“Digital transformation of education” is a hot topic of present educational reform and the development tendency of future educational innovation. Digital transformation of education, as a process stressing technology-driven educational innovation and reform, boasts the importance of development in its birth and practice. It is driven jointly by social and cultural transitions, the impetus of technical innovation, the guidance of national policies, and the endogenous development of the education system. The logic of practice of the transformation can be regarded as the behavior choice dominated by value and intentions, and the underlying generation principles in practice comprise the “problem-driven + concept-led” principle, the “system evolution + innovative breakthrough” principle, and the “value assessment + iterative optimization” principle. At present, under the background of constructing the new ecology of a smart society and a high-quality education system, and under the pressure of COVID-19 pandemic, the transformation faces golden development opportunities. Nonetheless, the present transformation practice still has some differences from the expected value orientation. Therefore, it is required to research and develop a mature digital education model or framework, carry out a national digital education preparation campaign, work for pilot schemes for the transformation at all levels and of all kinds, attach importance to theoretical research on education relating to the digital transformation of education, and more actively embrace the new wave of educational reform worldwide.

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.

Digital educational resources have become essential elements of modern educational public services. China’s national program on new educational infrastructure construction has proposed to take new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources as one of the critical tasks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical basis for advancing the reform and development of digital educational resources in the new era. It classifies the current development and realistic challenges of China’s digital educational resources, and summaries and interprets the directions of the three construction projects of new type resources and tools, the resource supply system, and the resource supervisory system. It depicts the prospect of digital educational resource construction in the intelligent era in the combination of the strategic layout of the policies on new educational infrastructure construction. It also discusses such key technologies supporting new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources as multimodal learning analytics, disciplinary knowledge graphs, machine learning, and blockchain. It finally proposes a specific development path for new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources.

Digital and smart education has become the new orientation of educational reform. Further promoting the application of the pilot Smart Education of China platform is one of the effective means to implement the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization, an essential deployment of China’s strategic decision on digital education and a pivotal move to stimulate the construction of digital China. With the Smart Education of China as the research object and based on its strategic superiority and connotation of construction, the paper analyzes the current status and development of the construction and application of smart education platforms and resources, explores the patterns and methods of provincial promotion with Jiangsu Province as an example, and puts forth countermeasures and suggestions in terms of platform interconnection, resources construction, innovation mechanism, digital transformation, and safety specification. This paper aims to provide reference and experience for the provincial promotion, application, and practice of the Smart Education of China. It also targets at facilitating the interconnected promotion and innovative application in different places, establishing the “extensively accessible” smart resource public service system at the country, province, city, county, and school levels .

In education, digitalization has become a pivotal force to promote educational reform in the new era, featuring demand-driven development of digital transformation in education. Digital transformation in higher education aims to reshape its new capabilities based on next-generation digital technologies concerning the quality of development of higher education. As per the scope of services and composition of responsible subjects like personnel, digital transformation in higher education should focus on three key areas: talent development, scientific research, as well as management and services. In addition, digital transformation should be structured based on several types of content: essential data, environments, operational functions, organizational structure, and systems. Moreover, paths of guarantee, action, and operation should be taken concurrently to facilitate digital transformation in higher education.

At present, intelligent digital technology is irreversibly influencing all levels of the education field. The construction of an education system serving lifelong learning has also become an essential field of digital transformation. In the face of the impact of marketization, aging, and networking, as well as the update and iteration of intelligent digital technology, the construction of the lifelong learning system not only needs to realize the transformation with the help of digital technology but also needs to clarify the internal correlation of transformation goals, computing power support, multiple collaboration, and learning evaluation from the framework structure. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that the penetration of technology into lifelong learning may cause the misunderstanding of technology supremacy and the trap of tool rationality. Therefore, technological empowerment and enablement can accelerate the digital transformation of the lifelong learning system and coordinate with community education, elderly education, vocational education, higher education, and other fields to construct an integrated environment. Additionally, being critical issues requiring attention from society, they are also vital ways to overcome the above dis advantages, promote interactions between communities, governments, and professional education organizations, and improve the digital and intelligent learning environment.