By EUGENE ADIONG
BACOLOD City — Public school teachers should use technology as a creative tool in educating students, an official of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said.
“We need to move from the traditional tools, like books and blackboards, and embrace technology,” said Frederick Amores, head of DOST’s National Computer Center – Visayas Group.
Amores was a speaker in yesterday’s Information and Communications Technology Educators Summer Camp.
Students these days are “digital natives,” born in an age when technology is pervasive, Amores said. “[In] everything we do now [we use] technology.”
For teachers and students to become globally competitive, “we need to have a certain level of technology savvy,” he stressed.
Amores believes technology is the answer to the perennial problem of lack of classrooms in public schools.
“There are alternative learning systems wherein students need not go to a classroom,” he said, citing online teaching.
For her part, Negros Occidental Provincial Schools Division Superintendent Juliet Jeruta said she welcomes creative ways to educate students, especially in public schools.
However, “we found out that most of our teachers are not conversant with computers and other gadgets,” Jeruta said.
She admitted that, in this generation, students are excited with technology.
To make schooling attractive, technology should be made available in every classroom, Jeruta said. Teachers should also adjust their teaching style to the preference of their students, she added.
Jeruta believes that, if students enjoy technology, including social media like Facebook, these tools should be used in the classroom so that “student-teacher [relationship] will be fun, and learning will become a routine and not [considered] a waste of time.”/PN
