The "4.0 era expressways" in Vietnam have been opened to elevate STEM education in rural and highland areas, while also opening doors for the experiences driving Vietnam's STEM education to be shared with the world.
Power of Radiance 2023
In 2023, teacher Dao Thi Hong Quyen - a recipient of the Power of Radiance 2023 Award and currently living in the village - brought good news to the entire community of STEM education in Vietnam: she was awarded the Power of Radiance Award (valued at 100,000 USD) through a direct nomination from the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) - the only annual award for a female STEM educator.
THE 5 STEM AVAILABLE STEM TEACHERS
In November 2023, alongside experts, domestic and international STEM teachers at the National STEM Festival, Ms. Quyen compiled a list of “5 STEM Teaching Masters” already available in rural and highland Vietnam.
They are the “Professor Nature” (God), the Assistant Professor of Challenges (real-life circumstances), the Tutor of Labor (practical work), the People’s Teacher in STEM (an existing source of community intellectual culture), and the “teacher of the 21st century” (Internet and digital transformation).
This compilation was not a simple task, but rather forged from the long journey of Vietnam’s STEM education over the past decade.
These 5 STEM teachers have helped systematically train a community of STEM teachers up to the district level nationwide, individuals who not only closely connect with each other but also become a continuous “sixth teacher,” regularly sharing experiences with other teachers, following the principle of “mutual development.”
They are meticulously trained to teach in the STEM education approach, from the technical design process, scientific exploration, robotics, to research on scientific and technical projects.
FROM GLASS BOTTLES TO VEX VR ROBOTICS TECHNOLOGY
Ten years ago, STEM education in rural and highland areas started with the use of recycled materials such as plastic bottles and cardboard to make water rockets.
Those were the early days of the STEM education training program for teachers in the Thái Thụy district (Thái Bình province). Now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has stepped in to help these training programs keep up with the times.
In today’s STEM training sessions, highland teachers are instructed on how to use AI (for free) to save time preparing STEM lessons, organizing district-level STEM festivals. These are fun and exciting hours of learning for them.
In Tràng Định district (Lạng Sơn province), teachers requested AI to compose poems about the “queen duck” contest (a famous contest for the beautiful blue-necked ducks in Tràng Định, where the most beautiful duck wins a prize of 30 million VND). Perhaps AI itself has composed the first poems about it.
What makes the highland teachers love AI the most is its practicality. Within seconds of receiving commands from teachers, AI helps them prepare several STEM lesson plans on the right topic. “I save 2 hours of lesson planning every day,” one excited teacher said.
Highland teachers refer to using AI assistance as “shopping,” while the rest of their work is “cooking,” making sure it’s accurate, interesting, and suitable for students’ understanding.
But they are not passive. They immediately see the power of AI and what they can do to train AI to become “better,” to “understand themselves more,” and to help them better.
The days of using scrap bottles passed quickly. Seven years ago, teachers in Nam Trực (Nam Định province), Thanh Chương (Nghệ An province), and Thái Thụy (Thái Bình province) districts began experimenting with using KCbot robots (made in Vietnam, priced around 2.5 million VND) to tackle the programming barrier. Each school needed 3-5 robots, and teacher training took place in a direct format.
But now, as of the end of 2023, in just two days of online training, Tuyên Quang province has completed training in VEX VR virtual robotics technology (from the United States) for over 800 teachers and administrators from more than 300 high schools across the province (100% of schools).
Afterwards, this method from Tuyên Quang was adopted by Yên Bái province. Yên Bái became the first province in the country to successfully organize a virtual robot programming competition at the provincial level for middle and high school levels.
Although robotics is just a small part of STEM education, the implementation of robotics is extremely important because it is easy when promoting STEM education. It is easy because it is easy to teach, easy to inspire students, and does not take much time from when they start learning to when they can compete in a simple form.
The efforts of highland teachers quickly bore fruit at national and international robotics competitions. A major surprise occurred at the 2023 National STEM Festival robot competition: Cao Bằng High School specialized team won the KCbot robot table, and all three virtual robot teams from Lạng Sơn province won the top three prizes in the virtual VEX VR robot programming competition.
