The Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) courseware project for elementary students is currently nominated for the 2013 Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF) Asia Awards. Designed by DOST’s attached agencies, the Science Education Institute (SEI) and Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), the project nomination can be viewed and voted on at http://isif.asia/projects/projects/view/346.
Titled "Technology Package for Student Learning Empowerment: Mathematics Courseware for Tablet PC," the project is entered under the ”Innovation on learning and localization” category of the ISIF Asia Awards which acknowledges the important contributions of ICT innovators to the social and economic development of the Asia Pacific region.
In addition to selecting a winner per category, a Community Choice Award will be conferred to the project with the best social media campaign. Thus the DOST invites the public to visit the said webpage and vote online for the DOST-developed courseware.
The project seeks to contribute to the improved delivery of educational content especially in the primary education, and consequently, to the improvement of the quality of Philippine education. By utilizing efficient and affordable innovations in ICT, the students are better able adapt to new ways of learning in this information age.
The courseware is composed of ten lessons in Grade 1 mathematics with 16 activities, fixing skills, and evaluation that involves animated interactivities aimed at engaging pupils in fun ways of learning. Local talents such as highly-skilled graphic artists and programmers were tapped to develop the program.
Pilot testing of the courseware involved the deployment of tablet computers to ten selected elementary schools in the country, for which various metrics were used to measure the tools’ effectiveness. To identify the schools to be involved in the pilot testing, a National Steering Committee was created composed of key representatives from DOST, SEI, ASTI, Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development which is another DOST agency, Department of Education, UP National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development, and the Ateneo de Manila University.
The project also provided training for teachers as part of the pilot test deployment and first-level support for deployed units. For more information, please visit their site at http://isif.asia/home. Last day for online voting is on June 26, 2013. (By Josephine S. Feliciano, S&T Media Service, DOST- SEI)
