Lac Hong Open Workshop and HAMK Design Factory

That was really interesting to visit and learn about the model of HAMK Design Factory today. The entrepreneurs, teachers and students work together in the collaborative environment to find out the solution for the authentic problems. The first year students are forced to join the project as a compulsory module in their curricula.

I think it's really interesting because I had the same idea when I built Lac Hong Open Workshop (LHOWS) in my university. It's quite similar when HAMK Design Factory and LHOWS was built to connect companies with students by co-working for innovation.
Comparing with operation of LHOWS, HAMK Design Factory has the professional process to help the first year students how to manage the project step by step from the beginning to the end of project.

The best thing I learn from this module is the teacher believe that the first year student can do and give them the challenge. I should apply this thinking and give my students more opportunities to face the authentic problems and directly work with the customer.

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The first week at HAMK

I am on a business trip at HAMK University, Finland. This is a developed country in terms of quality of life; income as well as education leading the world. I learned about their education in the 4.0 revolution. What will change in education 4.0

         

I have been introduced by the teachers about 9 success factors of education in Finland. The factors are Student in the center means trust; Equality in education system; Less is more; The concept of learning; Active students; Pedagogical well-being; Collaboration / interaction; Competence- based education; Authentic - real world learning. The way of raising issues and discussing are similar to what is available in Vietnam but there is another thing about the comfortable style of dress for the teachers here. As i known Finland was a poor country, people were enough food. But now it has the world's leading economy and educational development.

I  worked at a leading software corporation in Vietnam, worked with Western teachers, so I was not surprised by their working style. But it is a bit confusing and curious about why some of the methods have been applied at Vietnam, even if they were applied more than a decade ago but still not really effective, bringing a great breakthrough to Vietnamese education.

I have learned a lot about teaching and learning methods, tools to support education and how to raise children from the moment they are born. Finnish education has really good elements and has greatly helped the development of education and economy.

The Finnish have changed and synchronized the methods of education, in addition to other factors such as family and society.

The other key factor is the contribution of society to help young children learn to be independent from an early age.

I have learned some methods of raising children from a young age, how they can be more independent in life. This will help students be more active in learning as well as in their life. Teaching methods (focusing on students, competency-based learning, etc.) will help students acquire knowledge in an active and moderate manner, learned vividly without being boring. To achieve the above, the consent of the school, family, society and the government to be synchronized with the education system.

After this trip, I will improve my known teaching methods.

Applying new learning methods to make the lesson come alive, students will actively acquire and practice knowledge.

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Ta Nguyen - Begin The Journey For Reaching The Higher Level - Day 1

Hello everyone, I am Ta Nguyen, a lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Lac Hong University, I have learned a lot of things during my 10 years of working as a lecturer, but the main field I teach is website development, some subjects such as Web Design, Web Programming, Web Administration, Open Source Software Development, Internet Marketing, E-Commerce, ...

On a beautiful day, I received a great opportunity from the EMVITET project (Empowering Vietnamese VET Teachers for Transformation Towards Education 4.0), which is a project to strengthen teachers' capacity to work towards education 4.0 and funded by Erasmus + a program of European Union. An opportunity for me to see first-hand about one of the world's leading education. On September 14, 2019, the Journey began, the journey to reach a higher level in my work.

Day #1
-----------oOo-----------

I have seen new things ...

After 15 hours of flight and with 4 hours transit in Turkey, I arrived in Finland. The country with the world's leading education, we can say this is a journey to discover why they are so successful in education. With the first impression is the friendliness of the airport staff, their enthusiasm has brought us warmth even though it is 7 degrees Celsius outdoors. This is the first time we experience this cold weather like this, even though I knew in advance and prepared very well from home, it was inevitable that I was not adapting, but the air in here was extremely clean. On the way from the airport to the hostel, there are lots of trees and extremely good transportation infrastructure, these have brought in me a quite big initial impression in this country.

Finnish are so nice, they knew we had a long flight, so the next day everyone started working at 10am, they also went to the hotel to walk and lead us to campus. I was really impressed with the hospitality and the way they organized the project.

I have learned ...

From the beginning, we were told how they succeed in education, from a poor country that has become so developed thanks to education, which takes place in just a few decades in A country that doesn't have as many mineral resources as Finland.

This really made us ponder a lot and I wanted to document these factors in detail so that I and you, the readers, will do something to change for our country.

1. Student in the center

• Trust in the student
• Trust in the learning process, learning takes time, but it happens
• Trust in a teachet: she/he is an autonomous professional
• Trust in teaching: It is effective, meaningful and it makes a difference

2. Equality in education system

• Education is free at all level
• Everyone has an equal access to education - no dead ends
• Equal possiilities
• Every pupil and student has the right to educational support
• Special needs education is generally provided in conjuction with mainstream education
• Efforts are made for supporting language minorities and migrants

3. Characteristics in primary school

• Education is based on child's development
• The potential of every individual should be maximized
• Learners should experience success and joy of learning
• During the first school years it is important to play
• Learner centered pedagogy
• Pupils are encouraged to work together
• Learning by doing
• Assessment is part of daily schoolwork
• Pupils' capabilities for self-assessment are strongly supported
• No national tests (the matriculation examination the only one)

4. The concept of learning - Socio Constructivistic approach

• Learners construct understanding
• New learning depends on current understanding
• Learning is facilitated by social interaction
• Meaningful learning occurs within authentic learning tasks

                --> Focus on LEARNING process - Not just TEACHING

5. Active Students

• Students ownership for their own learning is crucial 
• They plan and assess their own learning 
• They make choices
• They have responsibility
• They lead their learning
• Teachers as facilitators

6. Pedagogical Wellbeing

• Feelings of competence relatedness and autonomy must be supported
• Learners need to experience that they are seen and heard as individuals - who they really are?
• Fundamental for motivation

7. Collaboration/Interaction

• Team learning
• Peer assessment
• Students as tutors
• Peer learning is an essential resource of learning 
• Social interaction promotes learning

8. Competence-based education

• Focus on competencies - not traditional subjects/not contents
• Competence is a combination of
• Knowing - the theoretical knowledge - WHAT YOU KNOW?
• Doing - the practical knowledge - WHAT YOU CAN DO?
• Being - the self-regulative and socio-cultual knowledge - WHO YOU ARE? Or WHO YOU ARE BECOMING?

