Daily lesson planning, Part 2
Cross-posted from my weblog.
LAST WEEK in my weblog, I ran a survey on the question “Do Filipino teachers really need to write daily lesson plans?” Though unscientific by its nature, I feel the opinion shared by my readers are worth sharing.
Mi, a student-teacher, said in defense of lesson planning:
“I’ve always been rebellious with regard to lesson planning and following these plans, but one thing I learned — they are helpful. If you make a lesson plan, you’ll have more confidence in delivering your lesson, you know what you want to happen.
“This would be most true to student-teachers and new teachers, as more seasoned ones should have their plans by heart already.”
Daily lesson planning, anyone?
Cross-posted from my weblog.
OCTOBER is the month when public school students go into a week-long break ending the first semester of the school year. The break also allows their teachers to attend training arranged by their respective division or district offices.
I was reminded of this after my wife, who teaches geometry at Camarines Sur National High School, was extra-busy last week — as Math club president, she had to oversee their departmental in-service training and aside from that prepare something to share to fellow math teachers.
There was something in one of our conversations last week that grabbed my attention, and I took mental note of it. It had something to do with a sharing by a fellow teacher on the new Cyber Education Project (CEP)-compliant lesson plan format, for which a week-long training was recently arranged by the DepEd.
It’s a generational thing
Cross-posted from my weblog.
DURING weekends, it has become a family tradition to motor to my hometown in Sagrada, Pili for our weekly worship and a visit at the old folks.
For about three months, the trips became an ordeal as the electronics of our 10-year old car that survived Reming’s wrath, though bruised and battered by flying purlins that twisted in the winds, suddenly conked out. But everything is back to normal now, our weekly pilgrimage even made better by the rediscovered versatility of the car CD player.
You see, that three-year old CD player can play MP3 tracks. If you can’t grasp the difference, think about this: while traditional CDs can only have 20 singles — my Ultraelectromagneticjam for instance had 17 — a blank CD can have around 140 MP3s on them. That’s more or less seven music albums in one serving.
Since I started burning MP3 songs and playing them the past three weeks, with all my seven kids on board, with their mom and grandma to boot, I noticed that if there is one other thing that binds our family together, it is our common love for music.
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Pogs and an object lesson on power
Crossposted from my weblog.
LAST Saturday, I had to motor to the city center to attend two meetings, one with the University of Nueva Caceres General Alumni Association (UNCGAA) headed by Engr. Elmer Francisco, and a personal mission — to buy my kids additional pogs.
My task would have been infinitely easier if Hong’s — that popular store along Calle Caceres where chinese-made goods can be had for sometimes obscenely low prices that will probably make Alex Lacson (of the Twelve Little Things fame) unhappy — still carried pogs with a diameter of more or less two inches. Unfortunately, when I inquired, what they had are the ones twice bigger.
So I ended up scouring practically the entire CBD, and that on a limping rheumatic right foot. From Hong’s, I went to Novo, another similar store beside Aristocrat Hotel, went through Divisoria Mall beneath the Bichara Complex, and then Master Square: but all for naught. At Master, I chanced on Erning Elcamel and family buying school supplies; “sa mga bangketa, igwa kayan,” Mrs. Elcamel said when I told them of my quest.
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A Frankenstein project
Cross-posted from my weblog.
I’VE BEEN reading through the transcript of yesterday’s Senate committee hearing on the controversial National Broadband Network (NBN), courtesy of Manolo’s liveblog over Inquirer Current, including the resources he pointed to, like PCIJ’s transcript of ASec Lorenzo Formoso’s powerpoint and Yuga’s take on the project itself.
And in the end, I get the feeling that just like the CEP, the NBN started out as a good idea that later metamorphosed into some sort of a Frankenstein project, no thanks to the usual suspects in the Arroyo regime.
Why is this so? Let me offer the following:
The world’s longest?
Crossposted from my weblog.
LAST Friday, I overheard somebody say this year’s military parade should already be the longest of its kind in the world.
According to Gil de la Torre of the Sanggunian secretariat, the parade involved more than 430 high school and college men and women contingents from all over Bikolandia — from the prominent ones like the marching units of the Naga City-based schools like UNC and the Ateneo, to the most distant public high schools who braved the heat and the long wait.
