THE Technology for Education, Employment, Entrepreneurial, and Economic Development (Tech4Ed) Center of the Negros Occidental Language and Information Center (NOLITC) in Bacolod City is vying for this year’s Emerging Tech4Ed Center competition.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), through its newly-launched 2017 National Tech4Ed Center Awards, is recognizing three winners each for outstanding and emerging Tech4Ed centers.
Cristina Orbecido, vocational school administrator of NOLITC, Thursday, August 24, said the outstanding category covers at least 10-year-old Tech4Ed centers while those established for two years and below, like that of NOLITC, fall under the emerging category.
She said the NOLITC Tech4Ed Center, along with six other centers in the country, was shortlisted as finalists of the national search.
“The winners will become the ambassadors of the DICT especially in championing its program on solving the digital gap,” Orbecido said, adding that with the development initiatives it has implemented, they are optimistic that NOLITC's Tech4Ed Center will bag the award.
The DICT has set certain criteria for the selection of winners. Ten percent will come from the number of likes and shares in its Tech4Ed Facebook page.
The bulk of the points, 90 percent, comprise socio-economic impact, innovation, productivity, and partnership and networking.
In terms of socio-economic impact, Orbecido said they showcased the center’s provision of digital literacy trainings for different sectors in the city, including village officials, police officers, volunteer workers, daycare workers, women, midwives, out-of-school-youth, and government employees.
These trainings are geared towards addressing the needs of every sector like digitalizing the operations, she said, adding that another socio-economic feature of the center is piloting the mobile Tech4Ed registration.
For innovations, it has embedded Tech4Ed modules to its training program. Meaning, all students, especially of the Learning English Applications for Pinoys (Leap), are using the modules to enhance their communication skills.
NOLITC’s Tech4Ed Center also established an incubation hub for medical transcriptionists which provided students mentoring, coaching, and online work.
Orbecido said that for productivity they have also embedded the recruitment strategy as well as utilizing NOLITC’s resources and facilities for Tech4Ed use.
In terms of partnership and networking, the center has already established strong collaboration with the above sectors.
“The award is a validation that our Tech4Ed programs have been felt by the community. It has delivered what is expected of the center,” Orbecido said, adding that through the search, they could showcase the center’s good practices which can be replicated by others.
Since its operation in March last year, the NOLITC’s Tech4Ed Center has already benefited 661 graduates by embedding the module in the courses, 19 medical transcriptionists, 792 individuals who were given access to registration, and some 124 recipients of the digital literacy trainings.
Meanwhile, among other recognitions given by the DICT to NOLITC’s Tech4Ed Center included top performing center in the Visayas and national level for the whole of 2016.
In January 2017, it was cited for having the highest number of registered users. The center was able to maintain its ranking as one of the top performing centers in the country from February to May this year.
