Vietnam has become a respectable name in the international IT arena.
Understanding the importance of the IT development in the international integration process, Vietnam in recent years has been attaching much importance to IT training. Vietnamese students begin with IT at primary schools. At higher education level, IT is one of the most important subjects.
It is one of the hottest training majors for tertiary education thanks to attractive job opportunities for graduates. A lot of IT competitions for students of different education levels are organized annually, attracting the attention of young people.
One of the best known ‘playing fields’ for students is Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship (MOSWC). In 2019, the competition attracted 1,000 competitors from teams, representing 200 universities, junior colleges and high schools throughout the country. MOSWC is also the biggest office informatics competition globally, organized annually by Certiport Group, attracting the competitors from over 100 countries.
MOSWC-Viettel 2020 has kicked off which aims to find three champions to represent Vietnam to attend the championship event in the US in August. 2020 is the 11th year the competition has been organized, after MOSWC was brought to Vietnam.
The representative of Viettel, a large technology group that sponsors this year’s competition, said the group wants to promote the IT development of the country through investments in education.
Vietnamese students began participating in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) when it was established in 1989. It attends the competition regularly every year and gains high achievements. The Vietnamese national competition ranked first, above the strong teams from Russia and the US, at IOI 1999 in Turkey in which 67 countries participated.
In August 2019, Vietnamese students won two gold medals, one silver and one bronze from the competition, organized in Azerbaijan. The Vietnamese team ranked fourth, after Russia, China and the US in the competition among 327 students from 87 countries and territories.
Prior to that, in May 2019, all the seven Vietnamese students participating APIO (Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad) won silver medals.
The high prizes won by Vietnamese students at prestigious international informatics competitions affirm intelligence and strong growth of Vietnamese students.
According to Doan Hong Nam, president of IIG Vietnam, said in 2010, when Vietnam began attending MOSWC, it was not considered a big rival. Other countries thought Vietnam was a small backward country.
However, in the third year of participation, Tran Dinh Vy from Vietnam caused a surprise when winning the only gold medal in Microsoft Word 2010 at the MOSWC 2012 organized in Las Vegas, the US.
