VEX World Championship: New playground for Vietnamese students
Recent achievements of Vietnamese students at the world’s largest robotics tournament show that programming robots can be effectively deployed everywhere, as long as school leaders pay enough attention.
From 25th April to 4th May at Dallas City, Texas, America, the world’s largest robotics tournament was organized – VEX World Championship 2023. This is an annual event organized by Robotics Education & Competition Foundation – a non-profit organization with projects which affect STEM. This year, Vietnam took part in the VEX World Championship with 19 teams for the first time. Worth mentioning that only 2 teams come from the public schools: Team AANO from Trưng Vương secondary school (Hà Nội) and Team 11 from Cao Bằng specialized high school.
Programming robots is the most attractive part of STEM education and is very useful in preparing the foundation for learners to approach 4.0 technologies. However; this subject wasn’t put in the curriculum in high schools. Many schools take the excuse of not having official documents so they couldn’t perform.
Our article mainly discusses how public schools can solve the disadvantages of actively approaching robot programming and steps in the world’s level STEM playground. (These disadvantages don’t appear in private schools, where curriculum can be easily adjusted, financially free, and can easily allot students’ time.)
When alumni and parents are in action
Team AANO of Trưng Vương secondary school, Hà Nội, won Sportsmanship Award at the Research League for Secondary Students at Vex World Championship 2023. Photo: STEAM for Vietnam
During the commemoration of Vietnam’s teacher day 20/11 last year, Trưng Vương secondary school (Hoàn Kiếm district, Hà Nội) officially debuted a very special classroom. which is named Trưng Vương STEAM Robotics Forward Team. This is a STEM lab invested and equipped most modern in all of the country’s public secondary schools, equipped with a specialized field and 5 America’s VEX robot sets. Different from toy robots, VEX IQ has a system of over 700 online lessons and virtual technologies VEX VR to support students and teachers. In addition, VEX even has a world championship for every age from primary to high school, connected to national championships systematically.
To get this lab, first, was thanks to Mr. Hoàng Nam Tiến, Trưng Vương’s math specialized alumnus, an expert in information technology who used to be responsible for many leadership positions in the FPT corporation. After known of VEX IQ robot, Mr. Tiến on his own found KIDSCODE, VEX’s agency, to research thoroughly about education robots type. As a serious learner and worker, Mr. Tiến understood that organizing to learn advanced educational technologies like VEX IQ needs much people’s time and effort, not just buying and gifting the robot. For students and teachers in the school to get acquainted, Mr. Hoàng Nam Tiến bought a first-generation VEX IQ robot set.
But the beginning wasn’t all favorable. After the school received the robot, when they were about to deploy it, the COVID pandemic came. Understanding the school’s hardship, Mr. Tiến patiently waited for the school to have an official club. Then Mr. Tiến didn’t have to wait for too long: as soon as the new school year started, he received a proposal letter along with the plan for the STEM IQ robot club from Nguyễn Lương Bằng, who is a Cambridge grade 9 student. The plan made Mr. Tiến satisfied and he decided to buy the school 4 more VEX IQ robots with a training field with a total price of 100 million VND.
After the news of alumni supporting VEX IQ robot system, Nguyễn Thu Hà, who is the school principal, granted the club a private 43m2 wide, a pretty difficult decision since many schools in Hanoi suffer from the lack of room. In this school, where the tradition of education is maintained, the information and trends are updated rapidly. Because of this, 8 years ago, the school organized a STEM festival and since then, it has become an annual event of the school every 26/3.
The operation of the VEX robot club in Trưng Vương Secondary was also actively attended by parents in the logistics part. Because there is no budget for high-leveled STEM activities like VEX IQ, the principals continued to ask for support from STEM experts, parents, and school alumni that have suitable specialization for training clubs.
Via this example from one of the best schools in the capital, we can see that school leaders played a significant role in activating the devoting spirit of parents and the responsibility of alumni.
Cao Bằng gets higher
“TEACHER ĐỖ TRÀ TEAM IS EXCELLENT”, “PROUD OF CAO BẰNG” – that is the content of the sign on principal and teachers of Cao Bằng specialized high school at midnight on 6th May at Nội Bài international airport. Teachers had traveled about 300 km to pick up the first team of Cao Bằng going back from VEX World Championship. This is also the first time all three members of the team get to travel by plane. After an American reporter interviewed Cao Bằng’s team, the STEM education community joked: Cao Bằng has a new name called Higher.
Mr. Principal Hà Tiến Sỹ and the teachers of Cao Bằng specialized high school picked up Team 11 from VEX World Championship 2023 at Nội Bài Airport night 6th May 2023. Photo: DHS
Let’s see what Cao Bằng did to get higher:
1- First of all, the achievement of tournaments gets better and better. To be able to travel to America to compete, team 11 of Cao Bằng has excellently overcome over 100 teams in the national championship, including teams of 11 specialized schools around the country, there was even Hà Nội – Amsterdam specialized high school.
