Concerns from the AI-era podium

Concerns as students become targets of cybercrime

One Monday morning, instead of letting students salute the flag and participate in cultural activities like every other day, Thanh Xuan Secondary School (Thanh Xuan Ward, Hanoi ) organized propaganda to prevent kidnapping and fraud of students through cyberspace.

Vice Principal of Thanh Xuan Secondary School, Ms. Phung Quynh Nga, said that recent cases of fraud and kidnapping via the Internet are no longer a distant story but have become a topical issue, directly affecting students. According to her, in the context of strong technological development, early exposure of students to the Internet, smartphones, and social networks is inevitable, but also entails many potential risks. With just a click, a message or a seemingly harmless video call, students can be lured, psychologically manipulated or become victims of "tricks" of kidnapping and online fraud.

Ms. Nga expressed that the lack of experience and digital skills makes many students easily believe the clever enticements of bad people. This is a painful problem in modern society, and has become a constant worry for parents, teachers and the entire educational community.

Since the beginning of 2025, there have been thousands of online scams targeting students, causing many families to lose hundreds of billions of dong. For example, in September, Loc Ha Commune Police (Ha Tinh) received a report from NT (16 years old, 10th grade student, residing in Loc Ha Commune) about being scammed out of money through a lottery draw. While using his personal social media account, he saw that Facebook was livestreaming the "lottery draw" game, so he went to watch and saw many players, so he trusted and texted to find out more and asked for help with capital. After a series of scams and enticements, the bad guys manipulated his psychology, causing T to give up all his savings and borrow from friends to transfer money to them. The amount of money T was scammed out of was nearly 3 million dong.

Master Luu Van Tuan - Director of the Green Educational Psychology Center, commented that currently, "tricks" of fraud on the internet are becoming more and more sophisticated, targeting students, who lack experience and skills in identifying risks. Recently, many worrying incidents have occurred, such as subjects impersonating police agencies, teachers or school officials to call and text to lure students into providing personal information, passwords for learning accounts, or transferring money via e-wallets. In addition, the spread of fake news. For example, "urgent" announcements about exams, scores, tuition fees or violations of regulations make many students panic, share false information, and help bad guys spread fake news.

Master Luu Van Tuan pointed out a series of common tricks that cybercriminals use to approach students, and at the same time instructed how to recognize dangerous signs, such as asking for OTP codes, sending strange links or using unclear identities. He also emphasized that when encountering suspicious situations, students need to calmly handle them, save evidence and immediately report to trusted adults such as grandparents, parents, teachers or authorities for timely support, avoiding unfortunate consequences.

According to Mr. Ngo Minh Hieu, cyber security expert and Director of the Anti-Fraud Organization, a closed lifestyle, dependence on the Internet and mobile phones leading to self-isolation is an environment that causes students to "fall into" online traps.

Mr. Hieu said that currently, with AI, deepfake and automated tools, cyber attacks are becoming more and more unpredictable. Subjects can impersonate other people's faces, even turn into police officers... with just a photo in a few seconds to call online and approach students. Hackers can crop images of young people online, create sensitive videos to blackmail and kidnap online.

Up to the worry when "virtual assistants" become "substitute learners"

Master Chu Ha Phuong (teacher of Ha Yen Quyet Secondary School, Cau Giay Ward, Hanoi) said that today's students are very intelligent, agile, and adaptable to new technology. This is an advantage, helping them become high-quality human resources in the future. However, when AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot become popular, with just a few lines of command, a complete math problem or a good essay will appear coherent, citation-rich, and convincing. This creates anxiety in classrooms, when the amount of knowledge in the world is growing by the hour, by the minute. The need for students to prepare self-study, research, research, and problem-solving skills needs to be cultivated from their school days.

The first meeting of the week of Thanh Xuan Secondary School was meaningful with activities to improve knowledge of using the Internet for students.

About 87% of Vietnamese children aged 12-17, students access the Internet every day. Another survey shows that, under the age of 12, up to 75% of students use social networks, while the majority have not been properly trained about cyber risks. Regarding the time of device ownership, on average, Vietnamese children receive a mobile phone at around 9 years old, but by the time they are "introduced" to cyber safety, they are around 13 years old. Thus, for up to 4 years, children use the Internet without really being equipped with knowledge to protect themselves.

If you rely too much on ChatGPT, you will unintentionally lose the "golden period" - the most valuable time to practice independent thinking, analytical and creative skills in studying and working. Instead of learning, reflecting and experiencing by yourself, abusing AI tools makes the learning process passive, only stopping at "receiving results" without "thinking journey". In the long run, that not only blurs self-study skills, but also makes it difficult for you to adapt to work and real life, where answers from artificial intelligence are not always available.

In order for students to develop comprehensively in both spirit and body, and to gain more life experiences, many schools now organize activities, weeks with diverse topics and interesting lessons.

Ms. Chu Ha Phuong said that at Ha Yen Quyet Secondary School, students have participated in many rich activities to develop comprehensively. Right from the beginning of the school year, the school organized a week to welcome new 6th grade students, combining activities to get to know friends, visit classrooms and participate in group games to help students enter secondary school with confidence and dynamism.

In addition, the school also develops educational activities outside of class hours, such as STEM clubs, attractive outdoor extracurricular activities. For example, the journey to Ngoc Island (Thanh Thuy, Phu Tho), where students are immersed in an extremely spacious, green space, enjoy the fresh air of nature, participate in useful activities, freely experience extremely interesting games, helping them to explore, learn and have fun. In particular, students also listen to sacred stories about Uncle Ho, offer incense in a solemn and emotional atmosphere.

To encourage the spirit of learning and solidarity, the school organized an exchange with teachers and students from other countries such as Singapore. During the exchange, students, teachers and staff of Ha Yen Quyet Secondary School practiced English and learned a lot of useful and interesting information about the countries, people and education of other countries. Through these activities, students not only learned knowledge in class but also gained life skills and community spirit, contributing to spreading a beautiful image of a modern, safe and happy learning environment.

Master Chu Ha Phuong commented that AI is bringing many opportunities but also many challenges for teachers.

Master Chu Ha Phuong shared: “The amount of knowledge in the world is growing by the hour, by the minute. Students need to prepare the skills of self-study, self-research, research and problem-solving to be cultivated from their school days. If they depend too much on ChatGPT, they will accidentally lose the “golden period” - the most valuable time to practice independent thinking, analytical ability and creativity in studying and working”.

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/noi-lo-tu-buc-giang-thoi-ai.html