Valenzuela City's local educational channel won third place in the "Best in eGov Customer Empowerment- Cities Category" during the virtual awarding ceremony of the Digital Governance Awards on Friday, Oct. 29.
Also called as "Valenzuela Live," the program aims to provide a better distance learning experience for students, parents, and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We created this program because we want it to somehow synchronize with the national government framework but at the same time, we are tailor fitting it to what the LGU learners need. All the materials are contextualized and all the materials are localized para mas madaling intindihin ng mga bata ‘yung kontekstong itinuturo ng ating mga teachers (so the contents taught by our teachers can be easily understood by students),” Mayor Rex Gatchalian said.
The program, which was launched on Oct. 5, 2020, enabled the local government and the educators in the city to produce videos with content based on standard modules that students can easily access through Facebook live.
The videos were also posted on Valenzuela Live's website and Youtube channel.
"Rather than what we see in other LGUs wherein teachers are allowed to run their own programs and own live feed, Valenzuela City did everything in a centralized manner... Basically, Valenzuela LIVE is a template to centralize things, it is a template to standardize things,” Gatchalian said.
“It is the country’s only and first locally produced education content for standardized learning across the division. Our goal was to come up with a program that is not school-specific but rather division-specific... We are proud of Valenzuela LIVE because we were able to come up with our own channel and our own content that is paired with the modules that the local DepEd is churning out,” he added.
Valenzuela Live has converted 18 studio classrooms for the live sessions, with 451 streaming teachers for more than 120,400 students in the city.
The Digital Governance Awards was launched by the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines (NICP) in partnership with the Department of Interior and Local Government, and Cyber City Teleservices Philippines Inc.(CCTP) in 2012.
The event also aims to search for the best practices of the LGUs in utilizing information and communications technology(ICT) to effectively provide service to their constituents.