Wazzup Pilipinas!?
According to online publication Rappler, the Department of Education insists that education should persist despite the pandemic. Although there have been requests for academic freeze until 2021, the Department of Education (DepEd) insisted that education of millions of Filipino students should not wait.
According to Bernardo (2020), Education Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said that the call for "academic freeze" was an unpopular position considering that over 24 million students have already enrolled for the recent year, where they had learned through distance learning modalities, like modular, virtual, and flipped distance learning.
SDO Pasig had developed these means in order to cater the needs of its learners, and to attain objectives such as to deliver effective, time-bound education within technology-driven communities and to ensure that time – which is believed to be a valuable resource – will not get unattended.
In further addition, the Schools Division Superintendent, Ma. Evalou Concepcion A. Agustin conceptualized of having learning materials suitable for the pandemic. With this initiative, Schools Division Office of Pasig City, in partnership with the local government unit, spearheaded by Hon. Ma. Regis Victor N. Sotto, Pasig City Mayor, came up with locally developed self-learning modules.
The Local Government Unit provided the gadgets such as tablets and laptops for all its learners, whereas SDO Pasig developed the self-learning modules to be lodged to the said gadgets to be distributed to all the learners, so support is most certainly there.
There are 18 modules per quarter per subject area per grade level for a total of 72 Self-Learning Modules in a year per learning area. In the case of kindergarten, 6 Learning Modules per quarter are being utilized.
In addition to the Self-Learning Modules, Key Stage 1, namely, Kinder, SPED, Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 3 also have their printed Self-Learning Packets. These are the exercises or activities extracted from the Self-Learning Modules for them to answer and practice to decrease the students’ exposure to gadgets.
Other platforms utilized by teachers in delivering the teaching-learning process include the virtual method, through MS Teams, and Flipped method, through Facebook Messenger. All of these methods are meant to avoid setbacks in education despite the pandemic.
Written by: Hannah Krystelle Del Rosario
References:
Bernardo, J. (2020). DepEd rejects calls for 'academic freeze'. Retrieved from https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/09/20/deped-rejects-calls-for-academic-freeze
Magsambol, B. (2020). FAST FACTS: DepEd's modular learning. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/things-to-know-deped-modular-learning
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.