DepED Order No. 108 will Reduce Quality IT Education in Elementary

The DepEd order no. 108 S. 2010 imposed to the whole public school to integrate computer education with all subjects and removing this subject as separate lesson where pupils can study computer at separate time.

How this DepED order can reduce quality IT education?
1. Integrating computer education with other subjects and abolishing IT education as separate mean reducing learning time for the pupils. While private school have their own separate IT education to ensure IT career among pupils the DepED Order lessen the opportunities. IT career gives opportunity for Filipino's to earn dollars even if we are just inside our respective home. Many Americans, British and Australian hired Filipino Virtual Assistant that can do their routine task like bookkeeping, research, email management and marketing, sales processing, customer service and even online English language teaching.

2. Majority of the DepED teachers did not ever hold keyboards during collegiate lifen and considering the fast innovation of computer technology you can imagine the damage they can cause in school's PC. Furthermore, many  newly graduate teachers had poor training thereby having ineffective teaching skills and minute knowledge in IT. I have observed  that whenever a practice teacher from Normal University visits my classroom and observes my class they usually comment on how well my students are when it comes to computer applications and skills are even far better than what they have.

3. Subject teachers can integrate anything from their lesson. Giving them required time allocation and IT topics to discuss together with their subject matter means more things to learn at very short time. The idea of 12k curriculum is to increase teaching - learning activities but the idea of forced integration of computer topics on specific subjects (math, science, english, AP) means to lessen DepED operation cost by reducing the number of IT teachers. In short nagtitipid sa budget.  

4. Dilemma in curriculum. Current Math curriculum today are mostly integrating topics like Algebra and Geometry. As a Math major, I love to study them separately so I could have better mastery of each subjects. And as a Math lover too, I love to study them integrated in one topic as for completion of knowledge and skills. What i mean is that, let the DepEd separate or teach IT curriculum separately, master it and integrate other subjects once master. However, I am 100% sure that you can not integrate history well with computer if the AP teacher neither the pupils do not know or master the PowerPoint Presentation.

These are the content of the DepEd Order.

The 2008 Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Education on the Philippines Main Education highway underscores the vision of every Filipino to ensure that every child has the opportunity to obtain an education leading to a productive a well paying job. To achieve this vision, the Bureau of Elementary Education through the Curriculum Development Division with the assistant from Elementary Education Division of all the regions has undertaken a review of the content and coverage of Educaksyong Pantahanan at Pangkabuhayan to be able to directly support the vision of the Philippines Main Education Highway.

Starting School Year 2010 - 2011 computer education will no longer be considered as a separate component of the EPP curriculum however it will be integrated and used as a tool to facilitate learning in all subject areas.

Time allotment for the learning area can be flexible, it may not necessarily be recited every day for as long as the needed time requirement of 200 minutes per week is met. With this scheme pupils will be able to finish laboratory activities scheduled for the day.





The problem of quality education is affected by time allocation. Too many things to learn in computer at very small time which will hurt the learning more with the implementation of DepEd Order on IT topic integration. If the elementary school did not finish Ms Office Application and basic internet  it will affect the high school academic program all the way to college. Universities should no longer teach Microsoft Office Application because it can be learned by grade two pupils already. Therefore instead of integrating computer to other subjects, we should instead give them the opportunity of mastering computer education as separate subjects and let other subject teacher integrate it freely.


DepEd Order No. 108 s. 2010
10/29/2010