Investing in a burgeoning future through education

Good business sense dictates that investments must be carefully and patiently planned.

With this in mind, the global software giant known as Microsoft is investing in a very large and very promising future: Children. Children the world over.

Microsoft’s investment in public education begins with upgrading teachers’ skills and technological expertise through its Partners in Learning (PIL) program, which is global in scope, covering about 10 countries – including the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Brazil, Thailand and Italy – and is customized to the needs and experiences of each country and the community that it serves.

Global Scope, Localized Implementation

In the Philippines alone, the PIL program funds community-based and customized teacher training and equipment that costs about $2.5 million annually, Microsoft Phils. academic affairs director Sam Jacoba told NetWorks.

PIL, according to the press material provided by Microsoft, is "global in scope and local in implementation, providing a significant investment of software and more than $250 million in cash grants worldwide over a five-year period to deliver information and communication technology skills training, tailored curriculum development, technical support and research funds and resources to students and teachers."

The initiative also provides lower prices for Microsoft’s core educational desktop software for students and teachers covered by PIL.

In the Philippines, this kind of investment makes a world of difference. "So many teachers have come up with innovative methods of teaching and making lesson plans with the help of the PIL," Jacoba said.

While he does not deny that the PIL is a form of market-priming to broaden Microsoft’s consumer base in the Philippines and promote consumer loyalty, "it is also a way of enriching the community and making the lives of the residents better with technology and resources that are at our disposal."

Facilitating The Teaching Process

Upgrading teachers’ skills and access to technology is the first step to improving the learning process for students, Jacoba said.

"We began by providing teachers with access to computers, training and software," he said. Teachers under the PIL initiative have been taught to use Microsoft’s spreadsheet program, Excel, to compute grades.

This seemingly simple shift from analog to digital has cut the time for computing students’ grades from an average of three weeks to just two days.

"With this technology, teachers can devote more time to planning lessons and focusing on the students – this means that the teachers’ time is freed up so they can do more and be more creative in their approaches to teaching," he said.

The use of the Internet also makes a difference in the classroom experience, he added. Teachers who trained under the PIL program have made good use of the World Wide Web and the access provided by the PIL initiative: Science lessons come alive with the NASA website’s photographs of space and heavenly bodies as seen through the Hubble telescope; the music of the masters can be accessed through audio-streaming; language teachers can present the works of the world’s literary icons to their students at the click of a mouse.

"This adds a new dimension to their lessons," Jacoba said. "By empowering teachers with technology, we increase the range of methods and resources by which students may be taught."

The PIL is implemented in conjunction with local government agencies and businesses in each country to increase access to digital content in order to raise the quality and relevance of learning and lower dependence on and the cost of paper-based resources.

Together with its local partners, Microsoft is developing a government-endorsed technology skills assessment for students and teachers to provide a benchmark of ICT skills today and show growth over time.

The Philippine PIL aims to identify best practice models of teaching and learning using technology that can be replicated throughout the country, Jacoba said.

Uniquely Pinoy

Unique to the Philippine version of the global PIL initiative is the "No Teacher Left Behind" program, which involves over 200 colleges and universities which work with Microsoft and DepEd to train public school teachers on basic ICT literacy, desktop productivity and software development.

According to Jacoba, these colleges and universities have pledged, through signed letters of commitment, to each train 100 public school teachers in their technology laboratories with the PIL curriculum.

Now, 25 public schools in 17 regions have been reached by the program. To complement this, Learn.ph Foundation, the Philippine Normal University, and the Cebu Normal University will train DepEd teachers on ICT in education action research integration.

The Philippine PIL also introduced the Teachers PC program, under which Microsoft Phils., Intel Phils. and the Asia United Bank work together to help provide public school teachers with their own computers at subsidized rates and on a friendly installment program. This program is initially available to public school teachers and DepEd non-teaching staff in the National Capital Region, Region 3 and 4.

The PIL Community (www.pil.ph) connects educators, administrators, students and parents through technology. There are now over 2,000 members, mostly teachers, who share their experiences online in the Internet embodiment of the Edusystem, where everyone is both learner and educator.

With some customization to the Philippine setting, other global PIL initiatives have taken root and borne fruit, such as the Innovative Teachers Leadership Awards which honor and reward exceptional secondary public school teachers for outstanding innovations in the integration of technology into classroom teaching and learning.

