I have been to Sadanga National High School, Poblacion, Sadanga last Friday, December 9, 2011, as guest speaker on the culminating activities of the celebration of Education Week.   The theme:  “Nurturing the Whole Child, Celebrating Milestones and Accentuating Achievements,” is just but fitting to the whole week activity.  It was indeed a milestone for the school because it is the first time that the school celebrated Education Week-putting emphasis on the technical-vocational and entrepreneurial skills of the students.  The school held an exhibit showcasing the products of the students in the categories- Agriculture, Information and Communications Technology, Woodworks and Food Processing.  I was in awe at how the students could articulate on their business plans- one wanted a to set up a gasoline station along the main road from Sadanga to Kalinga.  Another wanted to set up a canteen with nothing to serve but foods from organically grown produce.  The students in Information Technology got to present their electronically created posters and their word processing skills.  Boys joined the dish gardening competition and won the first prize.  I got to taste the fruit pie and candied beans from the food processing department and it could rival the pastries we have in any other place.

The activity was a dream project of the principal, Mrs. Arleen G. Poyongan and put into fruition with the whole faculty members and students working together.  Mr. Avelino K. Tangkawan took charge of the ICT exhibits and presentations- indeed it was a good connection.  The ICT group took care of the labels of the produce from the food processing department.   The projects of the students who were more inclined in woodworks were also part of the exhibit.  The products were functional, practical –things you would not believe- a student could do.

Along the way home, I look back to the days when vocational skills were frowned upon by many.  Now that the K-12 is in the offing, it seems that those in favor are harping about the inclusion of vocational training in the planned addition of two more years in high school.  Nothing wrong with that, it’s high time we give tech vocation the attention it deserves.  But then, this is just like transferring to the high school level two years of tech-vocational education which, already is being provided for the the hundreds of TESDA supervised private tech-vocational institutions.

(Photo:  post secondary freshmen students of Xijen College participate in a team building workshop- senior high school students supposed to be if the students are in the K-12 program) Now on the looming K-12 or planned twelve years of education for the Filipino child, I prefer to look at it this way.  A very strong foundation in the early years of education is an important consideration.  Many researches, studies have been done by so called education experts, yet nothing seems to fit.  I am a product of a public school and I entered Grade 1 as a six year old.  We only had the very basic subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic, science, social studies, scouting came in next in the following years.  If my memory serves me right, our teachers did not use the local dialect to teach.  Of course there was a sprinkling of it.  Thus, reading Pepe and Pilar was more than enough to teach us the English language in Grade 1.

There was theme writing everyday and the more it honed our writing skills.  It was not all about having to teach in the local dialect for us to be able to comprehend but it was more about the teacher’s skill in teaching, in lesson delivery.  My teacher in Grade One, Ms.  Josephine Joven Dirige used a lot of visual aids, creative teaching techniques and lots of praises coupled with discipline.  In time, school was really fun for me.  Then we have emphasis on building good character.  Character building was part of all the subjects and it did not have to be taken as a separate subject.  Honesty, discipline, respect for elders and everything that a child should carry on as a characteristic of a better person were taken in either in the classroom or outside of the classroom.  I learned so much from my classmates too, children of Bontoc Ili who made it a point to rush home after classes-to meet their parents, carry their heavy load as they come from a day’s work at the fields.  Third is comprehension.  In high school, I hated subjects where exams were always measured on your ability to memorize.  I had poor memory and I did not like examinations that had a lot of fill in the blanks.  But then I would thrive in a subject where exams required essays.   Those are just a few of my thoughts on the K-12.  I guess it is not adding more years but a matter of overhauling the entire system.  Simplifying the curriculum and ensuring that we have the best teachers that we can possibly have.  To have K-12 just because our engineers and other professionals are not recognized in other countries because of their lack of school residency (most of the countries of the world have 12 years of basic education; Singapore has 11) is another indication that we have given up hope that the best place for the Filipino professional to work is in the Philippines.  We have to take a long hard look and not rush to implement K-12.

by Joel T. Fagsao

There could be days when you hear or experience people around you complaining about simple matters like a meeting starting late, bad food and snacks in a seminar-workshop or the hot weather.  We do have various levels of tolerance but often times, our impatience on trivial matters are results of negative thoughts.  By putting too much attention to trivial matters we give ourselves undue stress which could have been avoided in the first place.  When the weather is hot, we just have to tell ourselves that okay, I cannot control the weather.  We can also say that this is just one of the warmer days.  In hot weather, I can still wear long sleeved shirts and not be bothered at all.  It is all a matter of mind setting.  When we have bad food or “cheap” snacks, we can just say, we could have a better one the next time.  When a meeting starts late, instead of ranting we can say, people are trying to come early to the meeting but there could be a reason for coming late-perhaps the reason could be miscommunication about the starting time or the venue.

