Looking at the Quezon City Scholarship Fair 2009

We were invited to join the Quezon City City Scholarship Fair 2009. I actually was supposed to attend an "Education Nation Conference" at the University of The Philippines where my good friend Gene Morada of G.ho.st was attending.

We started at around 7 am for the flag raining ceremony and awarding of scholarship vouchers. We were looking at the different schools that were also offering their scholarships and course offerrings.

I noticed that when I saw the different schools actually followed suit. When we opened our course offerings in Multimedia applications and Computer Graphics Design in 2006, everybody barely understood and saw the significance of these courses. We actually pioneered Multimedia and Graphic Design Courses in the TESDA even before other schools and TESDA were offerring and promulgating Training regulations in these specializations in the Philippines. This was because we saw the significance of these courses in the ICT industry. We were also the ones who openly advocated putting and using FOSS in TESDA courses in order to popularize FOSS. So it was quite safe to say.. that other schools like AMA, STI, Informatics merely followed where we pioneered.

The scholarship fair was a showcase for the different schools and TEKBOK Providers....

It was also an opportunity for G.ho.st to showcase its versatility to other schools especially the bagong henerasyon foundation which had satellite training centers in the different community areas in Quezon City.

Explaining the value of cloud computing for indigent students, Trainors from Bagong henerasyon were welcoming the idea and looked forward to having a demonstration of the product to their community computer learning centers

CHS students trained with FOSS as alternatives

Engaging Students with FOSS.

TESDA has recently given 50 scholarship slots in computer hardware servicing NC II to our school, the Asian Academy of Business and Computers. This was part of the 175 recently given slots of Pangulong Gloria Scholarships courtesy of TESDA.

Previously, we held an assessemnt on PC operations NC II around October of last year, we used open office and mozzila firefox as part of the test pakage for our students. Most of them (90 %) had passed the assessment and were declared “competent” (TESDA uses the term COMPETENT instead of passing).

Last Month (April) we also held assessments for our students in Computer Hardware servicing NC II every weekend. 94% (67 students) were declared competent in this category.

Currently our 2 classes of Computer Hardware servicing NC II are being trained to be both familiar with proprietary and FOSS software.

Touching on the merits of FOSS,most students were surprised how come LINUX and other FOSS Operating systems never have viruses.

Running on their third to fourth week, most students are still having their doubts as to the workability of linux. Perhaps after they have done installing and maintaing the computers they will have as projects.. they may realize that indeed Linux and other FOSS products are good technical alternatives to proprietary software.

Our trainors, linux Guru Brian De Vivar and hardware guy John Lopez are both doing their stuff in training these students to learn to use better alternatives like Ubuntu Linux and Mandriva Linux.

Unlike other Computer Hardware servicing students from other schools, our graduates will be both familiar with proprietary and FOSS.

Pangulong Gloria Scholarships

The Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA ) Quezon City District office has recently awarded 1,000 Pangulong Gloria Scholarships to poor yet deserving students in its first pilot tsting of the PGS scholarships to selected schools/TEK Bok Providers (TBP).
According to NCR Regional Director Mitch Tangonan, this is on;ly the first batch of PGS scholaers, more will be following as the government plans to increase Training for work scholarships in order that students will have more access to sure jobs and employable skills after completion of their trainings.

Among the schools that were able to be part of the pilot implementation of the PGS was the Asian Academy of Business and Computer of which 100 students were awarded scholarships in the following fields:

• Computer hardware servicing NC II : 25 slots
• Programming NC IV: 25 slots
• Visual Graphics NC III: 25 slots
• Book Keeping NC III : 25 slots
  

There are other schools also co-implementing the program. For more details, you may check www.tesdaqc.wordpress.com for more details.