On 8 October one teacher from a Lower-Secondary School in Nghe An, Mr. Linh, one teacher educator from Thai Nguyen TTI, Mr. Phu and one DOET manager from Quang Nam, Mr. Thuy, arrived in Seoul, Korea to attend UNESCO’s “Regional Seminar on Innovative ICT Practices in Teaching and Learning”. This event was the culminating activity of the three-year “Facilitating ICT-Pedagogy Integration Project” funded by Korean Funds-In-Trust that aims to create an enabling environment for student-centered use of ICT by building stronger partnerships among teacher education institutions (TEIs) and schools using project-based learning (PBL) and telecollaboration.
Mr. Linh, Mr. Phu and Mr. Thuy, together with other educators involved in the project, had a long but exciting journey to reach this destination. In March this year, they participated in the UNESCO-VVOB workshop where they explored the advantages and steps of PBL and identified a topic for a project to implement. Back home, they each successfully convinced other teachers, even in other schools, school principals and education managers from the DOETs to collaborate on the implementation of these projects. It was not hard to convince their students. Most students were soon very eager to get going on their projects. In Nghe An, students from different participating schools designed their own school garden plans and presented these to their peers and the wider school community. In Thai Nguyen, students visited and learned in depth about ethic minorities in their province. And in Quang Nam, students got a hands-on introduction to traditional handicrafts in crafts villages of Tam Ky city.
UNESCO Bangkok supported the implementation of these projects and invited the involved educators to present the projects during the seminar in Seoul. During the poster presentations, the Vietnamese projects got quite some attention next to the projects of five other participating countries. It was a great opportunity as well to get an idea of what kind of projects and in what way projects are being implemented in Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, China and Pakistan. During a panel session on collaborative learning beyond the classroom, Jef Peeraer from VVOB Vietnam shared how in all projects the participating schools reached out to the local community. Mr. Linh, Mr. Phu and Mr. Thuy all went home with good ideas for future projects and a stack of contact cards of educators in the Asia-Pacific region to even get involved in international projects.
More info related to the seminar can be found on the website of UNESCO Bangkok.
