Good education is good business.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
iSchools SAPOT develops IP sensitive Content for Students; IPO status Scored
Original article found at:
by: Kairos Dela Cruz
“Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being”.
We all know our rights, sometimes we even overshoot on assuming them. The latter even makes some of us neglect the existence of others and the rights that are intrinsic to them. In cases of violence, people know about their human rights. In cases of trials, even the accused parties have the guts to assume their rights to remain silent. In the cases wherein students duplicate or photocopy resource materials, the Philippines appear to be blatant in transgressing intellectual property issues.
Should this be the case and future of Philippine education? Students stealing to become educated?
iSchools Project says NO.
iSchools Project, a government-funded ICT-education integration program, seeks to educate students not just by giving them free computer laboratories and training workshops; but also by providing them with intellectual property- sensitive educational materials.
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SAPOT Participants (institutional/individual partners and project staff) pose for a group pick at Angels' Hills, Tagaytay last July 20-22, 2011.
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The project seeks to provide high-quality educational content to the project’s high school recipients through its Content Mapping Initiative (CMI), more popularly coined as Supplementary Academic Philippine Online Treasury (SAPOT). The initiative is part of the project’s thrust in empowering the major stakeholders (teachers, students, and community members) of its recipient schools.
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Representatives from iSchools partner institutions meet up with iSchools Project Manager, Toni Torres (in maroon) to insure the smooth flow of SAPOT.
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As Toni Torres, iSchools Project Manager, puts it “iSchools Project believes that ICT can propel the Philippine education system but the project will not compromise any values in doing so.
Content, especially in education, comes at a price that not everyone can afford. To help in solving the problem, iSchools would provide free content materials in different subjects, materials that will undergo rigorous academic scrutinizing. Permissions from the “whose” end of these content materials will be coordinated and negotiated by the project”.
In the recent outlining and primary mapping workshop for CMI, iSchools Project joined hands with major academic, cultural and legal institutions at Angels’ Hills, Tagaytay City last June 20-22, 2011. Among the many subject matter experts, Atty. Mark Dy of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO-Phils.) was given the chance to explain the need and implications of insuring that CMI would not transgress any level of the intellectual property rights of the proponents of the content materials that the initiative wishes to include in the final content map.
According to Atty. Dy, “Respect for intellectual property is a strong indicator of quality creative & educational content. Designing world-class educational material always includes proper referencing, attribution and copyright clearance for all the components used in the project. This way, credit is given to those who deserve it and the entire project is kept fresh and original”.
iSchools SAPOT will distribute the content materials to project recipient high schools tentatively through three major media- an online portal, portable external hard disk, and a magazine-type catalog. All of these materials will be distributed free of charge.
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Atty. Mark Dy from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) briefs SAPOT participants about the possible IP implications of the initiative.
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During Atty. Dy’s lecture he came across why initiatives such as SAPOT are pushing a holistic change for intellectual property in the Philippines. iSchools SAPOT is one of the first of its kind but it would not be the last of iSchools’ attempts in bridging the digital divide.
“The creative, scientific and academic communities must demand greater institutional support for copyright in the Philippines if we want our creative content to flourish. Senate Bill 2487, once passed into law, will create the Bureau of Copyright under the Intellectual Property Office, dedicated to copyright policies and programs. Presently, our Intellectual Property Office only has an ad hoc team composed of two lawyers and about 10 support personnel manning the entire copyright system of the country. In contrast, South Korea has about 800. We urge everyone to support the passing of Senate Bill 2487 and lift Filipino creativity to the very top”, Dy added.
Attributing the author with due recognition is a basic in respecting intellectual property; here is an example.
Khalil Gibran, an internationally acclaimed philosopher, and author may sound too noble and too ideal when he published the opening line. In all honesty, maybe the world can use a little of this nobility and idealism.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Speak English
Published in Cebu Gold Star Daily
I remember during my grade school days when I would run up a wide ramp to get to the second floor classrooms. As you reach the wall facing the ramps, you would see a sign in bright bold red letters against a white background saying, SPEAK ENGLISH. Back then, that was the entire school’s expectation. Back then, that was the law. One who violates this command would get a screeching reprimand or be fined twenty-five centavos to be tossed into the class fund. Like having a school-wide swear jar, this was the educational attitude we had during the 80’s and 90’s (and perhaps even up to this day). As if speaking your native tongue was actually identical to cussing.
