Taguig to complete set up of cyberlabs in public schools

MANILA, Philippines - The Taguig City government will complete the installation of cyberlabs or computer laboratories in the city’s 34 public schools with the installation of the remaining laboratories in seven public schools tomorrow.

Taguig Mayor  Lani Cayetano who initiated the program in 2012 expressed confidence that graduates of the city’s public schools will later not find it difficult to find employment in the information technology (IT) sector, especially at the Bonifacio Global City – the city’s technohub.

"We all know the value of IT in our lives today. With the BPO and IT-related business now booming in BGC, we can expect our graduates to get highly competitive jobs. And the coming development in FTI will require hundreds of thousands of IT employment," Cayetano said.

Cayetano said the cyberlabs will be opened in the schools of Kapitan Eddie Reyes Elementary School- Palar Annex, Dr. Artemio Natividad Elementary School, Eusebio C. Santos Elementary School, C. P. Tinga Elementary School, Maharlika Elementary School, Daanghari Elementary School and Bagong Tanyag Elementary School, completing all the 22 high schools and 12 elementary schools in Taguig.

The city education’s curriculum allows students to utilize the cyberlabs for their IT-related subjects.

Cayetano said city cyberlabs are equipped with complete sets of computer from monitors, central processing units, keyboards, mouse and other computer paraphernalia. It also has a projector to amplify the contents of the computer during school discussion inside an air-conditioned room.

“This can be a considerable amount of investment but that is just a small price to pay when you want to produce highly computer literate graduates or experts in IT education. You will soon see the fruits of our labor when these children find work after graduation,” Cayetano said.

The IT programs being offered by the city to students include web design, personal computer operations, hardware troubleshooting, computer programming, digital arts, animation, photoshop, graphics design, web programming and digital movie making. The local government of Taguig has partnered with the Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) to set up these modern cyberlabs.

CAL also provided the IT education modules for the elementary and high school students, the training of teachers handling the IT subjects and the maintenance of the computers.

According to Cayetano, CAL has been the partner of numerous private schools such as Xavier School, Ateneo De Naga, Miriam College and other prestigious schools that are starting a competitive IT education program.

The Taguig City government also has a CAL program wherein public high school graduates can undergo CAL’s IT assessment before they can take the test with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for a TESDA national certificate on computer operations or web programming.