Educational Local Knowledge Ecosystem

It takes a village to educate a child, and the child’s holistic journey to learning begins at home. I believe most challenges that both teachers and learners are experiencing right now are within the context of their microsystem. If the parents are unable to provide the necessities for their children to participate in blended learning like internet connectivity and gadgets for online classes, that is where the dilemma begins. We cannot blame the parents since some of them lost their job due to this pandemic. They may opt to choose the purely offline or modular modality, but a common predicament of this scenario is that learners may not be able to fully understand and achieve the content and performance standards as prescribed by MELCs.  

I do hope DepEd would explore the possibility of tapping other government agencies and private institutions as well to support us in these pressing concerns. I know that our government is doing its very best, moving heaven and earth just to deliver still quality education amidst pandemic, but I believe we should also start with some bold actions like investing to virtual learning infrastructures, amenities, and gadgets (with one is to one ratio), so that we can combat this digital divide that is very evident here in our country. 

Sharing here my output in Flex2Educate course about creating a poster showing my learners local knowledge ecosystem:

Homework: To Give or Not to Give?

 – that  is the question! 

I am honestly not a fan of giving homework even prior to pandemic. I would just see to it that all learning tasks are accomplished within our class time. Perhaps, it’s because most of the time there is a low turn-in of accomplished homework tasks, which will just disappoint me a lot. 

After, reading the articles assigned to us in our Flex2Educate course, I had so many realizations about giving homework! First, perhaps the low turn-in of assignments was caused by giving a boring, unengaging, and repetitive instructions for tasks that just forced them to accomplish those for scores. I could have prepared more relevant tasks that have definite purpose, doable, appropriate for their learning style and cognitive level, and with visual aesthetics appeal.  

Illustration by Marlon L. Lalaguna, 2020

We must get down to the nitty gritty of the nature and aspects of the homework we would like to give to our learners. Remember, that we are in this situation wherein we should look everything in different angles. Ask ourselves, if the task we will give them will hone the enduring learning competencies they really need to acquire for your subject? Is it really worthy of their time away from their family and on to the screen again? If this homework will just add “breadth” and not “depth” in their understanding about the most essential learning competencies, just don’t give it! Let the learners just enjoy their free time with their family and other hobbies they could work on instead while staying at home.