University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Professor and UP Faculty Regent Dr. Patricia B. Arinto travelled to the United States of America and the Republic of Cyprus to present the outcomes of the "Technology-Supported Teacher Professional Development on Early Language, Literacy and Numeracy (ELLN) for K-3 Teachers" (ELLN Digital) project, which her team piloted with 4,020 K-3 teachers in 240 public elementary schools in the Philippines in SY2016-2017. The project was implemented by the Foundation for Information Technology and Development (FIT-ED) in collaboration with the Department of Education, with funding from USAID through the Gerry Roxas Foundation.
Dr. Arinto participated as a spotlight presenter in the 7th Annual Mobiles for Education Alliance Symposium held on 5-6 October 2017 at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. She was also part of the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) panel on "Learning at Scale" led by the eminent Professor Diana Laurillard of the UCL Institute of Education held on the second day of the Symposium. DL4D is an international research network focused on testing digital learning innovations and scaling proven ones to improve educational systems in developing countries.
On 14-15 October Dr. Arinto spoke about "Teacher Professional Development @ Scale" at the 10th International Conference on Innovative Learning Environments held at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. Her presentation highlighted large-scale online and blended learning models of teacher professional development for developing country contexts based on DL4D research on MOOCs for teachers offered by Peking University in China and the blended ELLN Digital course for K-3 teachers in the Philippines.
Dr. Arinto is the team leader of the USAID-funded ELLN Digital project and the theme adviser for MOOCs research in the DL4D project, which is co-funded by the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC) and the UK Department for International Development. She is also the deputy principal investigator of the multi-country IDRC-funded Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project.
