Computer Clubhouse in East Rembo featured in the Inquirer

Article from Inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines--The children of East Rembo in Makati have access to the information highway and have become dotcom kids, thanks to the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network that is housed at the Mater Dolorosa Parish church.

Many of the kids on the afternoon of the Philippine Daily Inquirer's visit were girls. The boys were probably out playing basketball. After all, every barangay has a basketball court, courtesy of Councilor This or Councilor That. It seemed nobody cared where the girls went after-school or what they did, nobody that is until Intel opened the clubhouse where girls are welcome to play with the computers and exercise their brains same as boys.

The East Rembo community is, to be politically correct about it, underserved. The streets are narrow and the homes are ramshackle compared to the wide avenues and high-rises of neighbor Fort Bonifacio. Chances are, without the ICCN, these kids would not have been introduced at their tender age to the skills that they will need to succeed in this digital age.

In addition to being a center for creativity, the ICCN is a warm community of learners. The 80 members, ranging in age from 10 to 17, are mentored by the staff and 21 registered volunteers in the use of technology for creative expression, for recreation and for more serious school work.

Supportive learning environment
The supportive learning environment within the computer clubhouses enables young people to express their ideas, build skills as well as self-confidence.

The ICCN in Mater Dolorosa Parish also caters to the youth of nearby areas in Makati, Pateros and Taguig.

It is open 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., but closes for an hour's lunch break from 12:30-1:30 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday. On Mondays the staff and volunteers meet for training sessions. Sundays are reserved for maintenance. The Mater Dolorosa Parish church is now mainly responsible for the project.

At the ICC, young members are taught hands-on how to use various software creatively.

The software programs are top of the line: Adobe Premier, Movie Maker and Ulead Video Studio for making their own movies; Flash, Dreamweaver, Swish Max and Adobe Image Ready for designing their own websites; Photoshop, Corel Photo Paint and Painter for editing and manipulating pictures; Microsoft PowerPoint, Movie Maker, Photo Story and Microsoft Publisher for showing off their pictures; Microsoft Word, Publisher and Adobe Pagemaker for publishing; RPG Maker for designing their own games; Sierra Home Architect for home designing; Pico Blocks and LEGO Mind Storms for robotics.

There's also the Intel Play Microscope where they can view minuscule objects like a real microscope, capture them in the computer and proceed to edit the image.

As much as the kids would like to spend a lifetime at the Intel center, they are limited to three-hour sessions to give other members a chance to get their hands on the computers. Paul Christian Rosales is clubhouse coordinator; Amy Baldoz is his assistant.

The clubhouse is also a safe place where student members go for help with school projects that require technological skills, including surfing the Web to do research, e-mail, even chat.

Anniversary mural
The day of the Inquirer visit happened to be Intel's 40th anniversary, a milestone that the microprocessing giant had chosen to mark with the launch of a global digital mural.

Children around the world have been working with Intel volunteers on murals depicting what computers will bring into their lives in the next 40 years.

For obvious reasons, the creative collaboration is called The World Mural Project. Using computers, kids from 20 countries, such as Brazil, China, Mexico, India, Israel, Ireland, Russia, South Africa and the United States, have been hard at work (or hardly working, considering how much fun this is for the digitally-inclined) to create the online global mural.

The World Mural Project is a web-based digital art piece that includes visual and written contents from 70 Intel computer clubhouses throughout the world.

More than 500 young people in 21 countries submitted graphic design "tiles" that were incorporated into an overall mural design. The project links together the individual submissions into one expansive and exciting digital mural that speaks to the youth's creativity and passion about technology.

Renowned digital muralist Favianna Rodriguez has shepherded the World Mural's creative process.

Common themes represented in the mural include the trend toward smaller, more mobile computing; green technology that improves our environment, more responsive technology in health care and education, and virtual travel.

Through the project, the youth of the world have expressed, in so many strokes and words, that they expect computers to change the world in positive ways for the next 40 years and beyond.

"As an industry, we have a responsibility to fulfill these expectations," said Bruce Sewell, senior vice president for corporate social responsibility at Intel.

Intel researchers are already working on a number of technology areas that are similar to what some of the youth have envisioned, including energy-efficient, affordable mobile Internet devices, high-performance visual computing solutions, and low-cost personal computers designed to meet the needs of first-time computer users in emerging markets.

"Intel has a 40-year history of serial technology breakthroughs and innovation," said Intel CEO and president Paul Otellini in an anniversary statement. "Over the next 40 years Intel technology will be at the heart of breakthroughs that solve the big problems of health and environment. For Intel this is just the beginning of its journey."

The sense of pride is understandable since Intel can take credit for introducing the "brain" of computers, the microprocessor. At that time, Otellini said, no one knew that computer sales would exceed 350 million units a year.

