KNOWLEDGE IN A CART
BIG THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES. In this case, it comes in the form of portable carts slightly taller than its intended beneficiaries: kindergarten students enrolled in public schools across the country.
Smart Communications – through its #LearnSmart education program – recently unveiled the Smart TechnoCarts, a mobile digital laboratory designed to facilitate formative learning among kindergarten students through mobile devices and applications.
“It is aimed to help improve literacy,” says Stephanie Orlino, senior manager for community partnerships and project lead for education programs at Smart Public Affairs group.
Ramon Isberto, head of Smart Public Affairs Group, says the TechnoCart could address the need of young students for interactive and engaging learning tools to help them grasp basic concepts such as letters, numbers, colors and shapes.
“It does make for smarter learning,” he adds.
Each TechnoCart contains a laptop and a tablet for the teachers, as well as 25 tablets for the students. The cart, which also doubles as a presentation table, also includes a projector and a Wi-Fi device to enable streaming of education materials available on the Internet.
The laptop is also pre-loaded with Smart One Campus, a cloud-based learner management system that allows teachers to record and automatically compute the grades of the students.
It also has advanced analytics and report-generation features that would allow school administrators to track the academic performance of the students.
“This is very convenient because you can bring the carts inside existing classrooms,” says Orlino. “A computer lab takes up too much space.”
Batibot’s ‘second coming’
Each tablet is also installed with applications based on “Batibot,” a Filipino children’s television show that gained popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“We’re dealing with millennials, and the way they consume content is mostly through applications,” says Orlino. “What better content to bring back, localized content for literacy, than Batibot?”
Developed in the 1980s, Batibot featured characters such as Pong Pagong and Kiko Matsing. It provided its young viewers with values- and culture-oriented segments, as well as informative activities to help in their development.
“Batibot is aligned with the kindergarten curriculum,” says Orlino, saying its developer – Fely delos Angeles-Bautista, co-founder and director of the Community of Learners Foundation (COLF) – is a consultant of the Department of Education.
“This is its second coming. The return of Batibot in the digital age,” she adds.
The two mobile applications, Batibot TV and Batibot Games, were developed by a third-party developer, startup company OrangeFix.
In addition to select clips taken from the original show, the Batibot mobile applications also feature games and other activities such as alphabet tracing and sing-along.
The apps are currently available for free for Android devices through Google Play, with Orlino saying its release in AppStore for Apple devices is in the pipeline.
With thousands of Batibot episodes available, the project proponents say they will continue to update the applications to include more clips and activities for the children.
Darwin Flores, head for community partnerships for Smart Public Affairs Group, says their company’s corporate social responsibility program is aimed at using technology to help in development. “The focus of our CSR framework is how to use technology for development,” he tells
STARweek. “How do you bridge the digital divide? How do you use CSR to address the base of the pyramid?”
Isberto says the company believes that technology can be used to facilitate learning opportunities, “which is why it tailored initiatives that are targeted to address the needs of learning communities.”
One such initiatives is the TechnoCart, says Flores.
In 2013, the company commissioned a study on the use of tablets for learning among kindergarten students in Culiat Elementary School in Quezon City.
During the study, tablets were loaned to the school and were used by an entire class of kindergarten students for 30 minutes each day for three months.
Learning mobile applications on colors, shapes and numbers were pre-loaded on the device.
Orlino says the results showed that the learning gain in terms of literacy of those who used the tablets were higher than their control group, which only had teachers explaining the concepts.
She stresses, however, that mobile devices should never be used as a substitute for, but rather as a supplement in, the education of the students.
According to her, it was also during the study period that they saw the need for localized content. This is where the partnership with COLF and OrangeFix came about.
“The partnership is perfect. COLF with the content, Smart with the technology and OrangeFix for the development of the apps,” says Orlino.
“In Smart, we don’t claim to be education experts. We are in the technology sector, so we partner with experts in education,” she adds.
The idea behind the TechnoCarts is to foster partnerships from different sectors.
Following the initial carts donated by the telecommunications company to 15 public schools across the country, Smart is now implementing a matching program for an additional 20 TechnoCarts this year.
Any sponsor – an individual, a group, a private institution, a non-government organization, a local government unit or even a school or school division – can partner with the company to provide a cart to a beneficiary school.
Each cart costs P200,000. Under the matching program, the sponsor will provide half of the amount, with Smart shouldering the balance.
Orlino says sponsors can also cover the entire amount, saying Smart is open to co-branding.
“If we put together our resources, we can reach more schools, we can help more children,” she says.
In addition to sponsorship of TechnoCarts, she says they are also open to developers and other groups who want to partner with them for content development.
She notes the need for more localized content in the vernacular, especially since DepEd is already implementing its mother tongue basedmultilingual education.
“We cannot develop everything,” says Orlino. “If there are people who have the content but have no delivery platforms, we tell them – ‘here, we have our Smart TechnoCarts.’ We are open for partnerships.”