Summer spent the Smart way

MANILA, Philippines - School’s out but the learning goes on. During the summer break, Smart Communications Inc. trained over 3,200 students and teachers all over the country in various fields, ranging from reading to operating telecommunications equipment and monitoring rainfall.

The educational sessions were part of the company’s “Kabalikat” social responsibility program. Participants were from its academic partners in the Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP), Smart Schools Program (SSP), and Applied Developers’ Intro School (ADIS).

In addition, Smart emplo-yee-volunteers tutored over 2,400 public school pupils in reading under a community-based project.

In April, 681 professors and Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) majors from SWEEP partner schools in Davao, Cebu, Metro Manila and Nueva Vizcaya completed SMARTBro Module 1, an overview of comm-unication systems.

Offered in mid-May was a follow-up course designed to give participants a better understanding of a virtual private network. Among the first to undergo the two-day training were students from Adventist University of the Philippines in Cavite and Mariano Marcos State University in Laoag.

Also part of ECE-focused trainings was the TCP/IP module which has so far been drawn 424 participants since it was first offered in 2004.  

Aside from classroom-based training, select students and teachers get a chance to experience the real world of telecommunications through on-the-job training (OJT) and faculty immersion. Guided by Smart engineers, they perform routine maintenance and operations work in selected facilities.

This summer saw 157 OJT trainees from six universities in Luzon, five in Metro Manila, four in the Visayas and two in Mindanao.

The faculty immersion program had IT teachers from Ateneo de Davao University, Polytechnic University of the Philippines and University of Batangas and a total of 55 ECE teachers from SWEEP partner schools nationwide working with Smart engineers and IT personnel in the telecom environment.

Just in time for the onset of the rainy season, teachers and pupils from Smart Schools partners learned to monitor rainfall via Project Rain Gauge, a joint initiative with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) and the Department of Education.

Project Rain Gauge seeks to increase interest in the study of earth science by building online meteorological data provided by a network of public high schools that monitor and record rainfall observations around the country.

Begun as a science education project, it hopes to create a network of supplementary ground stations across the country to provide additional data on local rainfall measurement in specific areas for a more effective and accurate local weather monitoring. 

On a broader community interest, Smart Schools partners also advanced their know-ledge of content generation and Web development. A total of 246 participants attended the weeklong training conducted by Netlearn Ventures, first in Manila for the Luzon partner schools, and later in Cebu City for the Visayas and Mindanao.

The training prepares students and teachers to contribute online content, specifically through Smart’s “Doon Po Sa Amin,” a project designed to generate Web-based information and educational materials about their respective communities.  

As Smart advocates the integration of information and communications technology (ICT) in basic education, it trained 68 teachers how to do it. The training was held at Letran in Intramuros for those in Luzon, and at the University of San Jose-Recoletos in Cebu for those in the Visayas and Mindanao.

A PC troubleshooting and networking seminar was also held for 72 teachers and students from partner schools in Bataan and Mt. Province.

It was a summer well spent.