I admit, I am a proud Cebuano. But it occurred to me that when it comes to my native tongue, I have the vocabulary and grammar skills of a first grader. Here are three instances that prove this point:
It is because of this realization that I am working hand-in-hand with legislators and teachers to pass a new law -- one, which promotes multi-lingual education. It encourages the use of multiple languages, especially the native tongue of the locality, for teaching. It also provides for mandatory formal education on the native tongue. This is above and beyond the subjects already taught for English and Filipino.
I know what many of you are thinking – “Will this not make English proficiency suffer?” U.P. Diliman linguistics professor, Dr. Ricardo Nolasco says “No”. In his book, 21 Reasons Why Filipino Children Learn Better While Using Their Mother Tongue, he reveals that studies in many countries have shown that students who learn using their native language outperform those who learn using a secondary language. First language learning allows children to develop solid foundations for literacy and paves the way for learning multiple languages.
Like many people who are products of the Filipino private school system, English is my first language. It is the language in which I am most proficient. It is the language I use to count and the language in which I think. This is a fortunate (or unfortunate) reality for me and for many of my friends. But the majority of children who do not have this initial exposure to English adapt the native tongue as their first language. It may be Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Chavacano, Ilokano, Kapampangan or the many other languages of these islands. This burdens them with a tremendous disadvantage in the learning process and teachers get such a headache just trying to get them to learn while using English as the exclusive medium of instruction.
This is one of the reasons why many Filipinos remain illiterate -- why the dropout and repeat rates rise. These children are not stupid. They just were not given the same opportunities on a level playing field. They lack confidence because they cannot articulate their ideas in the way expected of them. In effect, their grades suffer and their self-esteem plummets -- all because they were brought into a learning system that forces them to become something other than their natural selves.
Education should be liberating. It ought to come naturally. Forcing children to learn what is alien to them in the onset will trigger a long-lasting aversion to learning. This is not to disregard the importance of learning English. In fact, it should be taught with greater intensity and depth. Learning English is our gateway to the rest of the world – but this should not be done at the cost of abandoning the rich wisdom and knowledge of our foreparents.
Local languages face extinction even as they are passed down by oral tradition. Few people know how to use our native languages correctly and use it well. What little we know now is a bastardized version of its former glorious self. Isn’t high time we reclaim our past and solidify our understanding of our cultural identities.
Many fear that this will cause division. On the contrary, it will encourage interaction and multi-literacy. It will send a message to the rest of the islands that the national government values their cultures and uniqueness. It fosters unity in diversity because of mutual tolerance. To deny that we are multi-cultural people is plainly delusional. We must embrace this diversity by celebrating it in our schools.
The more children learn their own languages, the more poets, novelists, screenwriters, actors, songwriters and artists we will have in a very wide range of languages. It will enrich and develop our culture. Music and art will flourish and it will shepherd in a Filipino renaissance never before seen in history. I look forward to this period in our future.
Panahon na para mag-bag-o ang ato-ang panan-aw sa kalibutan. Panahon na para ibalik ang ato-ang kultura ug kaalam.
I remember during my grade school days when I would run up a wide ramp to get to the second floor classrooms. As you reach the wall facing the ramps, you would see a sign in bright bold red letters against a white background saying, SPEAK ENGLISH. Back then, that was the entire school’s expectation. Back then, that was the law. One who violates this command would get a screeching reprimand or be fined twenty-five centavos to be tossed into the class fund. Like having a school-wide swear jar, this was the educational attitude we had during the 80’s and 90’s (and perhaps even up to this day). As if speaking your native tongue was actually identical to cussing.
I admit, I am a proud Cebuano. But it occurred to me that when it comes to my native tongue, I have the vocabulary and grammar skills of a first grader. Here are three instances that prove this point:
- I attempted to write two songs in Cebuano and was successful only after consulting three of my friends about the lyrics.
- I went to Davao last December to conduct a paralegal seminar for six indigenous Mindanao tribes and I had to give all my lectures in straight Cebuano. I had such a difficult time that I was corrected many times by the participants and had to substitute many words unbeknownst to me with their English equivalents. It turned out to be a successful seminar, but it gave me the feeling that I was a foreigner among my peers.
- Yesterday, my boss asked me to translate a six-page script into Cebuano and it took me the greater part of two hours to finish my task.
It is because of this realization that I am working hand-in-hand with legislators and teachers to pass a new law -- one, which promotes multi-lingual education. It encourages the use of multiple languages, especially the native tongue of the locality, for teaching. It also provides for mandatory formal education on the native tongue. This is above and beyond the subjects already taught for English and Filipino.
