From June 5 to 16, 2011, the multiplication workshops on ICT 4 ATL were organized by VVOB in partnership with Thai Nguyen DOET. The targeted participants are the lower secondary school teachers from Thai Nguyen province, which makes it different than the previous trainings with focus on school managers. In total, 13 sessions were organized for 390 teachers from Lower Secondary Schools in 9 districts in Thai Nguyen province.
Thai Nguyen is located in the North of Vietnam with nine districts covering the area of 3,535 km². The population is more than 1.3 million people. (Report on Thai Nguyen’s current environmental conditions by Nong Khanh Bang, Thai Nguyen Teacher Training Institute, 20/2/2009).
The 13 multiplication workshops were facilitated by six members of the core group which received the input training in Hanoi in April 2010. As most of them have university degrees in ICT, they are all well qualified for this technical area. Almost every district received a training arranged by the DOET with two or three teachers from every school coming to take part in the training. However, the city of Thai Nguyen and the three biggest districts - Dinh Hoa, Dai Tu and Pho Yen - received two trainings each to ensure equal access of the schools here to this training. Except for Thai Nguyen City with only 18% of the students being ethnic minorities, all the other districts have a considerable high percentage of ethnic minority students, around 60% (statistics of Thai Nguyen DOET).
In this field trip, we visited two multiplication workshops, one in Thai Nguyen City and the other in Dinh Hoa district. On June 7, 2011 we had a chance to observe the trainings delivered by Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan and Mr. Nguyen Thanh Ha. The trainings took place in Chu Van An Lower Secondary school, which is right in the center of Thai Nguyen City. Thanks to the trainers’ careful preparation and participants’ enthusiasm, the trainings met their expected results.
On June 8 we went to Trung Hoi Lower Secondary school in Dinh Hoa district which is 60 kilometers away from Thai Nguyen City. Two trainings were organzied on this same day, facilitated by Mr. Tran Manh Hung, Mr. Luong Thanh Thuy, Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan and Mr. Duong Van Quang. This is a poor mountainous district within the area of program 135. The district has 24 communes, 23 of which have their own Lower Secondary schools and one district has the Lower and Upper Secondary schools combined together. Students from ethnic minorities account for 60%, even 80-90% in some communes. With the support from the government, all the schools are concrete buildings now and this is the case of Trung Hoi Lower Secondary School where the trainings took place. The school was equipped with a computer lab of twenty computers that are still quite new. However, ICT skills of the participants here is limited compared to that of those in the city. Despite that difference, we felt cheered up with their enthusiasm and confident that the program’s interventions are really meeting their needs and making a contribution to improving lower secondary education quality here.
After the trainings, all the participants were informed of the competition of ICT 4 ATL. It will give an opportunity to all the teachers from lower secondary schools to shine with their abilities and creativity in teaching and developing teaching materials for more sharing and dissemination in the future.
