Jeremy Ann T.

Catunao Sir Allan Vilar Verana

Principles and Theories of Educational

Technology

Assignment:

Question: Discuss educational programs on television. How effective are these in

enriching the educational process in Philippine schools? What are their flaws and
limitations?

Educational television (ETV) and other youth-oriented shows in the Philippines

surged during the late 80s and early 90s due to the popularity of the western educational
show Sesame Street. Batibot was the first pioneer in the local ETV fad, combining traditional
academic subjects with stories, puppetry and moral lessons. After the show was cancelled,
broadcasting networks followed the pursuit with shows like Sineskwela, Hiraya Manawari,
Bayani and Math Tinik. When ABS-CBN launched Knowledge Channel, a cable network
and the country’s very first educational frequency, all of the ETV shows were moved from
the main network. ETV programs lessened in our local programming, and were eventually
decimated.

I have small recollections on watching the shows mentioned above because I was
born in the late 90s. However, I still remember the Eskwela ng Bayan series when I was
on primary school. It debuted in the late 2000s in the PTV Network Channel 4 (previously
NBN Network) targeted for the grade school demographic. Eskwela ng Bayan series is
composed of four shows, namely:

1. Alikabuk – tells the story of a young boy who lived with his grandmother. Little did he
know, his grandmother has magical powers. The show focuses on the Filipino
subject and features Philippine Folklore and stories, grammar (balarila) and
linguistics (palawikaan).

2. Solved – a Math program that revolves around the lives of Tinay, Loloy and Bubut, who
live in Barangay Pulang Bato. Each episode illustrates a Math concept through
real-life situations.
3. Karen’s World – set in the province, it tells the story of a young Inggo and his friend/tutor
in the English subject, Karen the carabao. Students learn the different aspects of
literacy in English— speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

4. Why? – a science program for intermediate grades that features Ida, a witty and funny
“science expert” who loves to investigate scientific principles and phenomena.
This series uses trivia, experiments, interesting animation, and graphics to explain
the lessons.

From a personal experience, I think the series is a good tool to help enforce the
lessons in the school to the students at home. I grew up watching these shows and I learned
a lot from them. Sometimes, I even learn new stuff that is not yet discussed in the classroom.
I cannot speak for the general public school system, but since Knowledge Channel acquired
the series, the shows are now being broadcasted on larger demographics. I also heard
collective stories from various people that baranggays and municipalities present the shows
mandatorily on covered courts. Through the help of these shows along with the help of our
local government, it helps reinforce the classroom lessons to the learners. Personally, I think
this benefitted students like me, especially learners from rural areas.

Clearly, the Eskwela ng Bayan series has a lot of advantages. First, it is advanced
for its time. It debuted around 2002 but the lessons and methods of instruction are
progressive that even millennials can relate to and understand. The animations, songs and
values incorporated in the lessons seems straight out of the K to 12 curriculum launched by
the Department of Education (DepEd), but then again, the concept of K to 12 is still bleak
during the late 2000s. Second, it is appealing to grade school and high school students.
Instead of the traditional blackboard-notebook lessons that are common during the late
2000s, it uses stories, songs, animations and real life situations so that the learners can
have application based on the discussed lesson. The visual appeal of these shows can help
through the engagement of the students to the lessons, making them develop an interest in
such academic subjects. Lastly is its accessibility to the general public, especially now that
the dawn of internet and technology spiked for the last ten years. Students can now access
such content online through the Knowledge Channel – Youtube page. Teachers can also
use the episodes to aid them on teaching, since most of the teachers nowadays are merely
facilitators, giving the freedom to discover things on their own to students.

However, it also has its downsides. The first concern is the pacing of lesson, since
the shows are pre-recorded, the pacing of the lesson can be too fast or too slow depending
on the capacity of the learner. Without the teacher’s supervision, the videos can do more
confusion than understanding. There is also the feedback factor, where lessons in real life
are usually enforced with evaluations to test if they really understood the topic. Since
television shows like these do not have the capability to do such, there is no assurance that
the learner understood the topics being discussed. No assessment is done at the end of the
lesson to check the students’ learning capacity and effectively enforce the topics. Lastly,
videos replacing the role of teachers can result into lacking in the learner-teacher
communication. Like what I have mentioned above, grounding the videos without the
teacher’s guide can do more harm than good. The social development of the students
regarding communication and physical activity may be compromised. The primary years in
a learner’s life is vital and excessive television watching can interfere with their brain
development.

In the end, the Eskwela ng Bayan series are just mere tools made to aid instruction.
Educating the learner is still the teacher’s responsibility. There is still few research about the
effectivity of educational shows and how they shape learners. Television shows truly has its
ups and downs, but it is up to the parents and educators to ensure that kids’ viewing
experiences are enriching.