Online course early childhood education

By staff writers – Translated by Uyen Phuong

Lùng Thị Hoài (second, left) and her electric firework device in 2021 STEM festival in Si Ma Cai District, the northern mountainous province of Lào Cai. Photo khoahocphattrien.vn

STEM is an approach to learning and development that integrates science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Students are expected to develop their skills through STEM education including problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, decision making and acceptance of failure.

Hundreds of students in the district have benefited from STEM education.

This was the first year the STEM festival had been held in the district – one of the poorest districts of the country after the provincial Department of Education and Training Department issued a document to instruct the implementation of STEM education in secondary schools in September 2020.

Nguyễn Thị Kiều Oanh, head of the district’s Education and Training Office, said officials of the department had visited many localities to plan the festival.

The festival was not only a chance for the students to show off the electric firework device but also run toy cars on race tracks using kinetic energy, Khoa học và Phát Triển (Science and Development) online newspaper reported.

Also at the festival, the office invited two students in Lý Tự Trọng Secondary School in the province’s Lào Cai City to operate a robot, programmed by them, Oanh said.

The two students won the first prize in the robotics competition in the north, held by the Central Youth Union in November 2020, she added.

Oanh said the office wanted students in Nàn Sán Secondary School to do more in the next festivals, such as programming robots like the students in Lý Tự Trọng Secondary School in Lào Cai City did.

To do that, the office plans to hold a training course for programming robots for both teachers and students in a total of eight schools in the district this month, she said.

The training course will be organised with the support of teachers in Lào Cai City and the STEM Alliance, she said.

Established in 2015, the STEM Alliance – an organisation dedicated to connecting volunteers participating in STEM promotion activities – has trained some 10,000 general teachers about STEM education and helped establish more than 500 STEM clubs across the country, especially in rural areas.

The alliance also plays an important role in organising six National STEM Festivals and five Open Math Festivals.

STEM universal education

The district administration issued Project No 04- DA/HU on July 31, 2020, on improving the quality of education and training for 2020-25. The project aims to promote STEM education at all schools in the district.

The move came under the goal of STEM universal education of the provincial education sector.

Over the past five years, the provincial education sector has conducted many STEM education training programmes for thousands of teachers.

The education sector has also set up STEM advisory groups for all levels of the education sector to build a formal system of STEM education.

To do that, the provincial education sector has received support from experienced STEM educators such as Đặng Văn Sơn of Hà Nội National University, Hoàng Vân Đông of Electricity University, Dương Tuấn Hưng of Việt Nam Academy of Science and Technology, Lê Chí Ngọc and Hàn Huy Dũng of Hà Nội University of Technology.

All students in Ho Chi Minh City have been allowed to go back to school in early March as the COVID-19 pandemic has been put under control again in the southern metropolis.

The municipal People’s Committee on Wednesday issued a document stating that students and learners of local schools, universities, and other educational institutions will resume their normal classes on March 1.

The city’s Department of Education and Training and Department of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs will provide local schools with guidance on pandemic prevention and control measures.

Students who have been to virus-hit areas will be required to fill out health declaration forms.

Stern penalties will be imposed upon those failing to declare their health status or violating rules on COVID-19 prevention and control.

All students, teachers, and other staff members will have to complete online health declaration on a daily basis.

Following the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February, all students were required to switch to remote learning until the end of the month due to the complicated COVID-19 developments.

The city recorded 36 community-based COVID-19 cases between February 6 and 11.

A total of 35 locations in 10 districts and Thu Duc City were sealed off to prevent the disease from spreading further into the community.

As of Tuesday afternoon, lockdown had been lifted from all of these locations.

The municipal Department of Education and Training on the same day proposed that all students be allowed to return to school on March 1.

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Experts believe that the schools which first applied distance training appeared in 1870s in the US and early 1890s in the UK.

In Vietnam, distance training modes were first applied in 1990s and they became more common after 2000s thanks to the internet and education market development.

The appearance and popularity of internet, digitized data and software technology recently have given a strong push to the development of distance education. This mode of learning can be applied within schools, but also at other institutions and many different fields, with no limitation in boundaries, space and time.

The obvious advantages of distance education and training are flexibility, convenience and economy, which satisfies the learning demand of high numbers of students at the same time.

However, a lot of problems arose when Vietnam began organizing online teaching on a large scale during social distancing.

The most obvious problem is the lack of facilities for online teaching and learning. Not all students and teachers have laptops or smartphones, and not all families have members with proficiency in technological skills. The problem is more serious in remote and difficult areas.

Online teaching requires learners to look intently at a screen. It becomes a boring one-way interaction between teachers and learners.

Experts have recently mentioned a problem in Vietnam which has existed for a long time that during lessons: teachers just talk and students just write down. And the problem may become even more serious with online teaching if teachers cannot design their lessons well.

Because of age characteristics, primary school children find it difficult to concentrate on lessons and they are easily distracted.

The common problems of Vietnamese students, including critical thinking skills, team discussion and opinion presentation have also been exposed more clearly during online teaching.

During online lessons, students tend to keep silent and they only raise their voice when they are asked to do this. This may affect the outcome of the lessons.

Online teaching could be a hurdle when teachers want to apply psychological therapies to inspire students and raise excitement, because the application of psychological skills need direct interactions.

So, it is necessary to make some adjustments when organizing online teaching.

First, online learning must not be a solution applied on a large scale for all sizes of classes.

Second, online teaching requires the active participation of both teachers and students, which poses requirements including high level of self-discipline.

Online teaching is unavoidable in the context of Covid-19. But this must not be seen as the only solution.

Nguyen Van Dang

Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics