tokyo-headquartered Sony Corp made its world debut in Beijing on Monday, as the company steps up efforts to target China's surging STEAM education sector.

STEAM refers to the fields of study in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. The STEAM education aims to teach students to think critically and have an engineering or designing approach toward real-world problems while building on their math and science bases.

The education solution, namely KOOV, aims at stimulating students' curiosity and improving their learning ability. Through an ecological system integrating school classes, community courses, robot classroom, contests, online-offline teaching system and other fields, KOOV greatly raises education efficiency and imparts programming knowledge to students in a short period of time, said the company.

"China is one of the world's most important education markets. This is why we launch the product first in China. With the country's surging demand for STEAM talents, we hope to establish a new educational ecological system. In the future, we will develop more courses and introduce more STEAM educational products in the coming years," said Masaaki Isozu, CEO of Sony Global Education. 

Hiroshi Takahashi, president of Sony China Ltd, said: "Sony pursues sustainable development in China. Currently, KOOV mainly targets first-tier cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. We are considering expanding our presence in second- and third-tier cities in the future as well. This is a long-term commitment."

In order to design the most suitable education solution for Chinese students, Sony teamed up with Chinese educational research institutions and universities, such as East China Normal University, Beijing Normal University, and Nanjing Normal University to jointly develop the courses.

According to the company, KOOV is designed for children from kindergarten to ninth grade. For younger kids, the courses generally use stories to arouse their curiosity and offer them intuitive perception, while for older ones, the courses use artificial intelligent guidance to teach them abstract knowledge.

Zhao Wei, general manager of the education department of Sony China Ltd, noted that "we introduce the education solution to Chinese students at a young age to stimulate their creativity and imagination. The earlier a kid gets access to STEAM knowledge, the more benefit s/he can get".

Hao Jinghua, a professor at the School of Education Science of Nanjing Normal University, said that "STEAM education courses are important because they offer modes of thinking to solve problems. Every one － from nine months to 99 years old － needs the knowledge. The courses should be included in general education".