A Four Month Computer Literacy Program in Balete

I was again tasked of representing my Mayor to the Completion Program of the Four Month Computer Literacy Program jointly administered by the Alternative Learning System of the DepEd and a service provider called Fontsmart Computer Arts and Training Services. The ceremony was done at the TFC Civc Center today, November 18, 2010. I just learned that there are seventy graduates coming from the academe, the business sector as well as the out of school youth. The Jose Borromeo Legaspi National High School served as host for this weekend competency and skills training for the past four months. The trainees are charged of at most Php 1,600 per head, depending on the competencies (packages) they wish to avail. I was told that the standard is high as the service provider wants to be at par with the DepEd standards and gains its endorsement in other regions. So far, since 2000, it facilitated trainings in 33 municipalities/cities, mostly in Mindanao and the Visayan regions.

The message I read to them is as follows:


Good afternoon!

The Hon. Mayor has requested me to deliver in his behalf his special message for all of you here today. Lend me your ear for a while.

This is one occasion worth remembering and which should be announced throughout the world through your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Do you have? Is having such accounts part of the required curriculum for you to graduate in this Four Month Computer Literacy Program?

Seriously, every moving up, each graduation, is a milestone that is worth documenting. Man is a historical being. Not because he keeps on looking back into the past but more so because of the fact that he is aware that historicity is about becoming. He lives and actively defines the circumstance and the moment where he operates. Thus, he says, “I am becoming.”

This philosophical statement is best understood as we recognize our strengths and shortcomings, as we pause to applaud those of us who excelled and hit the mark bull’s eye. Always, each completion program any school has for that matter provides a new perspective through which one realizes that the other is in flux—constantly defining himself, becoming as he grows in age and wisdom. The call is for you to adapt or to use the ICT parlance, to upgrade. By upgrading your knowledge and skills you give flesh and blood to your theme, computer technology: meeting the challenges of human living in the workplace.

In one of my interactions with DepEd personnel a few days ago, I have intimated to them that the predictions made by Dr. Alvin Toffler early in the seventies are becoming true today. The rapid growth in the fields of science and technology led him to infer that future shocks and alters the course of history. Today, power lever has already shifted into the Age of Information. We are indeed in a very different environment where everything is becoming linked together via the microchips. We see traditional jobs becoming obsolete and eliminated, giving way or shifted to places in the globe where wages are most competitive. New realities like hyper agriculture, nanoceuticals, desktop manufacturing, etc. are sprouting like mushrooms.

They say that things around and about us are fleeting. And so we are. The smell of newly harvested rice this morning is different from the one we cook on the morrow. The water that flow from the Jal-o yesterday was different from that which runs on it today. Yesterday, we endured tinkering on our Olympia Typewriter for hours and even days in doing our monthly report. Today, we silently encode on our laptop inputs and within a blink of an eye, we have a consolidated report which otherwise would took us several days to complete. That’s the magic of information communication technology. But as they say, “garbage in, garbage out”. Precisely that we sure better master it or else we find ourselves irrelevant and outmoded like our antiquated Olympia typewriter.

So go on and upload this event on your Multiply and Friendster accounts. We will be glad to remember this day as a point of reference to the many good things that are yet to come.

Congratulations to all of you!