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