As part of its vision to be a leader in innovative programs, Philippine College of Criminology (PCCR) invited Department of Education (DepEd) Bureau of Learning Delivery (BLD) Educational Technology Unit Head Mark Anthony Sy to train its teachers and professors on Digitization and Gamification of their lessons. Talking about “The Power of Open Source Platform in Digitizing Content”, Mr. Sy focused on efforts that would help classes be more Participative, Interactive, and Engaging, while also helping the faculty to be more time efficient and work smart.

Promoting Open Source Technology in his talk, Mr. Sy highlights the fact that this type of content will benefit students and teachers in the delivery of lessons, as these are available with or without internet connectivity, aside from the fact that these are free to use. Digitization also helps to make lessons more engaging to today’s learners, especially with the availability of mobile devices.

As the lead for the development of the National Education Portal of the Department of Education to ensure the delivery of quality, accessible, relevant, and liberating education for the Filipino learners, he has been an advocate of digitization for more than a decade. Upon realizing that less privileged learners had no educational content in the digital devices provided to them, Mr. Sy made it a personal mission to help provide equal access to digital educational content to learners of all classes.

Having been recognized as a Google Certified Innovator and a Microsoft Education Ambassador, Mr. Sy was awarded as the EdTech Leader in Asia K-12 Category (2nd place) by the EduTech Asia in Singapore. As part of his commitment to provide expert level technical assistance to all stakeholders, he is currently pursuing his Juris Doctor at the Manila Law College. 

Looking to the future, Mr. Sy foresees that teachers will evolve into app developers. As Mobile technology and app development has shifted in form, where programmers have created templates which allow developers to simply focus on the creative and pedagogical aspects of the apps, teachers now have an endless pool of digital resources in which to execute their lessons.