Gatchalian urges DepEd to prioritize digital literacy

The Senator said that producing digitally adequate graduates can boost “educational competencies” of the students and “economic competitiveness” of the country. (Photo: Senator Win Gatchalian/Facebook)

Vice-chairman of the Senate Education Committee Senator Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian on Sunday called the attention of Department of Education (DepEd) to make digital literacy a priority with an aim to produce digital-savvy graduates who can go along with the skills necessary in the modern world.

Gatchalian stressed that the government should nurture the “digital communication” and “cognitive skills” of millennials.

“Most job opportunities nowadays, especially in lucrative emerging fields, require significant digital know-how. We should nurture the digital communication and cognitive skills of the youth because this will pave their way toward more promising careers,” said Gatchalian, the vice-chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

The Senator said that producing digitally adequate graduates can boost “educational competencies” of the students and “economic competitiveness” of the country.

“The key is to start them young. We need to institutionalize advanced digital literacy training in our schools from an early age,” Gatchalian said.

He explained that digital literacy “lies at the center of professional competence and economic productivity in the Digital Age we now live in.”

Gatchalian said DepEd’s action in 2017 to conduct a preliminary study on new learning techniques that could promote digital literacy in the country is a “good starting point” for the Philippine education to eventually improve the “curricula observed in schools to include more in-depth digital literacy training”.

For the record, it was also Gatchalian who is pressing the salary increase of public school teachers as the government begins the process of crafting the 2019 budget.

“For much too long now, the modest salaries of teachers have not been commensurate to their critical contributions to society as mentors and role models for the youth of this country. Reforming teacher salaries to reflect the true importance of their work should be a top budgetary priority of the government,” Gatchalian earlier said.