Schools in Vietnam have ensured that students can keep up with classes through online lessons while they are asked to stay home for one week to prevent the possible spread of the novel coronavirus in the country.

Over 20 provinces and cities in Vietnam have told kindergarteners and school students not to go to school from Monday, when they were slated to resume studies after the Lunar New Year holiday, to February 9.

More than 60 universities in the Southeast Asian country have requested their students to take a similar week off.

In order for students not to lag behind the school curriculum, several schools have started providing them with online lessons.

Pham Thu Tung, a physics teacher at Ernst Thälmann High School in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that he has been doing so with the help of YouTube and Facebook.

According to Tung, he recorded his lectures and uploaded the video on YouTube while interacting with his students in Facebook groups.

“I correct my students' mistakes in assignments by live-streaming on Facebook,” Tung said.

Several other schools are also making similar moves, taking advantage of different platforms.

For examples, the Vietnam Australia International School in Ho Chi Minh City and Nguyen Tat Thanh Middle and High School in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District use Office 365 – a cloud-based Microsoft Office Suite.

Phan Huy Chu High School in Hanoi’s Dong Da District use Skype, while the Wellspring Bilingual International School in Ho Chi Minh City makes use of a variety of online channels, including Google Classroom, Web page-creation tool Google Sites, classroom communication app ClassDojo, and game-based learning platform Kahoot!

Meanwhile, some other schools employ their internal platforms, such as the Vinschool Parents app of Vinschool in Hanoi, and the Learning Management System by the University of Science and the University of Technology and Education in Ho Chi Minh City.

Online education providers are also getting this chance to show what they have to offer.

For instance, the online study and examination website 789.vn has announced that it will run free online classes for high school students nationwide.

The novel coronavirus, a new strain of the coronavirus family that caused SARS and MERS, first surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

It has since killed 425 people in mainland China, one in the Philippines, and one in Hong Kong, while infecting almost 20,000 others globally, an overwhelming majority of whom are in China.

Vietnam has confirmed nine infections so far, including six Vietnamese, one Vietnamese American, and two Chinese.

Among that, one Chinese and one Vietnamese have been cured.

The World Health Organization has declared the new coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.

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