Two Baguio teachers vie for Microsoft prize

MANILA, Philippines - Two teachers from the Baguio City National High School will compete this week at the 6th Annual Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in Cape Town, South Africa.

Teachers Vilma Ambat and Ram Basingan are representing the Philippines at the event sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning to be held from Oct. 26 to 29 at the Cape Town International Convention Center in South Africa.

Ambat, who teaches third year high school and also handles creative writing classes for the school’s Special Program in the Arts (SPA), used mobile technology to come up with a plan for students of the SPA to be able to learn anytime, anywhere through digital learning materials designed and produced by fellow students.

Basingan, who teaches at the school’s Sto. Tomas Annex campus near the Baguio-Benguet border road, utilized MS Publisher, Windows Movie Maker, Paint and MS Office Picture Manager to have his students produce an advertising campaign for products of the community’s indigenous people. The students will produce one radio commercial, one TV commercial and one brochure.

These two projects were chosen by Microsoft Partners in Learning as examples of how creative and innovative use of technology can enlarge the classroom and expand the students’ learning experience. They will compete with other innovative education projects from all over the world at the forum.

Also to be presented at the forum is the Benigno Aquino High School of Makati City, which was chosen as one of Microsoft’s Pathfinder Schools under its Innovative Schools Program. The Program is designed to help school leaders “become change agents in their school communities” and “successfully envision and implement educational transformation.”

The school will be represented by its principal Dr. Reynaldo Estacio and teacher Edwin Engana.

The school was accepted this year as a Pathfinder School after rigorous selection process including written and video documentation and interviews with school leaders. For 2010, nearly 120 schools from 48 countries applied; 54 were chosen.

Says Leeanne Lambino-Nuguid, academic program manager of Microsoft, Pathfinder Schools are chosen for their “potential to create scalable and replicable educational transformation that can influence schools within their own community, country and around the world.”

“These schools have a vision for what they want to achieve, and the Pathfinder Schools program will help them refine the vision, make it stronger and implement it. Once the vision is in place, we work with schools to implement technology appropriately into the teaching and learning process.”