Educational Technologies
In the dawn of technology as a channel to facilitate more effective learning, innovations in instruction delivery and alternative forms of instruction become salient. Traditional forms of instructional delivery and management will never be obsolete but are instead supplemented and complemented by educational technologies (EdTech) that spark the interests of the learners. To encourage and attract the learning interests of the modern generation learners, interactive lessons and learning through the assistance of alternative realities are some of the EdTech that are being utilized in order to facilitate effective instructional delivery. The drive of the City of San Juan to become a modern city, guided by its tenet of Makabagong San Juan, Project DAGITAB AR was conceptualized.
Project DAGITAB AR, or Device-Assisted and Gamified Interactive Teaching Activities using Blended Augmented Reality, is a project of the Learning Resource Management Section of the Schools Division of San Juan City. This project utilizes android tablets that are installed with interactive and augmented reality (AR) based learning applications that can supplement the regular instruction inside the classroom. The current partner applications of Project DAGITAB AR are applications developed by the Philippine Science High School, Mariano Marcos State University, and Western Institute of Technology under the Science and Innovation Budding Opportunities for Leverage (SIBOL) project of the Department of Science and Technology Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD). The following applications were made available in tablets that were installed in selected school libraries in the division of San Juan City:
Haynayan AR: an interactive and gamified cell biology lesson application using augmented reality;
iJuanderer AR: an interactive and virtual educational trip to the city of Tarlac featuring 3D and AR-based historical artifacts and virtual narration of the province’s history;
Historya: an interactive quiz bee about the history of the Philippines, where learners earn stars while they answer questions correctly;
Stunt Science: an interactive physics game where the hero hasto solve physics problems in order to progress to the game.
The pilot phase of the deployment of Project DAGITAB AR was done in four schools of the division, namely San Juan National High School, San Perfecto Elementary School, Kabayanan Elementary School, and Pinaglabanan Elementary School. The selected schools utilized the tablets provided by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). Teachers of the schools, led by the library teachers-in-charge, used the applications to supplement their lessons. Reports of the pilot schools were that the learners enjoyed the interactive lessons, but experienced lag of the application due to technical mismatch of the recommended specifications of the tablets used for the pilot test. To further improve the project, the City of San Juan provided high-end tablets for schools to test Project DAGITAB AR such that the next phases of full deployment to the rest of the schools in the division will have a smoother experience in using the learning tools that come with, and will soon come, with Project DAGITAB AR.