By Merlina Hernando-Malipot  To prepare for the implementation of new learning modalities this coming school year, the Department of Education (DepEd) has been training public school teachers in Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based teaching. DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Pascua said that from March to June, DepEd’s ICT Service - through its Educational Technology Unit (EdTech) - has already trained a total of 337,486 public school teachers in ICT-based teaching which covers 40 per cent of the public school teaching population. “An additional 10,521 private school teachers have also been trained by the Department,” he added. Pascua noted that these trainings made use of online webinars where the number of participants could reach 45,000 unique individuals allowing DepEd to rapidly scale its capacity building program. “Quality was assured by requiring activities to be completed and submitted before the release of certificates,” he explained. The trained teachers, Pascua explained, only count those who have received certificates. “However, more teachers have viewed the recordings of the webinars which are made available on the internet,” he added. Upskilling of teachers Pascua said that the number of teachers who attend multiple webinars offered by ICTS-EdTech indicates the “immense interest in the use of ICT based tools to respond to COVID-19.” Based on DepEd’s data, there are 315,540 teachers who attended the Proficiency OER Program which covered E-book development that teachers can use to prepare localized materials for their classes; the Basic OER Program which focused on Authoring Tools and Interactive Quizzes that can be used even with no internet, and in which the output of these tools can stand on their own or can be embedded in e-books to make the materials more engaging and interactive; and the Advance OER Program which covered Moodle, Augmented/Virtual Reality in Education, Gamified PowerPoint, and Interactive Comics Creator. Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS) that will allow teachers to deploy online classes, monitor completion of assigned activities, and conduct online quizzes. The DepEd LMS that will be released in July will make use of Moodle. A total of 38,500 also attended the webinars on Microsoft O365 which covered the Microsoft applications that can be used in education such as One Note and Flip Grid. Meanwhile, 79,349 have also attended the G-suite for Education which covered Google applications that can be used in education such as Classroom, Docs, Slides, Artificial Intelligence using Add-ons, Spreadsheets, Forms, Jamboard, Sites and Video conferencing. There were 308,961 teachers who attended the 3D Development webinars which focused on tools such as Fusion 360, TinkerCAD, Autodesk and Photoshop that can be used for developing 3D Graphics which can be embedded in e-books, videos, and presentations to make them more interesting. A total of 121,850 teachers have attended webinars on Canva for Beginners and Graphic Design which introduced Canva, a tool that allows teachers to rapidly create graphics using templates that can be embedded in e-books, videos, and presentations to make them more interesting and 111,464 teachers underwent webinars for Photoshop for Beginners focusing on Adobe products in detail which is used to teach digital arts that is part of the multimedia skills component of the Grades 7-12 curriculum. There were also 302,594 teachers attended webinars on Capacity Building of Teachers in the New Normal Classrooms which tackled creation of Curriculum Page or Website, Instructional Video Materials, and Teacher Video Blogs; 44,589 teachers who attended webinars on Parenting Tips for the New Normal Classroom which discussed topics that teachers can use to orient parents in the new normal; and 96,160 teachers attended webinars on Educational Apps coming from Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and other organizations. Pascua explained that webinars for parents and learners are currently being prepared for delivery in July. “The webinars will be announced through DepEd Commons and other channels which will potentially cover the 8 million users that are already using the said platform,” he ended.