I know what many of you are thinking – “Will this not make English proficiency suffer?” U.P. Diliman linguistics professor, Dr. Ricardo Nolasco says “No”. In his book, 21 Reasons Why Filipino Children Learn Better While Using Their Mother Tongue, he reveals that studies in many countries have shown that students who learn using their native language outperform those who learn using a secondary language. First language learning allows children to develop solid foundations for literacy and paves the way for learning multiple languages.
Like many people who are products of the Filipino private school system, English is my first language. It is the language in which I am most proficient. It is the language I use to count and the language in which I think. This is a fortunate (or unfortunate) reality for me and for many of my friends. But the majority of children who do not have this initial exposure to English adapt the native tongue as their first language. It may be Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Chavacano, Ilokano, Kapampangan or the many other languages of these islands. This burdens them with a tremendous disadvantage in the learning process and teachers get such a headache just trying to get them to learn while using English as the exclusive medium of instruction.
This is one of the reasons why many Filipinos remain illiterate -- why the dropout and repeat rates rise. These children are not stupid. They just were not given the same opportunities on a level playing field. They lack confidence because they cannot articulate their ideas in the way expected of them. In effect, their grades suffer and their self-esteem plummets -- all because they were brought into a learning system that forces them to become something other than their natural selves.
Education should be liberating. It ought to come naturally. Forcing children to learn what is alien to them in the onset will trigger a long-lasting aversion to learning. This is not to disregard the importance of learning English. In fact, it should be taught with greater intensity and depth. Learning English is our gateway to the rest of the world – but this should not be done at the cost of abandoning the rich wisdom and knowledge of our foreparents.
Local languages face extinction even as they are passed down by oral tradition. Few people know how to use our native languages correctly and use it well. What little we know now is a bastardized version of its former glorious self. Isn’t high time we reclaim our past and solidify our understanding of our cultural identities.
Many fear that this will cause division. On the contrary, it will encourage interaction and multi-literacy. It will send a message to the rest of the islands that the national government values their cultures and uniqueness. It fosters unity in diversity because of mutual tolerance. To deny that we are multi-cultural people is plainly delusional. We must embrace this diversity by celebrating it in our schools.
The more children learn their own languages, the more poets, novelists, screenwriters, actors, songwriters and artists we will have in a very wide range of languages. It will enrich and develop our culture. Music and art will flourish and it will shepherd in a Filipino renaissance never before seen in history. I look forward to this period in our future.
Panahon na para mag-bag-o ang ato-ang panan-aw sa kalibutan. Panahon na para ibalik ang ato-ang kultura ug kaalam.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Two Timepieces
Originally published in the March 2008 Issue of ThePalladium -- in my column Legal Personality.
As a super-senior, I can't help but reach back into my immediate past to try and draw out a cumulative meaning that will somehow justify this long-overdue end. After years of leafing through thousands of pages of often-incomprehensible text and braving hundreds of hours of humiliation, terror and disappointment, I finally see the finish line in the short distance -- a sight that gets sweeter every day. And just as we were taught always to begin with the end in mind, it's equally important to end reflective of everything that had been.
Roughly a week before I descended into the hell that was Intro to Law, my dad gave me an elegant wooden Ingraham table clock, and on its face was an inscription that read:
This is a prayer that I see twice every single day: Once when I wake up to prepare for the day and a second time as I wind up my affairs for the night. And it helped. It allowed me to take one piece of the puzzle at a time from the manifold parts of the law and reassemble them inside my head, albeit often with much difficulty. Law school has consistently pushed me against the walls of my own personal limits and I found myself repeatedly tearing them down just to make it through another exam—another semester—another year. I admit I was never as smart as my classmates. But by some grace, my academic destiny is all but complete.
In any case, law school is not just a lengthy exercise in intellectual sadomasochism, but it carries with it gifts of immeasurable value. One such gift is an extension of our youth. Most of us have been attending school our entire lives, and these extra four years give us an excuse to delay growing up. It gives us a chance to keep holding on to our ideals and our innocence up to the last possible moment. Indeed, to the casual outside observer, a law class would appear to be nothing more than a group of older, better-dressed high school students in action. Even our professors encourage this through their comical antics and shameless commentaries while discussing constitutional concepts like Stop-and-Frisk or family case law like Chi Ming Tsoi v. CA. In spite of all the pain involved, law school can be quite amusing. It's one huge carnival –- an attractive nuisance, if you will. Law school teaches us to be critical of all things brought before us, and this philosophy is always attended with humor and wit.
