What makes Cyber Education exciting?

What makes Cyber Education exciting?

With all the controversies hounding the ZTE Broadband Deal, I can’t help but be sad because the supposed to be pure intention of a better education is being pestered by corruption.

Corruption is another story. However, when I first heard about the cyber education project of DepEd, the first question that came into my mind is that will it really benefit the majority? On my part as a teacher, will it make my job easier? http://www.deped.gov.ph has these answers and I quote:

Cyber Education’s Benefits for Teachers

Cyber Ed will enhance the capability of DepEd to deliver teacher training to close to half a million public school teachers nationwide.

• Unlimited access to professional development materials

Cyber ed will bring our teachers from all over the country closer to quality teacher training activities and professional development materials. We will ensure that they will be provided the much needed training they need to significantly improve teaching and student learning, no matter where they are.”

• Frequent in-school “virtual” training from certified experts and countrywide collaborative learning and courseware development

Cyber Ed will be able to ease the limitations of the cascading model for teacher training currently being utilized. Through Cyber Ed, teachers will be able to receive training from the best instructors first hand.

Under the Cyber Ed Project, Virtual Training Studios will be created to allow DepEd officials and training experts to interact directly with DepEd’s 470,004 public school teachers. These studios will allow frequent direct professional development sessions for the teachers. Computer-based training materials and standby Training Support Experts will also be available to supplement live training broadcasts.

• Also, teachers will no longer have to travel long distances to gain access to training since these will now be available at the school level.

• Meanwhile, the national teachers will be the ones in-charge in ensuring the accuracy of the content. Thus, classroom teachers will have more time to focus on follow-up activities that will reinforce learning.

Indeed, the CyberEd Project is a very good way to deliver quality education to our students and it offers opportunity for teachers for professional growth.

But then, I don’t really think that it has to cost billions from the people’s money. There are lots of cheaper ways to do it. There are a lot of websites that offers sharing of ideas and even soft wares for free. For example pinoytambay.com offers forums for different IT professionals. Their forum helped me a lot every time I have problems with my computer. Although right now, they don’t have forums for teachers, but if our government will utilize websites like this, for sure the cybered project will be more exciting knowing that it costs less.

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