'TV-based instructions are a great help to students in distance learning' - Sen. Gatchalian

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said that using television-based instruction for teaching subjects or topics that is complicated and difficult to understand is a great help. There are around 59% of more than 22 million learners enrolled in public schools who are using the Department of Education's (DepEd) self-learning modules.

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Gatchalian made a visit during the first day of classes to some of Valenzuela’s households to check how parents and their children were coping with distance learning.

He noticed that one learner is having a hard time understanding fractions, specially that there are no teacher to guide the lesson. This is where videos should be helpful in teaching the learners, Gatchalian said, noting that these would feature teachers going through the lessons step by step.

Gatchalian said that television has a wider reach in the country compared to the internet, it would be of great help and use for teaching difficult lessons.

I looked at some of the modules. Some of the subjects are very complicated, like geometry or trigonometry. I see a lot of computations. It’s very difficult for an ordinary student to pick it up right away. This is where the TV and radio modalities would come in. TV, in this particular case, would play a very big role,

Gatchalian said in a press release issued on Sunday.

The department launched DepEd TV, which airs K to 12 subjects from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday. The lessons can be watched at Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation (IBC-13), People’s Television Network (PTV-4), and other channels that partnered with DepEd.

Gatchalian also stressed that the lessons aired should be check very carefully and reiterated that quality control should never be compromised, following the recent error in a math lesson that was aired. He again called on to telecommunication companies to ensure the stability of internet connectivity to avoid online learning woes.