Education Secretary Leonor Briones underscored the need to implement drastic changes in the delivery of education especially in the coming years.
“The central and field offices need to collaborate in improving and enriching the quality of the distance learning,” Education Secretary Leonor Briones said.
Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation in the country, DepEd is implementing multiple learning delivery modalities to ensure that learning will continue even if the students are insider their homes.
Under the distance learning set-up, students were asked to choose a modality: modular (printed and offline), online, television and radio-based instruction or a combination of two or more modalities under blended learning.
This school year, DepEd said that the most preferred choice of learners and their parents is printed modular. However, DepEd noted that this is not the most ideal option because printing thousands of learning materials is costly and harmful to the environment. “We need to be ready to digitalize our delivery of education in the succeeding years,” Briones said.
Briones added that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) will “help us in the long run as we continuously provide basic education to learners” - including the Last Mile Schools in the country.
In line with this, DepEd has been training its teachers and personnel to maximize the use of technology in education delivery.
For instance, DepEd Bicol trained its teachers and personnel on the use of Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio to augment Open Education Resources.
Both teaching and non-teaching personnel in DepEd-Bicol Region underwent the training to further improve the delivery of the learning modalities at the regional level.
Led by the DepEd Edtech Unit of the Central Office and ICT Unit of Schools Division Office of Ligao City, the webinar workshop equipped the participants with basic skills and usage of OBS on creating offline video materials.
Experts from the field ICT shared their respective knowledge to assist the participants in creating their offline learning materials for their learners.
For DepEd Bicol Regional Director Gilbert Sadsad, the offering of training and upskilling activities that provides additional knowledge and skills on technology to maximize the use of communication platforms for teaching and learning is very crucial during these very challenging times. “Teachers and DepEd personnel alike really need this training,” he added.
Aside from the online features of the OBS, the webinar also introduced the essential things to take into consideration when live streaming on social media pages using the platform. The webinar and workshop were participated by the teachers from different field studies, education program supervisors, module writers, and editors.
The open education resources utilization on the use of obs studio in teaching and learning, manipulation of tools and application of basic open education resources, and creation of interactive instructional video lessons were among the expected outputs from the participants.
The said initiative is in line with Briones’ directives to ensure the delivery of quality and accessible basic education by bridging digital gaps and focusing on ICT-assisted teaching-learning, administration, and governance.