‘With these tablets they will be healed’

One November afternoon, the high school students at the Divine Healer Academy, a mission school for underprivileged children in Sorsogon City, energetically entered into the makeshift auditorium for a special session. The school’s founder and head, Fr. Gerard Deveza, beamed from ear to ear with exciting news for the students. Earlier in the year, he announced that he had raised enough resources to provide tablet computers for each of his high school students. Through a partnership with Diginoo, a technological company specializing in affordable mobile education, Fr. Gerard now had the tablets ready for the students. That day was the beginning of a dream come true for Fr. Gerard and the students.

Fr. Gerard’s move to solicit for tablet computers was definitely a large fundraising task in any environment; it was especially enormous for a school that typically operates on a P7,000-budget a year for each of its 365 students from kinder to third year high school. In addition, tablet initiatives are still in their infancy in Metro Manila and even rarer outside of the city.

So why be ahead of the trend and be the first to provide tablets to students in Sorsogon City? For Fr. Gerard, as a healing priest, it fulfills his mission of healing. He views the lack of knowledge as a sickness that can and should be addressed. Since founding the school in 2003, Fr. Gerard has complemented a modest budget with a progressive vision to provide the best education at a reasonable cost. 

“A tablet is beyond a book in what it can do to give knowledge to a child,” said Fr. Gerard. “It can give more opportunities for the students to learn, because it contains textbooks, resources and other information. With these tablets, the students will be healed of their hunger for knowledge.”

For the priest, the tablets represent the next step in his vision of bringing digital education to those who may need that knowledge the most.

According to Sister Odelia Golloso, school directress, the students typically come from very poor families and cannot afford the smartphones, tablet devices and the Internet.  Fr. Gerard believes in the opportunity for these students to have access to technology, both for their educational and professional development. Thanks to this initiative, each high school student will have a tablet to use as his or her own during class.

So, on that eventful day, Fr. Gerard was excited to introduce the tablets and the students were equally excited to give them a try. The tablets were passed around by a half dozen teachers into the waiting hands of the students, none of whom had ever held one before. Guided by a customized training program and implemented in a training session by Francisco Sibal Jr., the COO and CFO of Diginoo, the students caught on quickly. 

“What I found amazing was that the students took to the devices so naturally, even if they had never used one before,” said Francisco, an MBA graduate of Yale University who maintains an expertise in the field of education technology.

“Not only were the students very eager, their imaginations were unlimited in how they could use them. To me, that shows that students from every background deserves access to and can make the most out of the right technology,” he said.  

He noted that within an hour, the students were navigating the e-book application, the dictionary, the calculator, the camera and an algebra application. Some picked it up quickly and were happy to share their knowledge with others. By the end of the session, the students were comfortably exploring the tablets by themselves.

One month later, Francisco’s brother, Antonio Tanseco, who is the  president and chief technology officer of Diginoo, came to the Divine Healer Academy to deliver tablets for each of the school’s full-time faculty members, and to launch the e-textbooks on the tablets with content partners Vibal Foundation and Vibe Technologies. Much to the delight of the faculty, seven e-book titles per student were installed for all 90 high school students, making Divine Healer Academy the first school in the entire Bicol region to have a tablet-based e-textbook program.

Antonio spent 15 years doing multimedia advertising and interactive design with some of Silicon Valley’s largest technology companies, including Cisco Systems, Google, HP and Leapfrog. It was also during this time that he was involved with implementing early technology-based education, working with Stanford University and University of California-San Francisco on their pioneering efforts in the field.

Antonio shared in retrospect, “It was our ailments (our mother’s and my own) that connected us with Fr. Gerard and his healing. During healing  Masses and sessions with Father, we learned about the school and his dream in providing tablets for the students. It was as if both sides had a need, and we were connected by the Lord. Our mother Aleli Sibal, so touched by Fr. Gerard’s dedication and compassion for the poor students,  immediately committed to donating 30 tablets for one high school section. Father then decided to seek out other sponsors to provide for the other two sections, and the pilot program for the high school students was born.”

Eventually, Fr. Gerard plans to provide a tablet computer and e-books for each of the students of the Divine Healer Academy. Excited by the potential of the technology in the classroom but also aware of the challenges, Diginoo will continue its partnership with the school to ensure ongoing success. The biggest inspiration comes from a simple observation from Fr. Gerard. He said that if you were to ask his first batch of students some years ago what they aspired to be when they grew up, “tricycle driver” was a typical response. The same batch that has been given the opportunity to receive a proper education at the Divine Healer Academy is scheduled to graduate next month. If asked the same question now, the responses are: to become “a teacher,” “an engineer,” “a doctor...,” and the pride with which they say that is priceless.

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