The Rotary Club of Royal Hua Hin (RCRHH) has developed a close relationship with the Principal, teachers and pupils of the Baan Hua Hin Nongkhon School over a number of years, with projects including supplying clean drinking water, providing new toilets, a Brain Based Learning (BBL) playground and the building of a Monkey Library supplied with storybooks.
The ageing school facilities were becoming untenable for modern teaching practices and the school wanted to build a new, purpose-built building of 15 classrooms and approached RCRHH to seek substantial financial aid to complete the project. An agreement was reached and a substantial RCRHH donation was given to support the new school building project in 2018. The building has recently been completed in May 2020 and subject to pandemic relief approval, the students between the ages of 6 to 12 years of age will start in their new classrooms at the school on Monday, 1st July 2020.As part of the contribution by RCRHH the school Director promised that the club would be allocated one classroom to develop technology enhanced learning for their students and thus was borne the dream of establishing a Rotary Education Centre at the school to teach students advanced lessons in English, Sciences, and the arts.
Through his teacher professional development work with establishing education centres in Hong Kong and the Thai Voices project at the Phetchaburi Panyanukul School, Rotarian Dr Keith Humphreys proposed that we take the project further and establish the first Technology Enhanced Learning for Knowledge (TELK) classroom in Thailand. Planning for the TELK project started in early 2019. It involves teaching students how to search on computers for the knowledge they need for life education, both social and academic. The knowledge of the future students need to learn will not be found in ten years out of date text books, they are to be explored in the constantly evolving Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the school and RCRHH in 2019 the school promised to add an additional classroom, therefore giving us a double-sized room for TELK (see below).
At the last RCRHH Board committee meeting on the 4th March 2020, a Ghannt chart was prepared to plan the coordination of the project into four phases with clear directions and costings for each phase. This Ghannt chart was updated in readiness for the first RCRHH physical board meeting since February 2020 which was held on Saturday 23rd May 2020. The Board members attending this meeting and non-attendees who gave a proxy vote voted unanimously to support and proceed with works to establish the TELK.
The four phases of the project are as follows:
- Preparing the classroom in terms of infrastructure to support the TELK project
- Preparing a curriculum, training the teachers and ordering 2 work stations and 8 computers to train the teachers
- Order other essential IT equipment to support the training
- Order remaining work stations and computers to establish a fully operational TELK room
The first 3 phases of the project are planned to be completed by the last quarter of 2020 with funds already donated to the project including 719,000 THB from private donations.
The overall cost of establishing the TELK will be 2.7 million Thai Baht with over 1.7 million already pledged, the remaining money will be raised through private donors, other RCs and grants.
This is by far one of the most ambitious projects the RCRHH has ever embarked on and offers to establish the club as providing a state of the art Internet-based education facility here in Hua Hin that will leave a lasting legacy for our club. More importantly it will provide a vital innovative catalyst for the provision of 21st century education in a newly developing district of Hua Hin. The beneficiaries will not only be the Nongkhon students and their family quality of life, this project has the possibility of influencing the way teachers work across Thailand. The project will take several years to fulfil its TELK objectives and by then it is hoped that every classroom in the school will become an Internet-based technology enhanced opportunity for learning.
The Rotarians of RCRHH can be very proud of their contribution.
