VietNamNet Bridge – One hundred percent of Vietnamese teachers wants to utilize information technology (IT) in their teaching at school. However, they cannot do this with failed computers.

The teachers’ demand…

Violet, the teachers’ community network, has joined forces with the Vietnam Education Science Institute and Intel Vietnam to conduct an online survey on the demand and the habit of using IT in teaching.

The survey was conducted between July and October 2013 with 10,000 teachers across the country.

Nearly 100 percent of the polled teachers said they have been utilizing IT in their teaching work. 50.1 percent use IT devices during the works, while 81.4 percent work with computers at home for five hours a week.

The survey has found that most of the teachers use laptops and desktop computers in their works. Some teachers use modern devices such as tablets or reading machines as well.

The teachers using the modern equipment are aged between 21 and 30, while the users of desktop computers are 40 years or older.

The websites that assist the teaching have become more and more popular to teachers. According to Intel, violet.vn, tailieu.vn and youtube are the three most favorite websites by Vietnamese teachers to which they regularly access to seek materials.

Of the three, violet.vn has been best known (89.3 percent), followed by tailieu.vn (41.6 percent) and Youtube (22.5 percent).

Vietnamese teachers have also got used to some foreign websites, including scribd.com.

Nguyen Thi Hai Yen, a teacher of the Ba Trieu Primary School in Hanoi, said she has been drawing lesson plans with useful software products for the last few years. She said it is really inconvenient to use the traditional rudimentary teaching aids which make the classrooms narrower.

“In the past, it always took me a lot of time to make the objects for the lessons. But nowadays I just have to spend the time long enough to make some mouse clicks,” she said.

… is far from the reality

The majority of teachers affirmed that they bought computers, laptops or tablets with their own money, while the IT devices at the schools cannot meet the requirements.

Of the 10,000 teachers who were asked about the IT devices they were going to buy, 36 percent said they wanted laptops, 31 percent wanted tablets, 13 percent smart phones and other smart devices, such as cameras, overhead projectors and software.

The Ministry of Education and Training has asked schools to utilize IT in teaching since 2008 already. However, the limited budget has made the program go slowly.

Intel has found that only 41.1 percent of the schools where the 10,000 teachers work reportedly have servers, 25.3 percent have e-libraries, 57.3 percent have internal email systems and 52.4 percent have their websites.

Kim Loan, a teacher of Tran Van Hoai School in Tien Giang province, said 80 percent of the computers at her schools have broken down. Other teachers also said their schools have computers, but the machines either do not work, or have unreasonable configuration.

Tong Xuan Tam, MA, from the HCM City University of Education, has pointed out that the high prices of software products are also an important reason that prevents teachers from utilizing IT.

Articulate Studio, the software for e-learning, for example, is priced at $1,200, unaffordable to Vietnamese schools.

Lao Dong