The Department of Education is opening the floodgates of educational materials under the Open Educational Resources or OER.
OERs are digitized platforms the contain teaching, learning and research materials. They are primarily designed for offline use, but can also be accessed online for updating materials. Materials in these platforms include various educational content ranging from a lesson plan, a video, a song to a complete online course or curriculum.
OER has five (5) stages, the first stage is the Basic (Authoring Tools), Second is the Advanced (LMS, AVR/VR), third is the Proficiency (E-book Development and Mobile App Development), fourth is the Novice (Subject Expertise Ed Applications, Classroom Management System) and lastly is the Transformational (0365).
The program is truly ambitious but quite advantageous for ALL teachers who would be spending less time and effort to create their own educational resources. Or they may actually not have to create any at all.
Through this pathway, schools that do not have access to the internet shall be supported through making available materials that can be accessed either offline or online.
The DepEd said that this is the start of “revolutionizing education” in the country. “Welcome to the new era of learning. This is Digital Rise.”
It pays to mention that it is an idea that started as something like a wish coming from a consultant/technical assistant in the Office of the Undersecretary for Administration in the Department of Education.
Now the said office has apparently seen its wisdom and its strong potential to improve
the quality of teaching and is all-out in support of it.
The Information Communications Technology Services (ICTS) – Educational Technology Unit will be responsible for the emerging technologies/ innovations and EdTech training for teaching personnel in DepED.
Thanks to Mr. Mark Anthony Sy's crazy idea which started it all. By the way, that's "crazy" in a funny, positive way. So I'd like to call it here as a crazy but bright idea.