Why don’t we limit them? I asked Councilor Nathan Sergio early today. That would be difficult, he said. You’re talking about extraordinary commitment — every decision made to join the parade is not a spur-of-the-moment kind. It is made months before — kids, parents, teachers, trainors, school administrators and other bit players have to purchase their uniforms, train hard for the big day (and these would take months), wake up early, prepare logistical support, arrange transport et cetera just to be able to get their moment before the reviewing stand.
Peñafrancia webcasts sked
DAVE first explored the idea of beaming scenes of this year’s Peñafrancia fiesta using 3G-powered video calls in a comment to a previous post.
He will probably like this email I got yesterday from Reuel Oliver, head of the Naga EDP unit:
Greetings from An Maogmang Lugar!
The City Government of Naga, in cooperation with Bayan Communications, will be carrying live webcasts of major Peñafrancia activities from 07 to 16 September. Among these are the traslacion, fluvial procession, civic and military parades, and the Voyadores festival.
This forms part of our efforts to bring festivities in honor of our INA to Nagueños and Bicolanos living and working outside the region and the country. Our common devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia is one of the ties that continue to bind us together.
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Will history again repeat itself?
Cross-posted from my weblog.
AT THE height of the abaca trade in the late 1800s until around the turn of the 20th century – which is about 100 years ago – Albay was the richest province in the entire Philippines, Ateneo professor Danny Gerona, Bicol’s foremost historian, said in a recent lecture.
But as Norman Owen’s seminal work on the subject showed, it was by and large prosperity without progress as the industry built around that key commodity enriched the traders but not the local communities that hosted the vast abaca plantations feeding it.
By the 1920s, when the Americans started promoting the establishment of abaca plantations outside Bicol and in Latin America for security reasons (abaca being a Philippine monopoly at the time), Albay’s fall from its preeminent position as an economic powerhouse began. When synthetic fibers supplanted abaca-made cordage by the mid-50’s, the industry’s almost total collapse became inevitable.
It’s also about accountability
Cross-posted from my weblog.
THE ISSUE OF accountability, I think, is one of key important ingredients missing in the renewed debate on the state of education in the country.
This three-part series of the Inquirer here, here and here laid down all the numbers, capped by today’s editorial that takes to task the DepEd bureaucracy for not getting the basics right. In the same breath, it called for a return to the basics, addressing the usual shortages in classrooms and teachers among them.
Sen. Edgardo Angara and the Inquirer editorial however failed to explore a crucial question: 15 years after the Angara-chaired EdCom released its findings, why can’t the bureaucracy get its basics right? Or to borrow Angara’s language, what prevents us from extracting “more efficiency and more productivity from both our education budget and our education department”?
Accountability, or the lack of it, I will submit is one of the answer.
Come to think of it, to whom is DepEd really accountable for its continuing failure to deliver the minimum education outcomes? The easy answer, of course, is the Filipino people. But HOW? Let us examine the options:
Ang paradigm shift at ang mga erehe ng KWF
Crossposted galing sa weblog ko.
LABIS ang kasiyahan ko matapos basahin ang keynote address ni Ricardo Ma. Nolasco, chairman ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) sa 2007 Nakem conference na isinagawa sa Mariano Marcos State University noong Mayo 23, 2007. It made my day, ika nga.
Una, dahil kinilala rin sa wakas ng pamahalaang nasyunal ang pagiging multilinggwal at multikultural ng mga Pilipino. Sa talumpati ni Dr. Nolasco — ang pinakamalinaw na policy statement ng gobyerno, sa aking palagay, ukol sa paglinang ng ating mga wika — binigyang diin na hindi kahinaan, kundi lakas, ng bansa ang mahigit nitong 170ng wika. Pangsampu tayo sa buong daigdig na may pinakamaraming wika, aniya.
Ang ikalawang dahilan ay maaaring ma-misinterpret ng iba nating kababayan, gaya ng walang kwentang away sa pagitan ng ilang tinatawag na A-list Pinoy bloggers, na umani ng maanghang na reaksyon ni Gibbs Cadiz; sana naman ay hindi. Pero natutuwa akong nangyayari ang pagbabagong ito sa pananaw ng Komisyon sa pangunguna ng isang Bikolano, na tulad ni Gibbs ay tubong-Sorsogon.
