The Sun is the "center" of the Solar System
ikohanajima 08.11.2010
  Ang hindi magmahal sa kanyang salita Mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda, Kaya ang marapat pagyamaning kusa na tulad sa isang tunay na nagpala. -- Dr. Jose Rizal, “Sa Aking Mga Kababata”     Marami na akong nakitang eskwelahan, lalo na sa elementarya at high school, na may nakalagay na “We are an English Speaking School.” Sa totoo lang, eh ano naman ngayon? Totoong walang masama sa paggamit ng wikang Ingles at maraming pakinabang ang pagiging bihasa rito, pero marami rin sanang pagkakataon ang naibigay sa mga bata ng iba’t ibang henerasyon kung ang ginamit na wika sa pagtuturo ay Filipino.   Parang ang hirap ituloy ng mga gusto kong sabihin dahil ako mismo ay maraming nakamit na oportunidad dahil sa pagkakaroon ng kaalaman sa wikang Ingles. Maswerte lang siguro ako dahil mas madali para sa akin ang English at mga English subjects kumpara sa iba; kung Math siguro ang nasa pwesto ng English baka namundok na lang ako.   Maraming Pilipino ang matatalino at...
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The 4Ps Program: A Jump start to a Better Future
jfelizardo 04.05.2010
"Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all!” - Dr. Jose P. Rizal   The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is a poverty reduction strategy that provides grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education particularly of children aged 0-14. It aims to provide monetary aid to poor beneficiaries with the hope that these investments in human capital would lessen the great financial divide among the haves and the have nots.   It is the Filipino version of the World Bank-funded Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program where poor families receive cash provided their children regularly goes to public school, visits the health center for regular medical checkups and treatments. Conceiving mothers also receive financial grants provided they regularly undergo medical checkups and standard pregnancy treatments.   There are numerous CCTs in other countries, including Brazil's...
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We live in a blended-learning academic environment where teachers will never be extinct
jfelizardo 03.10.2010
“Panahon na ngayong dapat na lumitaw ang liwanag ng katotohanan; panahon nang dapat nating ipakilala na tayo’y may sariling pagdaramdam, may puri, may hiya at pagdadamayan.” - Andres Bonifacio, “ Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog,” Kalayaan 18 (January 1896).   A notable continuous discourse in Philippine Education has always included the topic of which mode of instruction to use. Two modes of education are involved, the Traditional (On-Campus) Mode and the Distance Mode.   The Traditional Mode of instructional delivery involves the long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate, while the Distance Mode is a process to create and provide access to learning when the source of information and the learners are separated by time and distance, or both.         Blended Learning refers to a mixture of both modes of learning environments, an approach combining face-to-face instruction with computer-...
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Understanding by Design, Learning by Design, and Project-Based Learning can do more good to Philippine Basic Education
jfelizardo 03.02.2010
“Knowledge is not information to be delivered at one end, and encoded, memorized, retrieved, and applied at the other end. Instead, knowledge is experience that is acquired through interaction with the world, people and things.” - Jean Piaget     For many years, the traditional type of information delivery in the Philippines was centered on the teacher, who spoonfeeds the students which concepts to learn and directs them where to look for additional information on these concepts. During those years, teachers centered their academic activities on teaching their students what to learn, where to look, and how to learn.   Much of it has changed nowadays. Access to the Internet is easily available through the proliferation of Internet-equipped school libraries, home PC Internet subscription, and Internet cafes. Teachers have discovered that students prefer multimedia-supported lectures and web-based activities. Teaching styles have blossomed into a mixture of traditional...
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To Kindle or not to Kindle: Now or Later?
jfelizardo 02.03.2010
With the tendency of most educators and learners to depend more and more on electronic technology, it seems that the use of printed educational materials is fast diminishing. Most of the time, a lot of educators and learners go to the internet for answers to their information needs. Reasons for this are increasing book prices, overcrowding of libraries, and scarcity of books.   Flickr-shared Photo by Richard Masoner, licensed under   Creative Commons Attribution Share AlikeIn a collegiate school library for instance, there could only be a maximum of  three books for a single title. This means only three students can borrow that particular book title at a certain time. A librarian's nightmare begins when another 30 or more students need to borrow that book title in order to fulfill their teacher's requirements either for an assignment, book review, or to do research. The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) says that the targeted 1:1 ratio for the number...
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