VietNamNet Bridge – Instead of writing lesson plans themselves, many teachers nowadays simply use the free lesson plans they download from Internet. Instead of being creative, many teachers nowadays simply reproduce lesson plans of other people. 

Analysts have voiced their concern about teachers’ laziness nowadays. In principle, every teacher has to prepare their lesson plans. However, in the digital age, they can simply download free lesson plans from Internet.

As more and more teachers now  copy lesson plans from other people, analysts have warned that teachers have become lazier. They do not put much creativity in their work any more.

Many exchange the addresses of education websites with free e-lesson plans to download, even though the lesson plans have not been appraised by any educational council.

Compiling lesson plans together?

A teacher related that at the high school where he is working, teachers gather in groups and compile lesson plans together. The best lesson plan will be chosen and used by all. The teachers in the same group only have to do one thing: they have to change the personal information and then submit the lesson plans to the school’s management board.

Sometimes, the local education and training department sends experts to schools to help teachers prepare lesson plans. But just as teachers, the experts simply compile lesson plans and then share them with others.

After every training course, teachers are asked to bring a USB to copy the lesson plans. lesson plans are collected and saved on CDs which are then given out to every teacher. Those, who need ready-made lesson plans, can also purchase the plans at book stores or photocopy shops.

It seems that teachers nowadays are very “creative” in compiling their lesson plans. During the one- ortwo day training courses, instead of learning new teaching methods , teachers spend their time writing lesson plans, which they should be doing during the whole academic year.

The Ministry of Education launched the competition on designing e-lesson plans for 12  subjects in the 2009-2010 academic year, hoping that the 8 billion dong programme would encourage teachers to compile lesson plans. However, the number of e-lesson plans submitted was  modest.

Many teachers say that they do not have information technology skills necessary for modern teaching, and many softwares remain unfamiliar to them, such as Powerpoint, Adobe Presenter, Math Type, Cabri 3D, or Hot Potatoes.

According to Nguoi lao dong newspaper, the most well known addresses for teachers who seek ready-made lesson plans, are baigiangbachkim or giaovien. However, the quality of the lesson plans remains questionable. Especially because there are many lesson plans are similar to each other. This is becauseteachers download ready-made lesson plans, make minor changes and then post the changed lesson plans back to the websites.

Read-and-write teaching method replaced with look-and-write method?

For a long time, teachers have been criticized for –using passive methods in teaching, so called read-and-write method. teachers simply read out lecture notes and students simply write them down.

However, in the IT age, this has been replaced by the look-and-write method. This means that many teachers have become too reliant on IT equipments (laptops and overhead projectors). Teachers nowadays do not look at students but only look at the laptop’s screen, while students simply copy down what they can see on the creen.

President of the HCM City Industrial Food University Pham Khoi said that the look-and-write down method has become so popular that teachers use it  even when they give lessons supervised by experienced educators.

Source: Nguoi lao dong