At VEX Championship 2023, team 11 stood at 183rd place in the world with the total point being 199 at the programming and controlling robot contest, surpassing over 1000 places in comparison to the team before the tournament which was 1187th.
To remember, two years ago, on 6th May 2021, philanthropists and the alumni’s family of Cao Bằng gift over 100 educational robots KCBots (made in Vietnam). Thanks to that, the movement of teaching and learning programming robots started, beginning with training for teachers of all 30 high schools in the province. Among the teachers attend in the training session, there is teacher Đỗ Thị Hương Trà, who was the coach of team 11. She was also the companion of team 11 to win third place in the Robotics VEX IQ national championship 2023.
2- Besides, it should be emphasized that only Cao Bằng of all provinces organize a design and create robot competition for high school teachers at the end of 2022. During this unique competition, teacher Đỗ Thị Hương Trà got second place.
The experience of organizing the design and creating robot competition of Cao Bằng is being applied flexibly, suitable for Hà Giang’s condition, after each high school in this province was supported with 5 KCBots sets.
Activities of teaching and learning programming robots at Cao Bằng are gradually expanding. Next, on the 17th and 18th of May, the Department of Education and Training of Cao Bằng will organize a contest for programming robot KCBot dedicated to all high school students.
Also in May, the Department of Education and Training of Thạch An district will for the first time organize a programming robot competition for primary and secondary students after they were supported by over 50 KCBots sets by alumni’s families. Meanwhile, the Bảo Lâm district would organize a competition for programming the KCbot robot and virtual robot VEX VR between 4 secondary schools will the robots supported by philanthropists last March 2023.
3- By organizing team 11 to go to America to participate in the world championship, the people and administration of Cao Bằng got much higher than some other provinces about the care given to the robotics team. However, there was no budget for the 4.0 development (all other provinces were stuck in the same problem). To have expenses for team members to travel, the Department of Education and Training ordered Cao Bằng specialized high school to send letters to organizations, enterprises, philanthropists, and alumni; meanwhile, Ms. Trà went to places to share the situation; and the parents, who were hesitating at first, decided to use the family’s saved money to take care of the student’s expenses. Moreover; team 11 also received substantial support from STEAM for Vietnam and STEM alliance. 10th of May morning, the provincial secretary Trần Hồng Minh organized a meeting to cỏngatulate team 11, he gave merits and money prize for Cao Bằng specialized high school, Ms. Hương Trá and Team 11. Many organizations had the same action.
We can say that the last two years were the trip to test the capability to approach STEM robotics with very great results. After this world championship, awareness of STEM robotics education took a new step, although there will still be many more to do, and challenges awaited.
Vietnamese students discuss with international friends at VEX World Championship 2023
Photos: STEAM for Vietnam
VEX World Championship 2023 at Dallas recently was participated by about 30000 students from all around America and over 50 other countries. For the first time, Vietnam participated, 5/19 teams of Vietnamese students won a prize.
At the league Research of Secondary Students, team PENN CHUỐI SẤY, PennSchool, Hồ Chí Minh City, won the Inspire Award; Team AANO, Trưng Vương secondary school, Hà Nội, win Sportsmanship Award.
At the league for Primary Students, half of Vietnam’s teams played excellently and win awards: Design Award for team Switch, VinSchool, Hà Nội; Innovative Award for T-rex Bot – Archimedes School, Hà Nội; Third Place Award for team TNS Innovation – True North School & Delta Global School, Hà Nội.
During the trip to participate in VEX World Championship 2023, students, parents, and teachers even participate in various technological and educational activities in America like visiting Stanford University – California; Texas A&M University – in Dallas; Tech Interactive Museum – one of the first museums to pioneer technology in Silicon valley; National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA center in Houston and more. The especially, participating group had a chance to visit Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley and converse with Vietnamese engineers working there.
This year, the Vietnamese students’ teams were for the first time brought to VEX World Championship event thanks to the project “A Year of Robotics 2023” started by STEAM for Vietnam and partners. These are teams chosen from VEX IQ national tournament in late February. In fact, there were 20 teams chosen, however, 3 teams couldn’t set off due to not being able to take care of the expense. Those were teams from Nguễn Hiền secondary school and Nam Hồng secondary school in Nam Trực district, Nam Định province; and Gang Thép high school in Thái Nguyên City. Afterward, two other teams were added to the list.
STEAM for Vietnam Foundation is an American non-profit organization with aims to promote activities related to STEAM education in Vietnam. This organization was founded by Vietnam’s alumni in America and operated by a net of volunteers who are Vietnamese experts and members of Net to innovate and create Vietnam from all around the world.
Đỗ Hoàng Sơn