At the 2023 VEX World Robotics Championship (held in Texas, USA) in May 2023, Team 11 from Cao Bằng, under the guidance of Ms. Đỗ Thị Hương Trà, a passionate teacher of science but with a love for robotics, ranked 183rd out of 787 high school teams.
This was the first time that Nguyen Tuan Khang, Hoang Hai Son, and Bach Nguyen Thai Hoang – three Tày students – flew on a plane, straight to the world championship, carrying with them the mission of promoting tourism for the highlands of Cao Bằng.
In the last days of January 2024, Team 11 (the VEX V5 robot team of Cao Bằng High School) won the national championship title and the right to go to the United States to compete in this year’s world championship, to the surprise of specialized high schools, international schools, and private schools nationwide.
It should be noted that VEX robots are the world’s leading educational robots with over 1,000 parts and high technical requirements. The recent National VEX Robotics Championship had 250 teams participating, considered the largest robotics competition in Vietnam to date.
Beneath these visible successes is a substantial foundation of STEM robotics widespread in Lạng Sơn and Cao Bằng.
Bao Lam – the farthest and poorest district of Cao Bằng province and also the poorest in the country – was the first district of the province to successfully organize a programming competition for all middle schools, with two events of VEX VR virtual robots (computer-based) and real KCbot robots (arena-based), something that many schools in large provinces and cities have not yet achieved.
Cao Bằng is also the only province that has successfully organized robotics competitions specifically for teachers and specifically for high school students.
In Lạng Sơn, up to 8 out of 11 districts have successfully organized such competitions for middle schools. By the end of 2023, Lạng Sơn held a provincial-level robot programming competition for middle schools with two events of VEX VR virtual robots and real KCbot robots.
IGNITING THE INTERNATIONAL STEM STREAM
In 2023, Gia Thanh Secondary School in Phù Ninh district (Phú Thọ province) was awarded the UNESCO Pedagogical Innovation Grant for innovative mathematics, science, and technology lessons based on knowledge from making traditional conical hats in the famous conical hat village of Gia Thanh.
In May 2023, Vietnam selected 19 teams to participate in the VEX World Robotics Championship in the US – the world’s largest programming robot competition with over 3,000 robot teams participating.
Even in their first participation, 5 VEX robot teams from Vietnam were awarded for their excellent performance in the group stage.
In 2023, the Vietnamese team won the Gold Medal at the First Global Challenge 2023 (FGC), considered the world’s robotics Olympic with 191 countries participating.
This is one of the most challenging robotics competitions for high school students worldwide, where robots are self-built by teams based on standard electrical motors and components provided by the organizers.
Winning the Gold Medal at the FGC World Championship is considered the highest STEM robotics achievement to date for Vietnamese students.
Just 5 years ago, Ngo Phuong Anh, a student in the GART 6520 robot club of Amsterdam High School in Hanoi, modestly said: “We are trying to touch the 4.0 world by learning together through the internet, learning from experts, and learning through real-world robotics competitions,” now students from a remote highland of Vietnam have stepped onto the glorious stage of major international robotics competitions.
The flow of Vietnamese knowledge exchange has moved from large cities to rural, deep areas of Vietnam and vice versa, then from small, remote lands straight to the world. ■
For STEM training experts, the demand and determination for innovation support from the leaders of the Departments of Education and Training are the foremost important factors for successfully training STEM teachers in highland provinces.
"The only thing that can't be done for each other is the 'will to do.' Everything is at a standstill if the leaders of the departments, offices don't genuinely want to implement STEM education," remarked a STEM expert.
Initially, as arranged by the Ministry of Education and Training , only 4 out of 10 districts in Cao Bằng and 5 out of 11 districts in Lạng Sơn were supported by the Power of Radiance program for training Middle School teachers in STEM education topics.
The leaders of the education departments in the two provinces proactively invited teacher Dao Thi Hong Quyen and STEM experts to help all the remaining districts. The training sessions on STEM topics such as scientific exploration and technical design for over 1,000 teachers from all district schools in Cao Bằng province by the STEM Alliance was essentially a "trial" where the "test maker" was the provincial Department of Education and Training director.
Author: Do Hoang Son
Origin article: https://cuoituan.tuoitre.vn/dong-chay-ra-the-gioi-cua-stem-viet-20240202102952491.htm
