Communicating in the digital age/Silliman lab and life-size robots?
A new old book has just come off the press and to our attention recently —titled Philippine Communication in the Digital Age (2014). Authored and edited by former journalist and prominent communication professor Crispin C. Maslog and published by New Day, it has been the standard textbook for Introduction to Communication courses in the Philippines for close to three decades.
It is probably the only continuing textbook for this course in the country, in the sense that it has been re-printed, revised and updated regularly over the years since it first came out in 1987. I remember having contributed one chapter on print media to that first edition. Perhaps three generations of journalism and communication students in the country have used this book in their courses.
The book has been reprinted five times, then revised completely in 2007, 20 years after it first came out. In his preface to the second edition of his textbook in 2007, Dr. Maslog wrote:
“When we were writing the manuscript for the first edition of this book in 1986-87, we used the manual typewriter. The older generation will recognize what we are talking about--the heavy, black, metal typewriter that made a lot of noise into the night as we pounded away page after page of our book. It was exciting to hear the staccato of the machine as we forged ideas in our head and transferred them unto paper.
“Today (in 2007), as we write the manuscript for this second edition we are using a Pentium 4 computer, quieter but infinitely faster and more efficient. On this machine the writer can insert, delete, revise, cut, paste, enlarge, reduce, illustrate in color, spell check, word count, and store the manuscript in its memory bank to be revised and printed as clean copy another day. . .
“The world of mass communication has indeed changed dramatically in the last two decades since we wrote that first book in 1986-87. That first edition went through five printings before we could find time to revise it for today’s generation of students, born in the age of the computer and the cell phone. . . The students who will be reading this new book were not yet born when we wrote the first edition. Imagine that! This new edition was rewritten and completely revamped with that student in mind.”
The first edition had 25 chapters. Seventeen new chapters were written for the second edition. They included “New Trends in Journalism,” “Civic Journalism: The Philippine Experience,” “Philippine Online Journalism,” “New Media in the Cyber Age,” and “New Media and Convergence.” These new chapters tackle exciting, mind-blowing new developments in the fields of journalism and communication to make it more relevant to today’s computer literate and cell phone-dependent student.
Yet only seven years later (in 2014), Dr. Maslog felt compelled to revise the book again because “the world of communication is developing at a dizzying speed. We are now in the midst of the digital revolution, and so we have changed the title to Philippine Communication in the Digital Age.”
Dr. Maslog again updated the book, citing more current facts, data and examples as much as possible in many of the chapters. More importantly, he added three new chapters on revolutionary developments in the communication field written by experts — chapters on “Pinoy Indie Cinema 101” by Edward De Los Santos Cabagnot, “Social Media” by Madeline M. Suva and Jaime A. Manalo IV, and ”E-books and E-publishing” by Chin Saik Yoon.
The author says the book pays tribute to the global village that Marshal McLuhan predicted more than four decades ago, a society where communication technology has conquered distance and time.
The book, with its 24 chapters in the third edition, is comprehensive and covers practically the entire gamut of communication as a field of study, from traditional media to digital media. It can be used not only as textbook for the Introduction to Communication course, but as reference for other courses in the communication curriculum.
I recommend this excellently written and meticulously edited book very highly to communication students and teachers as well as to professionals who want to update and upgrade themselves. For the price of P399 a copy, this 400-page book is worth every peso you pay for it. As far as communication textbooks in the Philippines go, it is in a class by itself. It’s available at New Day Publishers and National Bookstores.
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Silliman University has inaugurated its Simulation Laboratory and Resource Center which features life-size robots and state-of-the-art medical equipment suitable for both clinical and disaster response simulation in a hospital setting.? The laboratory was made possible through a grant of $500,000 from the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad of the United States Agency for International Development (ASHA-USAID). The grant was extended to Silliman through the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA).?
With the grant, the university expanded its original one-unit intensive care unit simulation laboratory located at the Olivia Villaflores-Yanson hall into a five-unit simulation laboratory and resource center, which now occupies the entire second floor of the same hall. The laboratory now has two intensive care units, one neonatal/pediatric care unit, a virtual operating room, and a labor and delivery room.? Silliman President Dr. Ben S. Malayang III said that the laboratory seeks to address the challenge of healthcare professionals to be more adaptable to scenarios, including emergencies and disasters, that may require more than just conventional thinking.?
“The challenge of healthcare providers is the unpredictability of a world that’s faced with new threats to human life, new diseases that are a result of climate change... It was for this reason that Silliman committed itself to pursuing a project that provides a simulation, not just of bedside conditions or of Asian symptoms, but of the whole hospital setting itself,” he explained.?
Andrea Molfetto, ASHA-USAID program officer, flew in from Washington, DC to witness the inauguration. She said the laboratory is the first project of its kind supported by ASHA-USAID in a university in the Philippines.
Silliman has been a partner of ASHA-USAID since the 1970s. Among its first projects was the Robert B. and Metta J. Silliman Library, which was built in 1978. The library is now one of the outstanding and biggest libraries in the country with over 250,000 volumes of books. ASHA-USAID was also instrumental in the construction of the Marine Laboratory, the facility which hosts the Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences, and the Silliman University Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management.?
Earlier, UBCHEA vice president for programs Dr. Glenn Shive described the laboratory as a way of “reinventing the classroom” and “an innovation in teaching and learning.” He also commended the university for making available the facility to other schools and communities outside Silliman.
It is the vision of Silliman for its simulation laboratory to support innovative teaching and research beyond Dumaguete. It is opening it for use for the same purpose by universities, allied health programs, and healthcare organizations in nearby provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao, and even those in some countries in the ASEAN region.?
Dr. Betsy Joy B. Tan, Silliman vice president for academic affairs, said, “The future of nursing as an academic unit where innovative teaching and research projects will now encompass the curricular designs of our medical school and other allied health disciples, where our knowledge assimilation and knowledge generation in both andragogy and pedagogy will now be enhanced by advances in robotics technology.”
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