GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/8 Nov) – In a bid to strengthen its computer literacy program, the city government plans to institutionalize its ongoing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training programs for its public schools.
City Mayor Darlene Antonino Custodio said such move was based on an agreement forged by the local government with the Department of Education’s city division for the mainstreaming of the ICT trainings among local public elementary pupils and secondary students within the city’s 26 barangays.
She said the training programs were part of the re-engineered curriculum of the city government’s SHEEP-Computer Literacy Program (CLP), which was earlier launched to help further upgrade the computer skills and awareness of students in public elementary and secondary schools in the city.
SHEEP stands for Social Transformation, Human Empowerment, Economic Diversification, Environment Security and Regeneration and Participatory Governance and Transparency, which are the city’s main development thrusts.
The city government earlier launched the CLP as a major component of the SHEEP program’s education-related initiatives.
“These trainings are mainly aimed at getting our students ready for the next-generation industries that will hopefully be locating here,” Custodio said.
The mayor was referring to the companies in the growing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, which the local government has been encouraging to invest or expand in the city.
Custodio earlier said the restructured computer literacy program focuses on the teaching of advanced computer skills that are required by BPO companies like animation, webpage design and development, among others.
As part of the program, some 230 students from various public schools in the city participated over the weekend to a training on web and video blogging facilitated by the local government.
Percival Pasuelo, executive assistant for information technology of the city mayor’s office, said the training focused on teaching and enhancing the skills of public school students on applications and other Internet-based technologies used in web and video blogging.
He said it encouraged the participants to enhance their writing skills and publish them online through their own blog sites or the websites of the 85 public elementary and high schools in the city that was recently launched by the city government.
The websites, which were designed and maintained by the SHEEP-CLP personnel, may now be accessed through its central portal www.gensantos.org.
Aside from the web and video blogging training, Pasuelo said they have lined up a series of seminars and workshops to further equip the principals and teachers of the city’s public elementary and secondary schools with the proper skills to oversee the content and editorial management of their respective websites. (Allen V. Estabillo / MindaNews)