Filipino wins Microsoft global excellence award
First posted 04:59pm (Mla time) Aug 21, 2005
INQ7.net
A FILIPINO’S initiative to improve the state of public school education in the Philippines has won for him a slot in the Circle of Excellence Awards of the world’s biggest software company.
Sam Jacoba is the only Filipino employee of Microsoft Corp. from among 16 in the Asia-Pacific region and 220 worldwide to be recognized for the Microsoft COE Awards 2005. He was recognized by Microsoft for his groundbreaking work in Partners in Learning (PiL), a global initiative by the software giant to invest 250 million dollars in five years to K12 education of countries worldwide. The program is already on its third year of implementation starting this July, marking a new fiscal year for Microsoft. Currently, 99 countries have ongoing PiL initiatives.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO and President, describes the COE Awards as Microsoft’s highest award to its employees worldwide.
“It recognizes contributions to Microsoft’s success in achieving key objectives such as enhancing the Customer and Partner Experience, advancing competitive initiatives and improving financial results. The award represents Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to recognizing our finest contributors and top performers,” Ballmer stated in a letter sent to all COE 2005 winners during Microsoft’s Annual Global Summit in Atlanta.
Jacoba, a journalist before he joined Microsoft Philippines in 1997, said that the success of PiL hinges on partnerships, teamwork and service.
Some of the key partners of PiL include the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), learn.ph, Philippine Normal University (PNU), Cebu Normal University (CNU) and the Coalition for Better Education (CBE). Hundreds of universities and colleges also support the program nationwide for teacher training.
“This for me is a team award because PiL is essentially about partnerships. Without the guidance of the advisory council and our allies on the ground, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this,” Jacoba said. “It validates that we are on the right track as far as PiL’s implementation in the Philippines is concerned.”
This includes a pioneering effort to provide an online Masteral Program on Instructional Design for qualified teachers of the Department of Education (DepEd). Dr. Ester Velasquez, CNU President, said that PiL was able to uniquely address the fundamental needs of public school teachers to integrate technology in teaching.
“The beauty of this masteral program is that it is action-research based, which means that the teachers do not have to stop teaching to gain a masteral degree,” Dr. Velasquez said. Dr. Velasquez is a member of the PiL Advisory Council. Currently, there are 45 PiL scholars making up the first batch of this online masteral program.
PiL in the Philippines was able to transcend boundaries. Dr. Eddie Alih, Chancellor of Mindanao State University and also a member of the PiL Advisory Council said that PiL is within the imperatives of Islamic teachings to fulfill the rationality of human faculty. Dr. Alih and the PiL team are working on Project Iqra for Tawi-Tawi. Iqra means seek knowledge.
“The search for knowledge is a major religious struggle,” Dr. Alih said. “It is for this reason that the Islamic world welcomes the wonders of today’s information technology. PiL is considered a part of the Muslim intellectual pursuit for a better quality of life such as scientific tools and processes could possible offer.”
Another key result that differentiated PiL in the Philippines is the creation of an online community for teachers. The PiL website (www.pil.ph) shows that there are already more than 3,100 members of the PiL teacher community. More than 200 of these teachers have online portfolios, according to Fr. Jomar Legaspi, president of learn.ph and chairman of the PiL Advisory Council.
Jacoba, who also received recognition from Microsoft in the year 2000 for his outstanding achievement in anti-piracy marketing, expects PiL to train around 50,000 public school teachers when the grant expires in 2008. By this time, he envisions that a nationwide education system will have been set up that will facilitate a sustainable ICT-education environment for teachers and students.
“Through PiL, I hope that we will be able to help the Philippines to produce a globally competitive workforce. Filipinos can be world-class across all fields. We just need to give them the right tools so that they may realize their full potential,” Jacoba said.
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