• Tool to reflect individual and collaborative learning

9. Authentic - real world learning

• Real world - learning tasks motivates the students, not just theory
• Classrooms are limited environments to learn competencies
• PBL - Phenomenom, Problem, Project based learning enables better competence development.

These  are the things that have brought Finland's great success in education, thereby leading to the development of all aspects of their social and their life. Hopefully, within the short 3 weeks here, I will learn and discover a lot of things to be able to decipher why they succeed and why we have not reached such levels.

I think ... 

What is special about the method they convey about these factors, we, the project participants, is divided into small groups of 4 based on the card we have chosen. We will stand from the factor number like in the card, and discuss together, asking any questions about that factor. After that, we will move on to the next factor and continue the discussion and ask questions, and so on until we have gone through all nine factors.

With such a discussion group organization that brings interest and clearly connections with learners, learners become truly involved in lesson development. And once the atmosphere of the classroom becomes more exciting with thinking together, expressing your personal views in the group will bring to mind the problem and the ability to think of each member.

A lesson in teaching method from the first session, along with an understanding of what makes Finnish education successful.

Besides, when I was able to visit the facilities of HAMK, I was really impressed with every design detail, everything was directed to students, creating an inspiring learning environment, a extremely comfortable study and work space.

It is true that studying and working in such an environment will bring a good result, because when you are inspired and feel the professional will motivate you seriously to study and work..

I will do ...

The first thing I thought I would to convey the message of their nine success factors, so that we, the people of education, could think together.

I intend to create a blog just to share the details of learner-centered teaching methods, methods to make the atmosphere of classroom more exciting, students will absorb the lesson. learn better. We will no longer have boring lectures, no stress, no pressure on class. To make teaching and learning really like trips, adventure of knowledge discovery, and together we can change this education to become more progressive, towards education 4.0.

But wait, what is education 4.0? This maybe me and you will find out together in the next time. See you in the following articles to continue exploring more great things ahead. 

Ta Nguyen - LHU

(Next: Amazing Business Train and Reflection Skills, What are they?)

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First week of Teachers Study Visit under EMVITET Project

Education 4.0 is an education that meets the human resource requirements of Industry 4.0, where human and technology are aligned to enable new possibilities [1]. So what is the pedagogy should be applied to solve this problem.

During one week in Hank University, my teacher (Irma, Sanna, Catja) gave me something new. Firstly, The important thing was the teacher understanding what was in mind of the student. I was amazed by the method Sana was applying, each person selects a picture that they like and shared their feelings about that picture. Through the short dialog, the lecture understands the feeling of student and change the method to approach the student. Secondly, I have learned the tool to support for teaching such as Moodle, Kahoot, Zoom.  Although I have applied these tools in teaching at LHU but I still learn many new things.  Finally, I visited another  campus of Hamk university and I amazed about curriculum-based module and the teacher will share with us next week. 

Fig 1. The Vietnamese student in Hamk University

I and my team have a good time in Finland. The weather and food are the difference in Vietnam but it gives me a new experience.  My first impression about the environment in Finland was fresh air and lots of trees. We have a good trip on the weekend to Helsinki and Tallinn. It is nice and romantic.

Fig 2. Tallinn old town

[1] Anealka Aziz Hussin,.Education 4.0 Made Simple: Ideas For Teaching, International Journal of Education & Literacy Studies.

Empowering Vietnamese VET Teachers for 

Transformation towards Education 4.0

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Reflective writing

One of the first new things which I learnt at the beginning of EMVITET project is reflective writing. This process consist of six stages such as description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. This structure was developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988.

Gibbs' reflective cycle

https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle

I think this is very useful model of writing to walk through the experience. When Mrs. Lisa introduced the structure I though other people in the class also recognized that Gibbs' model would be suitable to use for writing daily activities.

Applying this model helping me easy to construct the structure of a writing. I could explain my ideal clearly for other people. I had just posted my status by listing the order of events or leaving some sentences of thinking on my Facebook page in the past. I did not think I could share my experience on the blog.

Although writing the blog is the homework that I have to do, it's really useful for my beginning of learning how to study a new experience by writing about what happen in a standard model. 

I can not apply the whole structure in this first writing however I learn a lot from the lesson with Mrs Lisa by doing Mrs Irma and Mrs Sanna homework. I hope that when I will write the second tomorrow I would be familiar with the structure.  Maybe after 5 or 10 posts in this blog, I will be a blogger.

EMVTET-LHU Project.

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Time flies- 9 days for Teachers Study Visit

For 9 days in Finland, I felt the relaxed studying and working!

The weather is a difficult for us because we are not used to the cold in this place. But thanks to that, we had more interesting experiences with the weather.
We find that the food in Finland is delicious and clean. The things needed for human life such as food, clothing ... they are very cheap compared to the income of the Finnish. Everything and materials here are very good, they are much more beautiful and durable than Vietnam. We have experienced walking quite a distance, and our feet are also aching because we are not used to walking much. However, buses, trams and ships are quiet and fast. I wish Vietnam could develop like Finland.

Special thanks to HAMK for the hospitality and supports! Thanks to EMVITET Project and the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

OUR NICE MEMORY

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