Coming to Binh Son district, Quang Ngai province on a nice, early autumn day, I had an opportunity to attend a training in ICT for school management, for 30 school managers from 24 lower secondary schools in Binh Son district.
This training was a multiplication workshop focusing on ICT skills of educational managers. The idea of using free and user-friendly tools for everyday educational management practice, contributing to improving capacity of school managers was raised a year and a half ago. And after a some time for developing material with much contribution from the core group members, in July 2013, the TOT workshop was organized for 40 core group members from five DOETs. As a follow-up activity, five DOETs planned to organize 95 multiplication workshops, reaching 100% managers from all lower secondary schools in these provinces.
The multiplication workshop in Binh Son was organized for two days during which participants were introduced to specific ICT tools. Mind Manager is expected to be helpful for school managers in developing a plan/idea, systematizing and synthesising information and presenting it in a clear and logic way. All of them contribute to different aspects of daily school management practice. As a complementary tool to Mind Manager, specific tools of Google Apps such as Google Calendar, Google Drive and Google Form were introduced to school managers with the expectation of strengthening their other skills such as time management, skills in working with Word documents online, skills in data collection and synthesis, etc.
Talking about the workshop, Mr. Nguyễn Hòa, the Principal of Bình Châu Lower Secondary School, who has been working as an educational manager for 20 years said: "The workshop is really useful… With the support of some software, the process of decision making among principal and vice principal can be much faster, reducing the time spent on face-to face meetings… Not only used in school management practice, these tools can also be instructed to teachers so that they can use it in designing lessons and developing tests…" Most of the participants of the class, who have also been working as a school manager for long, shared Mr. Nguyen Hoa’s opinion. This could be seen in their enthusiam and activeness during the whole training and products of their efforts.
Similar multiplication workshops are taking place in all five provinces during the period of September-October, to strengthen the capacity of school managers.
