MODERNIZATION activities for Philippine Schools are flourishing.
The Asean Group is providing facilities for Instructional Technology (IT) in different schools. It provides laptops for each student in selected schools.
Maguindanao schools get science and technology digital library. While the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is deploying Starbooks Units to selected schools and local government units (LGU) in the Philippines. Starbooks is a digital science and technology library to serve different schools.
The latest and most promising progress is the approved Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Amended Children's Welfare Code wherein part of it incluced the creation of the the Special Office for Children's Concerns (SOCC).
The office will craft policies and coordinate programs for the protection of children. It will also monitor reports of abuses involving children, children-in-conflict-with-the-law (CICL).
Another provision is to include the designation of an ombudsperson for children who will be supported by its full legal staff.
The SOCC will serve as the secretariat of the Davao City Council for the Welfare of Children. It will also act as a recommending body for the formulation of policies, operations, and development of all existing programs and projects designed for children. There will also be a structure that will allow the participatory management of its program of action.
The office will be composed of an SOCC head; the coordinating, monotoring and evaluation section; regulatory section; integrated children coordination, monitoring and evaluation section; and the integrated regulatory section.
The Ombudsperson will be appointed by the city mayor.
The SOCC will also coordinate with the barangays, the Davao City Social Services and Development Office (CSSDO), the Department of Education, the LGU, non-government organizations, the Department of Labor and Employment, City Health Office, and other concerned agencies that work for the welfare of Children.
All of this will assure us of a well placed children's care and development ready to benefit from the Instructional Technology.
However, using IT and gadgets must be used with caution, especially with children in grade school.
Electronic gadgets must not take the place of the traditional teacher-pupil interactions where thoughts and mind reasoning processes take place.
The primary grades can use rote learning in memorizing the four axioms of math -- addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. Then use them to solve their mathematics tests. They can memorize their correct grammar usages so they can apply these to further lessons. Calculators are not permitted; laptops or tablets also. Gadgets may be used for upper high school and college levels.
I have had my own bad experiences in using IT, as a professor at that, when I could not get a perfect score in a computer biology test.
With a question where I answered 'gametes'; I was marked with an 'x', which means I was wrong. The computer allowed 'sex cells' as the answer and it does not allow synonyms. I must think like the gadget. See that.
Just as the critics say, modern gadgets are a boom and at times are banes. Nothing can substitute for the thought processing acts of the mind seated in the brain. We have the reaction types from reflexes, habits, emotional, loving, caring, which make beings far above a material gadget.
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