Smart training may produce online ambassadors

Smart training may produce online ambassadors
Cebu Daily News
November 13, 2010

The province of Guimaras in Western Visayas may get a boost in its effort to become the preferred tourism destination, now that 90 teachers and students from 22 public schools in the province have the skills to promote the island online.

Smart Communications Inc., in partnership with Petron Foundation and the Philippine Business for Social Progress, recently conducted a content generation and Web development training to encourage online content generation under its Doon Po Sa Amin (DPSA) project.

The five-day training held at the Central Philippine University in Iloilo City also drew representatives from the Department of Education Guimaras division.

Participants were given lectures and exercises on research methods, writing for the Web, image editing, photo journalism, blogging, fundamentals of Web design, websites and web servers, website development, publishing and uploading website.

At the end of the training, the 22 schools and the DepEd Guimaras division office were able to upload their websites hosted by Smart for free.

The participating seven public elementary schools and 15 public high schools have become Smart Schools Program online associates and can now join any of the three contests under DPSA.

These contests include the DPSA Learning Challenge, “Ano ang Kwento Mo? (What’s your story?)” and DPSA Quest.

The DPSA Learning Challenge draws on high school teams from SSP partners to perform basic community mapping exercises to generate local content that will help educate their respective communities and/or address pertinent local problems or issues.

“Ano ang Kwento Mo?” is open to all private and public high school students nationwide. It requires student teams, headed by a teacher coach, to create video blogs that feature a distinct characteristic, place or culture in their communities. Teams are then asked to upload their videos.

The DPSA Quest engages grade school SSP partners and online associates to research unique stories about their respective communities and narrate these stories through their blog sites.

Cash prizes and items are in store for the winners of the three competitions. Details can be accessed through www.doonposaamin.ph.