Another gift that law school affords us is the chance to clarify who we truly are. Many of us found ourselves in law school either because we couldn't get work that pays well enough or because we haven't made a career choice just yet. And long before even considering law school, we were writers, activists, artists, musicians, athletes and many other things that have nothing to do with legal education. To some people, law school is a reason enough to abandon these skills and passions for the much-needed additional study time. For others, this is simply unacceptable. These are the same people who join organizations in and outside school to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives—to say that law school is not the be-all and end-all of who I am as a person. We have law students who compete in sports or performance arts locally and internationally. We have writers who have penned brilliant pieces of literature, both outside and inside the legal spectrum. We have students who volunteer with charity organizations to work closely with and for the poor. All these is, to my mind, the Magis that we always keep hearing about: the more—the lingering discontent with the world and the corollary desire to always push it further towards goodness. Our character is built by the things that we pursue with fervor alongside the tests of academic life.
In the end, there are many people to thank: our mentors, our friends and even those who just love giving us a hard time. They all build up our character. I was a legal tabula rasa when I entered the Rockwell campus and I will be leaving it dramatically stronger and wiser than I was then.
Last Christmas, my dad gave me a beautiful silver Breitling wristwatch. I wear it proudly after several years of not having any watch at all and relying on my mobile phone for the time. This time, there were no inscriptions or prayers on its face. But I felt that it was my old man's way of saying "It is time."
End with the beginning in mind.
As a super-senior, I can't help but reach back into my immediate past to try and draw out a cumulative meaning that will somehow justify this long-overdue end. After years of leafing through thousands of pages of often-incomprehensible text and braving hundreds of hours of humiliation, terror and disappointment, I finally see the finish line in the short distance -- a sight that gets sweeter every day. And just as we were taught always to begin with the end in mind, it's equally important to end reflective of everything that had been.
Roughly a week before I descended into the hell that was Intro to Law, my dad gave me an elegant wooden Ingraham table clock, and on its face was an inscription that read:
One Day at a Time
Help me believe in what I could be, and all that I am.
Show me the stairway I have to climb,
Lord, for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.
This is a prayer that I see twice every single day: Once when I wake up to prepare for the day and a second time as I wind up my affairs for the night. And it helped. It allowed me to take one piece of the puzzle at a time from the manifold parts of the law and reassemble them inside my head, albeit often with much difficulty. Law school has consistently pushed me against the walls of my own personal limits and I found myself repeatedly tearing them down just to make it through another exam—another semester—another year. I admit I was never as smart as my classmates. But by some grace, my academic destiny is all but complete.
In any case, law school is not just a lengthy exercise in intellectual sadomasochism, but it carries with it gifts of immeasurable value. One such gift is an extension of our youth. Most of us have been attending school our entire lives, and these extra four years give us an excuse to delay growing up. It gives us a chance to keep holding on to our ideals and our innocence up to the last possible moment. Indeed, to the casual outside observer, a law class would appear to be nothing more than a group of older, better-dressed high school students in action. Even our professors encourage this through their comical antics and shameless commentaries while discussing constitutional concepts like Stop-and-Frisk or family case law like Chi Ming Tsoi v. CA. In spite of all the pain involved, law school can be quite amusing. It's one huge carnival –- an attractive nuisance, if you will. Law school teaches us to be critical of all things brought before us, and this philosophy is always attended with humor and wit.
Another gift that law school affords us is the chance to clarify who we truly are. Many of us found ourselves in law school either because we couldn't get work that pays well enough or because we haven't made a career choice just yet. And long before even considering law school, we were writers, activists, artists, musicians, athletes and many other things that have nothing to do with legal education. To some people, law school is a reason enough to abandon these skills and passions for the much-needed additional study time. For others, this is simply unacceptable. These are the same people who join organizations in and outside school to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives—to say that law school is not the be-all and end-all of who I am as a person. We have law students who compete in sports or performance arts locally and internationally. We have writers who have penned brilliant pieces of literature, both outside and inside the legal spectrum. We have students who volunteer with charity organizations to work closely with and for the poor. All these is, to my mind, the Magis that we always keep hearing about: the more—the lingering discontent with the world and the corollary desire to always push it further towards goodness. Our character is built by the things that we pursue with fervor alongside the tests of academic life.
In the end, there are many people to thank: our mentors, our friends and even those who just love giving us a hard time. They all build up our character. I was a legal tabula rasa when I entered the Rockwell campus and I will be leaving it dramatically stronger and wiser than I was then.
Last Christmas, my dad gave me a beautiful silver Breitling wristwatch. I wear it proudly after several years of not having any watch at all and relying on my mobile phone for the time. This time, there were no inscriptions or prayers on its face. But I felt that it was my old man's way of saying "It is time."
End with the beginning in mind.
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