Journey

Class, bring out your tablet and slide to page ten.

This might very well be the first instructions grade school and high school students of La Salle Greenhills (LSGH) will be hearing every day in school after the LSGH partnered with Samsung to launch a pilot program that will transform traditional classroom models into technologically advanced educational hubs. Students will be provided with electronic tablets to lieu of books, while the blackboard of old will be dispensed with in favor of a touch screen e-board. The objective, according to LSGH IT consultant Jun Lozada, is to prepare the students “for life in an increasingly information-based economy and an electronically networked society.”

Is this the dawn of a new journey for the Filipino student?

It is undeniable that the current make-up of the world today has been largely shaped by the physics behind the atom and the mechanics inside the integrated chip. The human brain certainly had to adapt to the astronomical changes in information creation and dissemination that all of human activity had to adjust to the quickening pace of digital life. Education, obviously, cannot remain in limbo and must, as is usually said, go with the flow. Goodbye books, welcome tablets. Goodbye blackboards, hello high definition, touch screen, LCD monitor screens. Heck, goodbye physical interaction, hello virtual, long-distance classes. The digital revolution has opened up a new journey for all students to take part of. It is not just the homework that is at their fingertips. The whole world is at their fingertips.

However, no meaningful journey lies in a single path. The unseen curves, unexpected chicanes, unwelcome dead ends - these define the essence of a lasting journey. Inarguably, the Filipino student has his own share of these. Crossing rivers and mountains just to reach school. Enduring dilapidated and crowded classrooms just to get through one school day. Stopping school altogether due to poverty. Oh what a life would be for Filipino students to go to school free from all such burdens. But this is the real journey. It is an inescapable truth that students live through an actual physical world and a demanding social niche. This is one human journey that necessarily diverges from the digital journey of today’s world of modernity. From the sight of the setting of the sun, to the rush of crystal clear waterfalls, from the old customs of family to the new norms of the youth, students are bound by a life undefined by binary codes.

Yes, today, students are all living in an information-based economy and an electronically networked society. Their journey to humanity, however, is theirs to undertake and complete, unaided by the tablet and e-board.

Aldan S. Avila, Entry No. 2