The BridgeIT project was piloted in Vietnam by the British Council in partnership with Nokia and Pearson Foundation with 20 primary teachers from 10 poorly resourced schools in Ho Chi Minh City. It has been successfully implemented in ten countries in three different continents.
Project Launch
The pilot project was launched on 25th January at Le Dinh Primary School, District 11 in Ho Chi Minh City. This was followed by a two day workshop for all the participating teachers aimed at equipping them with the skills to use the smart phones to access quality teaching and learning materials provided by the British Council mapped to Vietnam’s national curriculum through the NED platform.
Content
The Nokia Education Delivery software was used in Vietnam to download teaching resources from the British Council’s Learn English Kids website. The resources included videos in the form of songs, stories and grammar videos. The teachers downloaded the teaching resources to their Nokia smartphones using the 3G network and then connected them to TVs or data projectors to display the materials as teaching aids in the class. This approach fits into Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training strategy to implement ICT and digital learning resources as part of their English 2020 Strategy to upgrade the teaching and learning of English across primary and secondary levels.
LearnEnglish Kids is a website brought to you by the British Council, the world’s English teaching experts. It has lots of free online games, songs, stories and activities for children. For parents, there are articles on supporting children in learning English, videos on using English at home and information about English.
Monitoring and Evaluation
The pilot’s success was measured by the satisfactory completion of the training course of 20 selected English teachers. External research was conducted through classroom observations, feedback questionnaires, attitudinal surveys and focus group discussions. Observations of the teachers using NED content in the classroom confirmed that teachers were able to use the technology effectively in their classrooms. All of the teachers were able to select content appropriate to their learning objectives, and 90% of the teachers were able to effectively use the NED content to clarify lexis and focus on the form of specific language structures.
Feedback based on interviews with the teachers and students involved in the pilot were conducted in April 2013 was overwhelmingly positive. Both teachers and students were very positive about the extent to which NED helped students to learn English, particularly in terms of learning vocabulary and reinforcing basic structures, and in developing their listening and speaking skills.
Follow up training scheduled for July 2013 focused on better integrating NED content into existing lessons and exploiting NED content beyond a focus on lexis and form.
source www.nokia.com