News
Classrooms without walls
Minda Soldevilla, a Physics teacher at Buenavista High School in the
island-province of Guimaras, brought a student to the Internet café in
preparation for the quiz bee last year.
Amazed over the wealth of information she had at her fingertips, the
student told her teacher, “Ma’am, it appears that nothing is impossible
to know if I know how to use the Internet.”
Soldevilla’s student is one of the luckier ones since the teacher is
a believer in Internet-aided learning. She even bought her own laptop
which she now uses for classroom instruction.
“I have to be innovative to make my students see a bigger world outside of our small island,” she said.
Soldevilla was one of 42 high school and elementary
teachers from the education division of Guimaras who attended “Building
Classrooms without Walls: Maximizing the Internet and Creating online
Resources”, a training conducted by Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART)
as part of a collaboration with Petron to help rehabilitate the
socio-economic conditions of the island following the oil spill in
August 2006.
Public
high school and elementary teachers from the education division of
Guimaras give the thumbs-up sign after attending a training designed to
help them integrate ICT in education. With them are (rightmost, front
row) Marylou Gocotano of SMART Public Affairs and (leftmost, front row)
Mae Monjas of Philippine Business for Social Progress.
Under its Smart Schools Program, SMART provides Internet access,
content and training to over 240 public schools nationwide, including
Nueva Valencia National High School and San Miguel Elementary School in
Guimaras Island.
The leading wireless services provider expanded its training to
include all public elementary and high schools in Guimaras as part of
an agreement with Petron to integrate ICT in public school education in
the island.
SMART Public Affairs Community Partnerships senior manager Darwin
Flores said that the training aims to help public school teachers gain
access to the Internet via the PLDT group’s wide range of
communications solutions and train them on how to maximize the
resources and tools available on the information superhighway for the
benefit of their students.
Lloyd Anthony Layug, training director of NetLearn Ventures, was
tapped to conduct the training. According to Layug, the module provided
the participants with skills for Internet integration toward effective
research projects, introducing new concepts through visual aids,
supplemental learning, more effective collaborative learning and
communicating with others through blogs, websites and emails.
“With the strategies that they’ve learned, our teachers can present
their lessons in a more creative way to arouse the interest of students
and, likewise, develop higher order thinking skills,” said Science
Education Supervisor Edlyn Legita.
And present they did, simulating a classroom discussion based on a
lesson plan that adopted online-related strategies in various subjects
– from biology, physics, math and geometry to social studies,
literature and language as well as folk dancing.
“Through the training, I upgraded my teaching efficiency by becoming
more familiar on the use of technology to enhance classroom
discussion,” said high school social studies teacher Ronie Alegria.
First grade teacher Alma Cabangal said she will share insights
gained from the training with fellow teachers and encourage them to
make use of the Internet in presenting their lessons. Another
elementary school teacher, Arlan Maro, added that he now knows how to
make visual materials more appealing to students, thus helping him
motivate them better.
Petron Director Carmen Pedrosa, who is also a columnist of the
Philippine Star, shared with the participants how she has benefited
from online connectivity.
“I am an opinion writer and for me to write well, I need all the
facts, which I get from among others, the Internet,” she said.
Pedrosa reminded the teachers that by helping their students to make
use of the Internet, they can now open doors for their students and
enable them “to try anything now that the world has been laid open
before them.”
As for Soldevilla, she believes that Internet access has made the world smaller yet also “wider and limitless”.
“This limitless source of information and learning is a journey in knowledge power that begins with a mouse click,” she added.
Trainings on ICT integration were simultaneously conducted for
teachers of public elementary and high schools adopted under SSP in
2008. These were held in clusters – the NCR cluster at the
University of Makati (UMAK), North Luzon cluster at the Systems Plus
College Foundation in Angeles City, Cebu cluster at the University of
San Jose-Recoletos in Cebu City, Iloilo cluster at the University of
San Agustin in Iloilo City and the Mindanao cluster at the Xavier
University-Ateneo de Cagayan in Cagayan de Oro City.
(Published 11 May 2009, Smart Communications, Inc.)
