Promoting exchanges between students in mountainous areas and students in the capital
Pham Dinh Minh Son - a 12th grade student at Hanoi Amsterdam High School for the Gifted and 18 other students in the school recently had a 2-day trip to Tri Le commune, Lang Son province, to attend the STEM festival. Minh Son's group attended as guides and instructors for Tri Le students to experience STEM education activities.
Minh Son and his students came up with the idea and personally prepared easy-to-find tools and materials in daily life to carry out experimental activities related to the fields: Physics and dynamics; Chemistry and materials science; engineering and technology (STEM Robotics); dynamics and sound waves; optical and aerodynamic applications.
When participating in the experience, students will be explained by Minh Son's group the principles and applied subject knowledge. These were summarized by Minh Son's team in a notebook, so that after the festival ends, this will be a document for students here to practice and research.
Ms. Hoang Thi Luong - Principal of Tri Le Secondary Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities (PTDTBT) - shared that STEM education has been implemented by the school for many years, but in the past 2 years it has been more in-depth.
Each subject of natural science is built with at least 2 STEM topics/school year, and extracurricular activities are organized regularly. Teachers also regularly participate in training sessions, courses... Thanks to that, the teaching quality of students in the school has been significantly improved.
Previously, teachers and students mainly studied theory, but now, through STEM activities, they have known how to apply it from theory to practice, and have had the first steps in researching science and technology, said Ms. Luong.
Mr. Ngo Van Hien - Vice Chairman of Tri Le Commune People's Committee - assessed that STEM education is being focused on by the commune. Due to the nature of the difficult locality, in addition to improving the professional capacity of the teaching staff, the locality has also promoted socialization work, calling on non-social resources and benefactors to contribute, bringing the best conditions for the development of education and training.
"Exchange activities and experience sharing between students of mountainous schools and students of the capital are a great opportunity for teachers and students to learn, develop and promote STEM education" - Mr. Hien assessed.
Developing STEM education is an urgent requirement
Not only Lang Son province, the application of STEM education has been implemented by provinces and cities across the country for many years. Instead of learning each subject separately and disjointedly, STEM integrates knowledge from many different fields, combining theory and practice. Thereby, helping students practice multidimensional thinking, problem-solving skills, self-study ability... This is also the orientation and goal of the 2018 General Education Program.
In the document guiding the implementation of general education tasks for the 2025-2026 school year of the Ministry of Education and Training, promoting STEM education is one of the 5 key tasks. The Ministry requires innovation of teaching methods and testing and evaluation according to the orientation of developing students' qualities and abilities, creating opportunities and conditions for students to develop comprehensively; promoting STEM/STEAM education, digital capacity, artificial intelligence (AI) ...
Recently, Tay Mo Secondary School and Tay Mo 3 Secondary School (Tay Mo Ward, Hanoi) held the inauguration ceremony of the STEM classroom. These are 2 of the first 7 STEM classrooms in the country, modern and meeting international standards, supported by Petrovietnam with a total value of over 3 billion VND.
These STEM rooms are all equipped with modern machinery systems such as computers, laser cutting machines, glasses, laboratory equipment, tools for manufacturing, assembling... to help students have the best learning conditions, contributing to the development of the country.
STEM is an acronym for the words Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
In current schools, STEM activity orientation is implemented in 3 main contents: Teaching science subjects according to STEM lessons, organizing STEM experience activities through clubs, experiencing subjects and organizing scientific and technical research activities.