 

It’s time we explore the benefits of taking a positive attitude.  When workmates start whining about how lousy the boss is, how ineffective the policies of the organization are or how poor the lines of communication are between management and the people on the ground-you could either choose to be on the whining side or take an assessment of the situation and do the best you can possibly do to help improve the situation.  Now if you are on the negative side, you will tend to be pessimistic, easily give up and treat difficult situations in a manner that “nothing can really be done.”  In my encounter with corporate trainer, Ms. Lakshami Rao, practicing creative visualization helps one look more on the positive side of everything, no matter how hopeless it could be. Ms. Rao has been one of our speakers while I was on training at the National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD) in India.

 

I remember when Rao entered our lecture room, she would be greeting us a warm hello with all the expression of a happy face and gestures that elicit warmth.  It was then that in the middle of the lecture she said,  “if I came into the room wearing a serious face, not smiling at all and projecting a body language that conveys disinterest, then everything negative will follow.”  “Everyone in this room will feel uneasy, have a closed mind and might even adapt the same attitude that the speaker has.”  It is at this point that we realize that if you carry with you a negative attitude, you tend to influence the people around you also, with the same negative energy.

 

Creative visualization helps us realize our desire for the good things in our lives.  Creative visualization is about the power of attraction.  You attract what is in your thoughts.  It is about the power of one’s thinking or thoughts to achieve something.  It could be about daydreaming.   Anyone can achieve the good things by creating the mental image in one’s thoughts of the things he or she desires.  Ms. Rao however has cautioned, even discouraged us not to use creative visualization to desire material things.  “Be careful of what you wish, there could always be a price that you have to pay, especially on material things,” she warned.   The warning has some meaning as the analogy is simple.  If you desire for a car, note that the car needs maintenance, gas and all.  Creative visualization is best used in getting us out of tight situations, achieving good health, a harmonious relationship and those that help us achieve peace of mind.

 

I share with our readers the lessons learned from Ms. Rao.   The four steps of creative visualization are: 1. Give it some positive thought- learn to visualize and focus your thoughts into pictures, by visualizing, you are emitting that powerful frequency and it attracts the same energy, your pictures are returned to you just as you saw them in your mind.  Note however that you should learn to prioritize what you want because if you go for it, you have to be willing to pay the price.  Visualize for good health, conquering your fears, improved relations, self improvement, ask for small things and not the big things    (go slow on wanting material things).  2.  Using the law of attraction- do the things that you love and that give you joy (not pleasure).  Make gratitude a way of life. 3. Do not anticipate problems; you need not know how it will come about.  Practice affirmation, even ten minutes a day of doing effective affirmation can counterbalance years of old mental habits.  4. Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.  Keep your words positive, because your words become your actions.

Joel T. Fagsao

“All my bags are packed I’m ready to go…”, well training is over and most of my classmates have packed their bags and trying to figure out how they can stay within their baggage limit of 20 to 30 kilograms.  We did one thing, sent most of our books via the postal service, now who says the post office has gone the way of the dinosaur?    After all the shopping for something to remind us of this country, bags are full of saris, suits, faux jewelry, all sorts of crafts and clothes from India.  Textiles here are cheap because India produces almost all the raw materials industries to support its industrialization phase.  India is also more of a knowledge economy as I have come to know.

Time has gone so fast, it seemed only like yesterday, I was counting the days from February 1 and now, on to 23^rd of March I realize it’s my last night here at Noida, Uttar Pradesh.  By the time this article is published I would be waking up late at home.

I go home with a lot of respect for powerhouse India as I have seen and experienced it through interactions with my professors, all of them committed and passionate in their respective fields.  The rest of the weeks we spent for field study visits to as far as Chandigarh, Rajastan, Gujarat and nearby Delhi.  The field exposure provided as insights- of the ways of India in textile, handicrafts, handmade paper, dairy production, software development, electronics, steel, environmental clean-up industries.  All of the industries we visited were small enterprises and had so many opportunities for growth.

