The Construct

After a week of research and seminars, I’m compelled to re-examine my takes on e-learning in the Philippine setting. Here’s a post on e-learning as an investment from two years back and here’s on ICT learning in general.

Technology has changed so much over the past three years that I’m out of the industry that the problem with today’s educator is choice rather than the availability of tools and resources. With Web 2.0 technologies reaching a fairly impressive level of sophistication for effective use in education, it’s really quite exciting for educators. But that’s just among the many issues that stakeholders in our context face.

Among these, still is the issue of infrastructure. Schools are still inequipped with proper computer laboratories and enough computers to cover the needs of a school population. There’s also the issue of hardware and software investments. The sheer pace of development in both fronts means that a computer laboratory faces obsolescence in even less than two years.

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I met my old boss yesterday just to talk a few things about the state of e-learning here in the Philippines since I’m exploring it as a possible study to do over the next year. While in my old office, I was made aware of this new learning system provider. I was quite puzzled when they told me the website address – www.happyd.edu.ph.

Now that puzzled me because, as far as I know, that edu.ph is only made available to educational institutions and training centers authorized by the state.

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The Department of Education isn’t a stranger to being given grants (what I term as “alms”) for continuous integration of IT in the education sector. I think the government has had dealings with IT giants like as Oracle with their Oracle Academy and Microsoft with their Partners in Learning program. While these efforts give students and educational institutions a break in their efforts, I still view it in the overall sad state of Philippine education. We rely on the generosity of the large Western capitalists to educate our students.

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And Raul Roco’s widow boldly declares her advocacy. What she’s calling for is a no brainer and has really been the consensus of educators across the country. The problem is that even private institutions are finding it difficult to get funding for infrastructure. And it’s almost useless to teach ICT without computer labs.

But Sonia Roco recognizes this and suggests community participation. Does that mean reliance on private entities? I’m one who is always reluctant to always involve private entities in government business. I believe that Chiz aims to address these education woes better – allot larger state subsidies to education.

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So I spoke for St. Matthew’s College in Cainta, Rizal yesterday. My topic is built for the geek stuff – Learning Resources for the Internet Generation. “And boy, it was a blast. There were four different sessions for the different levels in high school. So I was speaking for a good part of the day. I kinda lost my voice at that. Haha.

Anyway, I was the only speaker to cover all four sessions. There were two others but one was just for the morning session and the other for the afternoon sessions. Speaking for the whole day takes a lot. Good thing I’ve been working out so I didn’t run out of juice and air.

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