students at coding session
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British Council

The Digital Readiness Academy is a new programme led by the British Council and sponsored by HSBC to empower local teachers and students with digital literacy, financial literacy and core skills for their future planning and resilience in a post-Covid-19 and tech-focused world. In its pilot year, the programme will take place in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Upon completion of the programme, teachers will receive a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certificate issued by the British Council and endorsed by the Micro:bit Educational Foundation. The programme consists of a two-day online training and 35 sets of micro:bit starter kits will be gifted to each participating school. 

In Vietnam, we are in partnership with VietNet-ICT to implement the programme at 10 secondary schools in Bac Ninh and Phu Tho provinces.

The programme aims to: 

  • equipped teacher with digital literacy skills to support learning in the classroom 
  • provide students with the skills to plan, budget, and enhance their future 
  • support students to develop online learning capabilities 
  • develop a suite of micro:bit teaching and learning resources for future readiness

The programme includes:

1. Teacher/ Student training 
Participating schools will nominate three to five teachers across different subjects. Teachers will receive a two-day online/ offline training which focuses on integrating micro:bit-enabled digital activities across the curriculum to support the following three pillars of student development: 
  • Core/Soft skills, particularly around creativity, communication and collaboration and critical thinking 
  • Financial literacy and planning 
  • Links to the workplace via exposure to industry context/networks and prototyping industry solutions. 

After the training, each trained teacher will integrate the provided training resources into their work plans and deliver the activities to their students (100 students/ school). 

2. School-based Code Clubs: Student Service Learning
British Council-branded Code Club will be set up at each participating school. It will be led by project school teachers as facilitators and run by student volunteers who act as peer tutors. These students will have the title Digital Academy Readiness Ambassadors. With the Code Club activities that are developed and available online as an open resource, each Code Club will run sessions on how to code simple micro:bit tasks aimed to develop soft skills and focused on different themes.

3. Student Hackathon
Towards the end of the pilot year, we will host a student hackathon involving all participating schools to celebrate how the world could be improved through creativity, design thinking and innovation using the micro:bit as a tool to respond to real-world challenges.

Core Values: 

  • Playful: play nurtures and develops the breadth of skills that enable us to fulfil our potential. 
  • Interdisciplinary: these events bring multiple subject disciplines together. For example, technology could fuse with engineering and the arts could blend with computer science.  
  • Skills development: activities will enable participants to learn new tangible (e.g. coding) and non-tangible (e.g. problem solving) skills. 
  • For social good: the events, by their very nature, are designed to have positive social impact and it is important to demonstrate how and why. 

Who can participate in the programme?

Priority will be given to schools that: 

  • are public, government-funded 
  • support students from low to medium income bracket families 
  • have teacher training needs in core skills and financial literacy 
  • have teacher training needs in digital literacy, ICT or STEM
  • can commit to the entirety of the pilot activity scope. 

How will students, teachers and schools benefit from the programme? 

  • Teachers develop proficiency and confidence in digital literary 
  • Students gain access to digital learning and demonstrate skills 
  • Teachers and students are motivated to use online learning within and beyond the classroom 
  • Schools adopt digital transformation of their curricula 
  • Communities of practice are established for sustainability 

Timelines

School recruitment and briefings February 2021 
Project teacher training session April 2021 
Setup code club at local schools March-May 2021 
Student Hackathon August 2021

For any enquiries of this programme, please contact Nguyen Hoang Thanh Le via le.hoang@britishcouncil.org.vn for more information.
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