Investments in education
In the past decade alone, Intel invested $1 billion to improve education worldwide and is now investing more than $100 million annually to help teachers teach, students learn, and universities around the world innovate.

In addition to the learning benefits derived from computer clubhouses by kids, Intel has also trained more than five million teachers through its Intel Teach program and funded the world's largest pre-college science competition called Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF).

The Intel Higher Education Program brings cutting-edge technology expertise to universities through research grants, technology entrepreneurship forums, and mentoring by Intel technologists.

In the Philippines, there is another Computer Clubhouse and it is located at the Computer Training Center in Barangay Pinagtipunan, General Trias, Cavite.

2,000 public high schools to receive computer labs

Article from Inquirer.net

The Department of Education is targeting to equip more than 6,000 public high schools in the country with computer labs this year.

More than 3,950 high schools have so far been given PCs and other equipment, said Paul Soriano, DepEd technical services director.

"We are targeting the remaining 2,000 this year and we have already rolled out more than 6,000 since the year started," Soriano told INQUIRER.net in an interview during the launch of the Skoool.ph website, a collaboration between Intel and DepEd.

DepEd's computerization effort is partly dependent, however, on the Department of Energy's program to provide electricity in remote areas, according to Soriano.

"Most of the regions are already represented," he said, when asked which areas will be covered by this initiative. "We are already moving to fourth- and fifth-class municipalities."

DepEd's goal is to equip all public high schools with PCs in line with a directive from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself.

DepEd has been allocated funds for this project although other agencies such as the DTI and CICT have pitched in. Computer labs were also donated by several private sector groups such as Ayala-led GILAS and Smart Communications, the latter through its Smart Schools.

Partners like Intel have also donated PCs and likewise provide content that enhance learning using technologies such as the Internet.

"DepEd is now trying to integrate providers and harmonize content coming from them so that all high schools will benefit," Soriano said.

Intel's Skoool now has a .ph!

Intel has contributed greatly to education worldwide, especially in the Philippines. Their contribution to education includes hardware deployment, teacher training, content and promotion of educational excellence, that spans from K up to Higher Education. They likewise support community education, and one of which I had a privilege to be part of.

Yesterday, Intel has launched Skoool, Philippine version. Skoool features interactive multimedia resources for the enhancement of math and science education. I have previously seen skoool.ie (Ireland) and skoool.th (Thailand), and was impressed by its content. And now, Filipino students and teachers will have their version of online content through skoool.ph. This project was made possible in partnership with the Department of Education.

More about the launching in this article.

What do students need to learn

From http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/technology_curriculum_integration/new_literacy

A fundamental question for everyone involved in education — administrators, teachers, parents, and students — in this time of rapid change is, "What do students really need to be learning today in order to be ready for an unpredictable future?" Some believe that the best thing we can teach them is how to teach themselves. This requires that students become not only literate, but also able to use that literacy within their personal information environment in order to succeed now and in the future.

The challenge to us as educators lies in keeping up with an information environment that has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, a decade during which the very nature of information has changed in appearance, location, accessibility, application, and communication. Thus, it is crucial that when teaching literacy to our students, we emphasize skills that reflect the information environment of the present, not the past.

Whether we like it or not, with the information age comes a whole new set of basic skills. Following, we will take a look at how the traditional 3 Rs, naturally and out of necessity, evolve into 4 Es to define literacy in an increasingly, and soon to be exclusively, digital and networked world.

Reading → Exposing Knowledge

Most of the readers of this article were taught to read what was handed to them. Textbooks were given to us by our teachers, reference books by librarians, and magazines and newspapers by publishers. If we could read and understand the text handed to us by such recognized authorities, it meant we were literate.

Today, our students typically begin their information experiences in front of a global electronic library of billions of pages of information (the Internet), where materials can be published by just about anyone, on just about anything, and for just about any reason. If our students have been taught only to read and understand this information, they could be in serious trouble, possibly even in danger. Accessing information in an increasingly digital and networked world requires a range of skills of which decoding text is only a small part. Basic skills for today's students include the following:

1. Finding information: Locating relevant information not only from a local library or newsstand, but also from the Internet. Literacy includes the ability to identify needed information, use Web searching tools to find it, and employ research strategies that expose the best information.
2. Decoding information: Beyond decoding text, literacy requires reading deeply for meaning in multimedia content.
3. Evaluating information: It is critical that students learn to evaluate the information they encounter, and also identify its value in terms of their goals.
4. Organizing information into personal digital libraries: A key strategy for handling the overwhelming amount of information available to us is the construction and cultivation of personal digital libraries. When we create and organize information that is relevant to our ongoing interests and goals, then we can handily find answers to our questions.