The last visit we had before our closing program tomorrow (March 24, 2011) is the Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology.  Yes it doesn’t have the “university” attached to its name but it is making waves in India.  It ranks 16^th among the best schools in India.  The one thing that sets the school apart is its TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS INCUBATOR program.  The school, based in Uttar Pradesh is a private institution and offers courses ranging from Computer Science to Mechanical Engineering.  It has also post graduate programs in business and technology.  Krishna Institute in its vision wants to promote an entrepreneurship culture in the institution to produce entrepreneurs on a continuous basis in order to generate wealth and self employment.  So what is the Technology Business Incubator program?  This program is an integrated service of the institution wherein facilities such as an office space, a laboratory, a sharing of facilities, marketing and promotion assistance and fund sourcing are provided to students or graduates who have promising products or services.  The institute has dedicated a building where young companies are nurtured until they are able to stand on their own.  Each year, a business plan competition is organized by the institution and those business plans with the most potential is accommodated into the incubation center.  In our tour of the Business Incubation Center, they were fourteen incubate companies; all ran by young people from 24 and up. They are mostly graduates of I.T. and Engineering courses.  One star-up company is Blue Ink Infotech. The young man demonstrated to us his products which are mostly animated illustrations of lessons in Engineering and other courses.  Already, he has engineering schools across India as clients.  Sapro Robotics is managed by a young man who has developed a remote control device to put on or off lights, electric fans and other gadgets in a room.  The young man has eight staff doing various functions from software, soldering to packing the device.  We asked who are his prospective clients and he said that hospitals, offices and homes can benefit from the device.  Another company has developed a vegetable peeler and slicer in one.  It also recently won a competition for an all terrain vehicle that they have developed.  In our interactions with the young company owners, you can see in their eyes the passion and commitment to making their company grow.  The incubators pay a minimal rent for use of their office space, electricity, use of the common service facilities.  Meanwhile, the school continues to nurture them through trainings in business skills, arranging accounting and legal services, guidance for development of new products and services, advice on human resource management, networking with entrepreneurs, customers and other support agencies.  The incubators also receive a seed funding from the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Department of Science and Technology.

There could be similar programs in our country, but we could further explore this area and really boost the chances of our young entrepreneurs to really make it. In the wall of the institution, a sign says, there are fewer opportunities for employees, but more for employers, entrepreneurship is the way to go. For school managers, you can look into the site, www.tbi-kiet.com.

Tech Talk
Joel T. Fagsao

If anybody who doesn’t

know how to operate a computer but can easily work his or her way on Facebook then this is a good sign. A good sign that we have reached a certain level of maturity when it comes to information technology. Information technology is quite very broad but I would like to simplify this for our readers to mean technologies-whether tools, gadgets, ways or methodologies that enable us to communicate, get access to information or pass information through several forms of media period. Ever wondered why kids take like ducks to water when it comes to operating an electronic gadget? Is it because they were born into it? Could it be that today’s kids are hard wired to easily learn the “intricacies” of figuring out how a gadget works? I would like to believe that the reason could be because they were born into it. Today’s kids are growing up in an environment where access to information comes through various forms of media. When my generation and those before me had limited access to information such as books, comics, the phonograph and the occasional trip to the town’s lone movie house, the present generation has more. Today, even the television has increased coverage with the use of satellites that can beam signals to even the remotest place on earth. Even the Internet became possible via satellite transmission and then through blanket coverage of an entire city or town by present generation technologies like Wi-Fi. As the countries of the world continue to move at a pace where access to information has reached a wider audience, I hope to see more communities in our province gain access to information and communication technologies. For the past decade that I have been in this field, the growth of the Information Technology sector in our province has reached an unprecedented pace. Broadband Internet access antennas have sprouted in homes, establishments and institutions. Access has thus greatly improved. I look back to the times when I was always looking for ways to have Internet access. Those I can call the “dark days.”

Information technology levels the playing field. For now, I can say that our access to information can be at par with any developed country. When I say leveling the field- let me focus on the field of education. As an illustration, a student or teacher can have access to updated information but if school libraries could not regularly stock the shelves with new edition books, then the Internet is the next best alternative. For now, I have this feeling that I have reached a plateau when it comes to information technology. It’s as if nothing excites me anymore. But then, I have not given up on this area yet. I have gone on to new interests such as organic gardening but I get amused by the fact that information technology can still make a connection in every new skill you would want to improve on. Yes, access to information on the World Wide Web accelerates my learning curve on how to do this and that kind of raising vegetables. I set up a garden greenhouse with visual illustrations from You Tube

. I got new ideas on raising lettuce from experts who share their knowledge through their b logs. Most new things I learned were shared for free on the World Wide Web.

There may not be something “new” to excite us in this field but I would like to dream and believe that the next best thing to happen in information technology will be from young people of our country. Easier said than done but anything can happen. I like to see more young people take interest in the field of Math and Science. We need government and private support to provide more scholarship slots in getting our young people into these fields. We need government incentives to schools that promote or focus on research on technologies that could create an impact on the lives of millions.

We can reverse the Filipino Diaspora by investing in our young people. We have a huge budget in the education department but it seems all our efforts in education are geared towards getting the next generation out of this country. There is still this one bright spot for this nation- our young people, if only we can get our acts together. Has information technology reached a plateau? If you believe it has, this is an opportunity for us all.