Of the 25 finalists representing the participating regions, five Filipino teachers were sent to attend the regional Asian Regional Innovative Teachers Conference in Singapore last year.

Shirlita Daguisonan, a Math teacher based in Iligan City, was chosen as one of the most innovative teachers in Asia and was sent to the Innovative Teachers Global Summit Washington, D.C. in June. The second Awards are set later this year.

Jacoba related the story of one teacher who stood out for her resourcefulness: "This teacher had only one computer for a classroom full of students, but she still managed to create a system by which each of her students got hands-on experience with the computer."

The teacher didn’t win an award, but her efforts and resourcefulness were rewarded by the PIL with another computer for her classroom.

Global Educational Support Programs

The Partners in Learning Resource Center veers from the usual computer laboratory set-up and offers a unique way of learning and using technology to enhance education.

The center has networked computers arranged in such a way that students can work in groups of three or four.

It also has a mini-library with additional references and a nook where students and teachers can hold group discussions.

The Cabancalan National High School is the first school in the country to have this kind of facility that provides students a unique way of learning and working with technology.

The Fresh Start for Donated PCs program helps primary and secondary schools make the most of donated computers by providing a licensed copy of the Windows 98 or Windows 2000 operating systems for PCs that use Pentium II or older processors at no charge.

It also provides a School Agreement Subscription Licensing Program that allows participating schools to acquire software licenses at rates significantly below commercial prices and provides an easier way to manage technology resources.

The Faculty and Student Ambassador Program seeks to enable a worldwide community of students, educators and life-long learners to realize their full potential by providing access to technology tools and opportunities to improve skills.

Microsoft has invited the top 30 learning institutions in the National Capital Region to be part of the program’s first year. Each school and Microsoft will choose 30 students and 30 faculty members from the business management and technology departments to be Ambassadors of Knowledge Transfer.

Long-Term Commitment

"I am often asked to quantify the gains of the PIL program," Jacoba said. "I have to defend the huge amount of money we are spending on this program by saying it is producing results."

The results, however, take time to show, he said. "We need to be patient in making such an investment in education, because these things take time to bear fruit."

According to data from Microsoft Philippines, which Jacoba provided, "The PIL is a long-term commitment of Microsoft to partner with governments, industry, non-governmental organizations, schools, teachers and life-long learners to establish an education ecosystem or Edusystem for continued advances in education, learning and manpower development."

Thus, the Philippine PIL takes a four-pronged approach to upgrading teacher skills in partnership with DepEd.

"We work with the teachers and the schools’ principals," he said. "We show the principals how to become the CEOs of their schools and how CEO-style management will benefit their schools and boost efficiency and performance, both for the teachers and the students."

The PIL program in the Philippines began by setting up computer laboratories in pilot areas, including Metro Manila. This strategy did not work, however.

"We learned from that experience that there must be follow-through," Jacoba said. "Just setting up the labs and donating the computers was not enough. We had to be hands-on in our approach, so we adopted the teacher-training program."

Jacoba, who was as a journalist covering the information technology beat before working for Microsoft Phils., said his life as a student in the public educational system inspired him to become part of the PIL.

"I saw the dedication of public school teachers and I am a product of the public school system," he said. "In a way, personally, I feel that I am giving back something to the community that educated me by working to develop and promote the PIL initiative here."

"It feels good to wake up each day knowing that I am doing something that touches people’s lives and helps them achieve their goals," he added. "This gives me the inspiration and the drive to keep going, to do better, to touch more people."

The Philippine PIL program is spearheaded by an advisory council whose members recently met with 200 educators from 30 countries in the Microsoft School of the Future (SOF) World Summit at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, Washington last week.

The Philippine PIL advisory council is composed of educators and sectoral representatives: Jacoba, Ramon Aboitiz Foundation COO Dominica Chua, Cebu Normal University president Dr. Ester Velasquez, National Youth Commission chairman Benigno "Bam" Aquino IV , University of the Immaculate Conception president Mother Assumpta David, Mindanao State University (Tawi-Tawi) chancellor Dr. Eddie Alih, Center for Teacher Excellence executive director Marilou Flores, and DepEd Educational Development Projects Implementing Task Force (EDPITAF) executive director Jess Mateo. The council is chaired by www.learn.ph president Fr. Jomar Legaspi.

According to the website www.pil.ph, "SOF aims to facilitate discussion and debate among education leaders worldwide to paint a picture on how schools of tomorrow will look like."