On October 25, the 5th "AI Future" National Middle School Students’ Artificial Intelligence Innovation Summit and Newton Apple‑Tree Talent Cultivation event was held at the Shanghai Science Hall. Two AI projects from Hefei middle‑school students took first prize. In an era of rapid AI development, what core skills should secondary students cultivate? This summit offers some clues.

Projects focused on solving real‑life problems

The 5th "AI Future" summit drew participation from over 400 schools across more than 20 provinces and cities — including Beijing, Macao, Xinjiang, Hainan, Sichuan, Anhui and Jiangsu. Shushan District of Hefei, invited as a member unit of the China Educational Society’s Alliance for Science‑Technology Innovation Education, sent teams to compete.

At the student AI project presentations, outstanding middle‑school representatives from around the country showcased their innovative work at the AI frontier. Ideas ranged from AI‑assisted golf practice to AI‑aided emergency rescue and AI screening for drug resistance — all student‑originated solutions with practical designs. Two students from Hefei — Peng Zhenyang (Wangyue Campus, Swan Lake Education Group, No.50 Middle School) and Yan Xu (Jinhu Middle School) — won first prizes and were named "Stars of the Future."

In middle‑school Chinese, memorizing classical texts is explicitly required by curriculum standards. Because Classical Chinese is concise and rooted in complex cultural contexts, many students report difficulties: "I don’t understand it, I can’t remember it, I forget it easily."

How to make memorization easier? With that goal, Peng spent more than four months on research, design and testing under teacher guidance and built an app to help. The app supports intelligent Q&A, line‑by‑line explanations, offers targeted memory techniques and recitation strategies, and automatically detects and corrects wrong or missing characters during dictation. Students who took part in internal testing reported more than a 20% improvement in memorization efficiency using the AI assistant.

"Students should learn to harness AI, not compete with it"

"Experts and professors from Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and others explained the wonders of AI and science, and exchanges with students from other schools were eye‑opening," said Yan Xu, a ninth‑grader at Jinhu Middle School, reflecting on the Shanghai trip.

From the rise of DeepSeek to robot teachers entering classrooms, rapid AI progress has put youth education squarely in the spotlight. "Some parents worry their children won’t be able to compete with robots — but we shouldn’t be trying to compete with AI; we should learn to harness it," said Zhang Meihua, a teacher with nearly 15 years of frontline science‑education experience. She emphasized that AI education must go beyond showing students how advanced the technology is; crucially, educational design must concretely cultivate critical thinking and creativity.

Zhang acknowledged that the AI era brings new challenges and demands for secondary education, requiring teachers to adapt and innovate across multiple fronts — for example, strengthening information literacy education, emphasizing interdisciplinary teaching, and enhancing hands‑on practical skills. "Whether teachers or students, facing the challenges squarely is the only way to see the future."

Source: Hefei Evening News