Although in isolated instances, technology is literally transforming the lives of people entirely -- not only students but also the teachers themselves.
Pedro Montejo, a high school principal from the Misamis Oriental General Comprehensive High School (MOGCHS) in Cagayan De Oro City in the South, gleefully narrated the stories of at least four former teachers from his school. Thanks to the power of the Internet, they discovered online dating, eventually got married, and migrated to the U.S. and Canada.
In the same gleeful tone, he likewise narrated the story of a student who was able to successfully pass a scholarship application online and is currently studying abroad. Again, thanks to the Internet.
Montejo's school is one of 37 public high schools around the country that are part of the Smart Schools program. Most of these schools have been able to put up computer labs through the government's PCs for Public High Schools project.
Smart, on one hand, is tapping into the network of its parent company Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. in providing free unlimited Internet access to these schools.
Motivation
Smart has also launched a Web site (www.smartschools.com) that aims to 'connect' these public high schools and provide a common resource for teachers, including the sharing of best practices, links to educational sites abroad, and basic tips on how to use Internet-based tools like e-mail and chat.
'It's a matter of how to motivate them (teachers),' said Montejo, who was among a group of high school principals who visited Metro Manila recently for the launch of the Smart Schools Web site.
By motivation, Montejo is most certainly not speaking of teachers finding the proverbial greener pasture, either through online dating or other means by which the Internet can be used. Even if he thinks 90 percent of teachers in his school already know how to write e-mail. Out of a faculty of 190 teachers, half of them range from 22 to 36 years old, which is young by public school standards.
Said Montejo: 'The primary motivation is to make their work a lot easier.' By this, he means simply doing away with time-consuming tasks like encoding student grades and preparing all sorts of forms manually.
But more importantly, the teachers also get to use the labs for their own training. Smart has partnered with software maker Microsoft in training teachers in participating schools in the use of basic MS Office programs. This summer, both companies plan to teach more advanced programs like Microsoft Visual Basic and networking.
The newly launched Smart Schools Web site is intended to aid this training program for teachers. Asked about how he expects his school to benefit from the Web site, Montejo is positive about the prospect of establishing relations with other schools, not just locally but from those abroad. 'We could get some ideas on how they (other schools) use the Internet in teaching their students more effectively.'
Opening doors
In the case of MOGCHS, the school now has the two computer labs, each housing 20 PCs, some of which were acquired by the school itself through rather interesting means.
The school was able to buy a few PCs after winning a contest sponsored by manufacturing firm Unilever Corp., which entailed collecting the most number of 'sachets' from various products. After collecting a P100,000 (US$1,955) cash prize, school officials promptly decided to buy more PCs.
The school likewise won grants from local companies in Cagayan De Oro, also spent on acquiring PCs. The more PCs there are, the better to serve the needs of a school population of around 7,800 students.
The Internet has also provided a means for Montejo and the school's PTA officials to tap and mobilize MOGCHS alumni, including those from abroad, in pitching in their valuable contributions.
At the moment, the school is awaiting some 400 second-hand PCs from abroad, the result of such efforts involving alumni help. According to Montejo, computer school AMA has agreed to provide technical assistance in setting up computer labs that would accommodate these donated PCs.
'We're now working out a way for us to retrieve the PCs from the Bureau of Customs,' he said.