Butuan Central ES: Pioneer of Online Education
By ROLAN T. PELEGRO
Covid-19 broke out just before the 2019-2020 school year ended and the disruption then was relatively minimal, affecting the last few weeks of classes and pushing graduations into the online realm. It was only during the first full year of distance learning – 2020 to 2021 – that the underlying issues came to fore, first highlighted by anecdotal evidence and later supported by surveys conducted as the pandemic raged.1
As the Philippine’s Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary, Leonor Briones quipped, “Education must continue even in times of crisis whether it may be a calamity, disaster, emergency, quarantine, or even war”.2 What comes with these problems, however, is the opportunity to improve the way we think about education and implement permanent and sustainable changes that will enhance the quality of our educational systems.
Several factors must be considered as the Philippines embarks on a new mode of learning. This includes teacher capacity, the learner’s situation and context, and the effectiveness of the learning environment. These, of course, are in addition to the more obvious issues of internet speed, material cost, and mode of delivery. The best way to proceed is to take a step back and develop a strategy that involves teachers, students, parents, school administrators, and technology-based companies.
Subsequently, there are challenges when dealing with students online. Now the teaching strategy of teachers has had to have evolved to deal with the current method of teaching. One of the biggest challenges that teachers face today with teaching online is ‘attention’. Children are at liberty to mute their mikes when taking online classes (and talk to who they wish), and some children are also prone to get up and wander away from their class.
The year 2020 marked a significant shift in the school. As classes resumed, Butuan Central Elementary School was the only elementary school in SDO Butuan City that provided online distance learning. There were 56 teachers who accepted the challenge; 42 were pure online and 14 were assigned to online blended mode in both regular classes and special science education curriculum. However, prior to the start of formal classes, the school ICT team, with the support of school administrators, organized a 3-Day Virtual Hands-on Training on various Learning Management System (LMS) for Online and Blended Learning dated August 7, 2020, with the topics Exploring Edmodo, Google Meet, and Online game.
Throughout the school year, online teachers faced many challenges and realizations, encountered new problems, and adapted various strategies to meet the emerging need of online teaching. Furthermore, there are some considerations to address in online teaching: low student motivation in attending the online class and participating, unorganized online submission of activities, and overdue summative tests.
To assist and bridge a gap on those specific concerns, the ICT team, with the support of school administrators, held another 3-Day training focusing on pedagogical approaches and teaching-learning enhancement on September 4-6, 2021. This is a more intense version of the webinar aimed at upskilling and leveraging teaching strategies among online teachers.
BCES is currently in its second school year of implementing online distance learning in the SDO Butuan City. Online educators continue to provide their best approaches and strategies for quality education among students. ###
[1] Manila Times. Distance Learning Struggles. 2020 [2] Philippines - Department of Education. 2020