Arithmetic → Employing Information

Before the proliferation of personal computers, most information was merely consumed. We purchased and then read text, listened to audio, viewed images, and watched video. Numbers, on the other hand, were used as a way of precisely measuring our environment and the laws that governed it, and to manipulate that environment and its laws in order to add value to our lives.

Today, just about all information is expressed in the universal language of numbers. Multimedia content is stored and communicated as ones and zeros, otherwise known as binary code. Since information is expressed in numbers today, and personal computers are available for interpreting and modifying those numbers, it becomes raw material that can be analyzed, altered, and improved in pursuit of a goal. It becomes just as important to be able to use a computer to process the invisible numbers behind images, audio, and video content as it is to be able to add, subtract, measure, count, and calculate the visible numbers.

Learning to process any and all information requires:

1. Basic mathematical skills: As always, students must know how to add, subtract, count, measure, and calculate numbers. They must also understand the fundamental laws of numbers and how to use these concepts to answer questions, solve problems, and accomplish goals.
2. Computer-aided processing of numbers: Of the numerous exabytes of information that will be generated this year, only a small percent of it will be printed. The rest will require a machine to read it. Students, while they learn the basic skills of processing printed numbers, must also learn to process large quantities of digital numbers using computer spreadsheets and other data processing tools.
3. Processing media: Because of affordable digital cameras, scanners, MIDI music devices, and the vast array of multimedia content available on the Web, obtaining or creating the picture (or sound) is no longer the final outcome. It is merely a part of the process. All formats of information can be moved into powerful graphic, sound, and video processing software and altered to communicate in a more precise and compelling way. Students must learn to use these software tools in order to add value to information. It's all about numbers, but also about using computers to process those numbers in order to improve the delivery of information and accomplish goals.

Writing → Expressing Ideas Compellingly

In a world bursting with information, we can use only the information that successfully competes for our attention. In the information age, content competes for our attention in much the same way as products on a store shelf were designed to in the industrial age. The information we select will be what looks the most appealing, seems to communicate itself most effectively and efficiently, and appears reliable and authoritative.

Writing will continue to be a core skill for all students, because some information is simply communicated most effectively in text. However, other information might best be expressed using pictures, sound, animation, or video. Students must master a range of practical and technical skills involved in expressing ideas effectively and compellingly.

1. Writing effectively: Students must learn not only the mechanics of writing, but how to use text to communicate knowledge and ideas more efficiently than ever.
2. Communicating with multimedia: Students must also learn to match their message with the medium that best communicates it, and then use the appropriate tools to create and or modify it in order to attract the attention of an audience.

Ethics: Right and Wrong Online

As information becomes increasingly important to our economy and culture, it also becomes more powerful — able to accomplish enormous good and great harm. This is why it is essential that at the same time we teach our students these prevailing information skills, we also teach them the ethical use of that information.

1. Information reliability: Students must learn to assess the accuracy of the information that they access and use, and it is equally important for them (and for all of us) to provide evidence of the accuracy and reliability of the information products they assemble.
2. Information property: In the information age, we are all information property owners. Most of us will make our living by producing information products. It is important that students gain an appreciation of information as property that needs to be respected in the same way that we respect each other's material property.
3. Information infrastructure: Today, we depend on the computers and networks through which our information flows to no less degree than we depend on our roads, rails, waterways, and airports. Planting a virus on a network is just as destructive as planting a bomb under a bridge. Students must realize the importance of our information infrastructure and how critical it is to our success in the future.

By Sara Armstrong and David Warlick

Support for Open Source Software

Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, Chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), told today that Open Source Software (OSS) should be supported and promoted as an alternative to proprietary software. Filipinos need to be aware about OSS and its benefits, as they are cost-effective, secure and relatively easy to use. I believe this is a better option than using pirated proprietary software. No to piracy!

CICT leads in the promotion of OSS by advocating and promoting OSS in its projects such as the eLGU, iSchools and eSkwela.

iLearn Portal

The iLearn portal features interactive educational resources and tutorials with a Filipino flavor. It's good to know that there is an online education resources localized for the Philippine setting because most educational technology resources that I find are from the United States. There are even resources written in the local dialects!

The portal was developed by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology and several state universities and colleges.

To know more about iLearn, visit their website at http://www.ilearn.gov.ph/

This blog has now been approved by PayPerPost!

I heard about PayPerPost through a friend who also earn from blogs. I thought this seems to be like a good opportunity. I've always looked at blogging as something I want to do to practice my writing skills and write about my advocacies. But now, through PayPerPost, I'll have an opportunity to get paid for blogging! Really, really cool! :)

I intend to save the money I earn from blogging.

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