SABLAYAN, OCCIDENTAL MINDORO – With the aim of equipping farm school trainers with agriculture-related applications, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) in MIMAROPA conducted the second batch of the “Training of Trainers (TOT) on Digital Agriculture Course (DAC)” on April 16-18, 2024 at the Adventure Camp Beach Resort, Sablayan.
The TOT first honed the abilities of the participants in using smartphones and accessing the internet, as well as various web-based ICT tools. This included familiarizing themselves with the e-learning platform, the Pinoy Rice Knowledge Bank, and agricultural helplines - the PhilRice Text Center and Farmers Contact Center.
Then, they explored into more advanced rice-related applications like the Binhing Palay App, AgriDoc, Rice Crop Manager, Minus One Element Technique, e-Damuhan, and the Leaf Color Computing App.
Afterwards, the participants were also exposed to advanced social media marketing strategies, learning how to create engaging content through Canva, develop marketing plans, utilize e-commerce platforms such as Facebook Page, Lazada, and Shopee, as well as to use online transactions through Maya and GCash.
To practice and refine their teaching skills while applying the knowledge acquired throughout the course, the 23 participants engaged in a micro-teaching session on the last day of the training.
Moreover, each farm school submitted an action plan specifying its strategy for conducting similar training for DAC 101 and 102 for rice farmers within their respective communities.
The TOT was made possible through the shared expertise of the resource speakers from the Information Services Section of the ATI MIMAROPA, namely, Ms. Karen T. Vicente, Agriculturist I; Mr. Michael Daven T. Jugno, Technical Support Staff III; and Mr. John Eric V. Arguelles, Technical Support Staff II.
