Vietnam Online Library for E-Teachers (ViOLET)
Introduction
Vietnam Online Library for E-Teachers (acronym ViOLET), located at http://violet.vn, is the most popular and biggest social network for teachers in Vietnam. It allows K12 teachers to share education resources (including presentations, lesson plans, quizzes, lectures, multimedia-materials, computer training resources). Moreover, it enables teachers to discuss teaching experience and make friends. Last but not least, Violet allows teachers, schools, and education departments to create their own websites with desired domains.


Figure 1 – Homepage of Violet.vn
Violet was up-and-running at the end of 2008. Up to now, the site has more than 4 millions of items including lesson plans, lectures, tests, etc, which are uploaded by teachers daily. Regarding traffic, the site has 350.000 visits and 2 thousands of page views each day [1]. The site’s growth rate is 100% each year [1].
Violet has several sub-sites in order to meet various requirements of teachers:
Educational material library. Educational materials (images, films, Flash, audio files…) are used to author e-lessons. Without these materials, authoring tools (e.g., Adobe Presenter [2], Articulate Presenter [3], and Violet [4]) are useless. Check out at http://tulieu.violet.vn/
E-lesson library. This library is a collection of lessons uploaded by teachers all over Vietnam. Vietnamese teachers often use MS Powerpoint, Violet [4], GeoCabri, and Macromedia Flash. These lessons are useful for teachers to exchange ideas and improve teaching quality. Given an uploaded lesson, teachers can comment on it, rate it, and reuse it. Check out at http://baigiang.violet.vn/
Lesson plan library. Given the development of ICT, paper-based lesson plans are now out-of-date. Computer-based lesson plans are not only easy to modify and present, but also convenient to share and exchange with other teachers. Check it out at http://giaoan.violet.vn/
Test and assessment library. This library meets the needs of test and assessment requirements of teachers. Most of tests are authored using MS Word and can be extracted by a testing system to create online quizzes.
Online class library. This library is for K12 students. The library contains videos capturing real classes. Instead of attending traditional classes, students can visit here, find and watch videos they like. Check out at: http://lophoc.violet.vn/
Computer skills training library. This library help teachers improve computer skills, for example, including how to use:
Violet Tool and Violet Library
Macromedia/Adobe Flash
Internet services (E-mail, Searching YouTube/Google).
Open source software (Firefox, Thunderbird…)
Check out at: http://daotao.violet.vn/
Private Websites. Teachers and educational organizations can create their own websites with specific domains. Each website is a place for teachers to show preferences, make friends, and store their personal files.
Violet is an open system allowing teachers to download as well as upload educational materials. The benefits of an open system are:
Absolutely free
Big data which are often updated by the whole community
High quality materials selected from multiple sources by teachers and validated by Bach Kim. Moreover, Back Kim often updates the site with newly authored resources and lessons according to requirements of teachers
Violet is a channel to connect all teachers in Vietnam supporting teachers to exchange ideas and share teaching experience
In addition to that, each teacher can create his/her own library; each school can create its own library; each education department can create its own library. A library can be configured with its own domain, interface, and functions according to specific requirements. These libraries can be connected together based on organization of educational departments. For example, a library of a department can control and manage a library of a school; a library of a school can control and manage a library of a teacher. If a teacher uploads a resource to his/her website, this resource will be updated in the library of the corresponding department managing the school.


2 – Library of Education Department of Dong Trieu district, Quang Ninh province.
Awards
Tri Tue Viet Nam Award in 2007
Typical libraries of education departments
http://danang.violet.vn
http://quangtri.violet.vn
http://nghean.violet.vn
http://binhduong.violet.vn
http://daklak.violet.vn
http://nuithanh.violet.vn
http://dienchau.violet.vn
http://thuvien.dongtrieu.edu.vn
http://thuvien.longbien.edu.vn
References
[1] Google Ad Planner. https://www.google.com/adplanner
[2] Adobe Presenter. http://www.adobe.com/products/presenter/
[3] Articulate Presenter. http://www.articulate.com/products/presenter.