Digital ATI – PH, The Best Is Yet To Come!

Today, when more farmers want to learn more, you better teach much better – and more intelligently!

Learning agriculture can now 
become more exciting – if ATI 
becomes more excited.

News: In faraway Visayas, “Governor Asks ATI To Accredit More Agricultural Learning Sites In Bohol[1]” reports Minerva Newman (07 August 2020, Manila Bulletin):

Bohol Governor Arthur Yap (has) asked the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI-7) to support farming learning centers and accredit more agricultural learning sites in his bid to push and boost food security through massive production, especially now that the COVID-19 crisis and home quarantine (have) forced more families to focus on backyard farming/agriculture for (their) own food (supplies).

“Massive production” – more food grown by more families for themselves. Mr Yap, a former PH Secretary of Agriculture, sees the need for much more food produced locally. I wonder what other PH governors are thinking during these lockdown times.

He needs more help. Mr Yap asks “to support farming learning centers” – fund and/or equip existing centers; “to accredit more agricultural learning sites” – add to the physical fields already being used for training.

In fact, under Bohol Regional Director Carolyn Mae Daquio, ATI-7 has accredited 19 Agricultural Learning Sites “where people who are inclined to learn about new agricultural technologies can go, practice and learn.” Miss Carolyn says those learning centers are actually farms in operation strategically located in the 3 districts of Bohol.

We should all be inclined. Those 19 sites are not enough. (Imagine if all governors of 81 PH provinces asked for more learning sites simultaneously? Not bad, but there would be national pandemonium!)

Anticipating, I have already recommended that ATI make all training digital – theories, practices, techniques, tips, lessons captured in various digital formats – available anytime, anyplace, anywhere (see my essay, “From 16 Weeks To 1-Day Organic Farming Training – Farmers Learning Digital, Trainors First![2]”)

In 2 words, I am recommending a thoroughly:

Digital ATI.

And so I present a borrowed image above, that of “e-learning access” (from TheStar[3]) – where you see several mouses simultaneously searching for data or information or insight from the digital universe of knowledge.

Limited to 6 mouses simultaneously clicking? No! You can multiply them into 600 or 6000 clicking on the same icon or object at the same time, and there would not be a noticeable delay. That is a digital field for learning – much unlike a physical field for learning, where you can accommodate only so many physical bodies.

Digital ATI whole hog is the way to go!

For everyone, not only in Bohol but ATI anywhere can make digital records of farming from planning to producing to postharvest handling to promoting, with video, audio and captions. Plus countless downloadable reading materials.

No only 19 learning sites, you can have 19 times 1,000 sites visited digitally at anytime!

I notice the Bohol learning sites are all for organic farming. PH Agriculture needs more learning opportunities. Organic, inorganic, hybrid, inbred, SRI, multiple cropping – more choices, options. What’s digital for?!

Digital ATI. Anyhow, for all Choosers and Learners!@517

 

---

[1]https://mb.com.ph/2020/08/07/governor-asks-ati-to-accredit-more-agricultural-learning-sites-in-bohol/?fbclid=IwAR3zHxogHUeDTbyad3_FV_XIi4Pr8X3lrHOwRTSFhf2Zodgxey9tYr_9EHM

[2]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/08/from-16-weeks-to-1-day-organic-farming.html

[3]https://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2020/05/03/improve-e-learning-access-and-make-it-a-permanent-feature