We can never overemphasize the need for digital literacy in Philippine education, for us to be globally competitive. Let’s be realistic. In a nation comprised of thousands of islands, but also plagued by widespread corruption, there is no way our traditional educational system will be able to cope with the massive shortages in school buildings, classrooms, teachers, blackboards, school tables and chairs, and textbooks that have to be renewed yearly. The government continues to deny the facts, but the current educational system is not only failing but is also fast becoming obsolete. Calls to education reform have largely been ignored. So even in this age when learning does not necessarily have to happen anymore within the confines of a classroom, a huge budget is demanded to build outdated educational infrastructure, instead of the much needed, technologically oriented school system. It might be the unwillingness to part with old corruption scams, or plainly the refusal to believe that digitalizing education is the way to go. Whatever the reason, the Philippine leadership’s resistance to change in this area has so far produced a generation of poorly educated Filipinos…stuck in a system that’s growing more inefficient by the day. Students spend long hours immersed in lectures on the structure of the amoeba, or the “edited” history of the Philippines, but are clueless on how to handle finances, how to put up a business, how to drive courteously, how to invest in stocks, or how to lobby for change in the government. Most students don’t even know how the economy in their own city works, or the way local bureaucracies function. Many don’t know how their own schools and universities are structured. In an era evermore exploding with complexity, vast swaths of information are not disseminated to those who might need it most. What a horrendous tragedy! It’s irrefutable that digital tools enhance discussions, recitations and overall learning in the classroom. The number of award-winning educational video games have already proven such points many times over the span of two decades. Children have been found to absorb lessons better in digital interactive environments, and the rate of development, particularly in the area of narrative thought, was observed to have improved considerably. Governments of the world’s most advanced nations all emphasize the value of digital literacy for their economies. Nations like China that are rapidly implementing digital literacy programs into their centralized educational systems are all seeing good social and economic results. That it is already a new world, requiring new tasks, which require new tools, which require new skills, which require a new literacy to learn—is not just an imagination. Truth be told, it would be a great transgression to the Philippine public if the government does not do enough to educate people in instant messaging, chat, blogging, website creation, social networking, creating and sharing music and videos, photoshop, emailing, online businesses, and digital storytelling. These skills today not only bear enormous practical value in daily life, but more importantly, they will serve as stepping stones for the core competencies of citizenship in the digital age. Another thing about digital literacy is that it is deictic. Meaning, it changes rapidly and regularly, with technology continuously improving itself, and in the process supplanting older versions. It’s exactly how 2G (2nd generation) are gradually being rendered obsolete by the 3G (3rd generation) smartphones. Or how software actually need to be habitually upgraded, e.g. from the 2.0 to the 3.0 version. This is a major component of digital literacy education, that it is not simply a matter of teaching or learning any single set of knowledge in new technologies, but rather a constant effort to assimilate whatever new literacies that will appear in our lifetime. Thus, ensuring that schools continuously update their curricula for digital literacy to keep up with accelerating technological developments; that computers be included in classrooms; that use of educational software be mandated; that course materials are made available to students online; and that teachers be digitally literate and trained to indoctrinate digital literacy—must become the educational system’s utmost imperatives.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 12:50:36 +0000