In recent years, Yuxi City has closely followed national and provincial deployments for artificial intelligence (AI) general education, grounded in local educational realities, and adhered to comprehensive planning, tiered advancement, and industry-education integration.

From foundational education enlightenment to deep cultivation of vocational skills, the city has built a full-chain AI education system covering primary and secondary schools as well as vocational colleges, empowering the digital transformation of education through AI and cultivating science and innovation talent for the new era.

Strengthening AI Enlightenment in Foundational Education

Entering a classroom at Yuxi Nie'er Primary School, a lively and engaging AI general education class titled "Dunhuang Creation Records" is underway. Qiu Liangbin, deputy director of the school's teaching and research office, patiently guides second-grade students in organizing creative prompts, using AI tools to generate imaginative images, and encouraging students to peer-review, revise, and refine their work. In class, children eagerly ask questions and boldly create, exploring the mysteries of AI through hands-on practice. Qiu Liangbin guides students in generating images from text using AI. As a national primary and secondary school AI education base, Yuxi Nie'er Primary School has established a comprehensive AI general education curriculum covering grades one through six, with a tiered teaching model tailored to different grade levels: grades three through six are taught AI technical principles and hands-on operations by professional information technology teachers, while grades one and two receive fun enlightenment through specialized training for homeroom teachers. According to Qiu Liangbin, the school's AI courses cover diverse content including text-to-image, image-to-video, and image recognition, honing students' innovative thinking through practical exercises. Meanwhile, the school places great emphasis on AI ethics education, with advanced grade students receiving focused instruction on the limitations of AI technology, guiding them to view AI-generated content rationally, discern information authenticity, and maintain correct value orientations. The systematic and well-rounded AI curriculum and engaging classroom formats allow the seeds of technology to take root in young minds. After learning, student Wang Yusen mastered practical AI skills such as voice-to-text and image-text-to-video conversion. "AI technology not only helped me broaden my learning approach but also taught me to use technological tools rationally," Wang Yusen said.

Promoting Deep Integration of AI Technology with Vocational Education

Building on the foundation of AI enlightenment in basic education, Yuxi City has deepened its efforts in the industry-education integration track of vocational education, promoting deep integration of AI technology with vocational education and precisely cultivating practical science and innovation talent suited to industry development. Yuxi Agriculture Vocation-Technical College, closely following the municipal party committee and government's deployment for AI-empowered vocational education development, has deepened school-enterprise cooperation, advanced industry-education integration, and comprehensively carried out AI skills talent training. According to a relevant official from Yuxi Agriculture Vocation-Technical College, the school has conducted multiple rounds of AI technology industry-education integration training, with a focus on特色 skills training in data annotation and AI animation production. In the future, the school will improve its AI teaching system covering specialty application, curriculum design, faculty development, and talent output, and build a diversified AI training system for teachers, students, and the broader community. At the same time, relying on its Eshan campus, it will create an AI technology entrepreneurship incubation base, offering AI skills training to veterans, unemployed college graduates, and surplus rural labor, continuously supplying practical talent for the local AI industry. The innovative upgrade of classroom teaching has injected strong vitality into AI empowerment of vocational education. In an AI project practical training class, Tang Jize, a teacher from the School of Information and Electrical Engineering at Yuxi Agriculture Vocation-Technical College, introduced the latest generation of AI tools, guiding students to locally deploy intelligent tools and conduct hands-on training, sharpening students' intelligent practical abilities, effectively enhancing their core competitiveness for entrepreneurship and employment, and helping them adapt to the demands of the digital workplace.

Advancing Normalized Development of AI Education

From deep cultivation on campus to citywide popularization, the Yuxi Municipal Education and Sports Bureau coordinates planning and targets efforts precisely to promote balanced, standardized, and normalized development of AI education across the city. Dai Tingbo, director of the Information Center of the Yuxi Municipal Education and Sports Bureau, introduced that Yuxi City has achieved full coverage of digital facilities in primary and secondary schools, built a municipal AI remote classroom inspection and teaching research platform, and leveraged smart interactive classrooms to break down urban-rural educational barriers, achieving coordinated development and resource sharing of urban and rural AI education. Beyond hardware empowerment, the city has also continuously improved its curriculum system and educational mechanisms. Currently, many primary and secondary schools across the city have normalized AI courses, building a tiered AI education system. Starting from this autumn semester, AI local courses have been fully launched in fourth grade of primary school and seventh grade of middle school, achieving large-scale popularization of AI general education during the compulsory education stage. Next, the Yuxi Municipal Education and Sports Bureau will deepen strategic cooperation with leading domestic AI enterprises, focusing on key areas such as smart classrooms and education metropolitan area networks; continuously upgrade campus fiber optic networks and intelligent facilities, expand AI course coverage, and further advance pilot programs for intelligent teaching applications; improve the normalized training mechanism for AI teachers, constantly strengthening the local science and innovation education talent pool; and continue to deepen the city's educational digital transformation, empowering high-quality development of Yuxi's education through AI and cultivating reserve strength for the local science and innovation industry.