E2 Monday, September 24, 2018 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos
Education BusinessMirror
BASF PHL to hold programs to provide students better understanding of science By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes @brownindio
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Contributor
N a bid to promote science education in the country and also as part of its corporate-citizenship program, BASF Philippines said it will conduct programs designed to give young students a more thorough understanding of science. Ronald Mercado, managing director of BASF Philippines, said the campaign was also to celebrate the company’s 55th anniversary in the Philippines. “To celebrate 55 years of growth
together with the Philippines, we will continue to strengthen our commitment to science education and sustainability in the country,” he said in a press statement. Mercado added this is the com-
Education experts talk about wired kids, global learning and homeschooling
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S the world shifts toward technology, everything has started to move at a faster pace, even education. The digital world has had an impact on children’s learning and development, and not always on a positive note. With more distractions available for young learners, it has been increasingly difficult for educators to engage students in the traditional classroom setting. The good news is that parents can actually provide their children a curriculum designed richly and tailor fit to their learning styles, as they also put a premium on raising them anchored on the right values, not just filling their minds with knowledge. Intentional parenting is at the heart of homeschooling, the learning movement that has been fast gaining ground in the Philippines and in the world. Brad Huddleston, author of Digital Cocaine: A Journey Toward iBalance” and “The Dark Side of Technology: Restoring Balance in the Digital Age is an expert on the effects of technology in molding young minds. He talks about the dangers of digital addiction. “In its simplest form, when someone cannot do without their digital device, they are addicted. This not only applies to entertainment media accessed through digital devices but also includes technology required for work and school. When any activity, including interacting with digital devices, interferes with normal life, they are addicted,” he said. This poses a problem for both parents and educators, he added, and goes around the world to help them mitigate the effects of technology. He also explained that because the world is connected to the same “pipe” known as the Internet, the resulting problems created by this relatively new medium are generally the same around the world. “This means that the rise in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], cognitive breakdown,
SEMINAR ON BECOMING A CERTIFIED PPP ADVOCATE
depression and anxiety disorders, etc., are common regardless of country or economic status.” With homeschooling, however, there is a way to harness the powers of tech to truly build up kids in their studies and make gadgets a healthy part of a holistic learning experience. As Debra Bell, homeschool mom and author of the best-selling book The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling, explains, “Homeschoolers are early adopters of the technologies that are revolutionizing education and how we deliver learning around the globe. It continues to rise in the United States, as recent research has shown, and is on the rise dramatically around the world.” The 21st century is about learning anytime, anywhere, through any means and homeschooling gives families the flexibility they need to balance work, family, travel, hobbies and education. Bell expounds that parents can actually marry being high-touch and high-tech through homeschooling. How? “[By] learning right beside your children with an Ipad or smartphone in hand. Talking about what you are learning and they are learning online around the dinner table and throughout the day,” she advises. The intentional parenting core of homeschooling keeps technology usage in check, wielding its power only for good so children #LearnBetter. This and other topics on how to enrich learning in the digital age and how to make intentional parenting work for you will be discussed by Huddleston, Bell, University of the Philippines Diliman Chancellor Michael Tan and other expert educators at the much-awaited first Global Homeschool Conference (GHC 2018) on October 13 to be held at SMX Aura, SM Aura Premier BGC Taguig City. The event is organized by Homeschool Global, a learning enrichment services provider with the vision to help change the world one family at a time through education.
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ITH the massive infrastructure projects envisioned by under the “Build, Build, Build” program of the current administration, there has been a growing demand for public-private partnership consultants and specialists who are needed by organizations— both by the private and public sectors—and investors to guide them and achieve success on their PPP initiatives. The Center for Global Best Practices, in partnership with Quantum Prisms Consulting Inc. and lawyer Alberto C. Agra, will launch a three-module program, entitled “PPP Certification Course,” to be held on Thursday and Friday, October 5 and 6, 2018 (Module I); Thursday and
pany’s share in helping Filipino children handle technologies, especially in the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution. “At BASF, we believe science is the tool that would aid them in solving these challenges.” BASF Philippine recently partnered with The Mind Museum in launching its Virtual Reactions Interactive Touch Table at the Atom Gallery. Claimed by the company as the only one of its kind in the country, the BASF table uses digital simulations, audio and colorful animations to help children explore the world of science so they can observe the chemical reactions between various chemical substances in a completely safe and interactive environment. A virtual tutor will also guide children to understand the element’s features and explain the chemistry theory behind it.
“The Mind Museum and BASF will work closely to create new opportunities for the public, especially young people, to nurture their natural curiosity and ignite an interest in science from,” said Maribel Garcia, curator of The Mind Museum. BASF will hold its Kids’ Lab at the science museum in October. Participants will get a chance to play with and learn about chemistry through the interactive touch table. Every year, the Mind Museum hosts educational field trips for an average of 250,000 school children in the Philippines. BASF employees donated bottle bricks that will be exchanged for science books about water conservation. The books will be donated to local public schools and nongovernment organizations, and bottle bricks will be used as alternative
fillers in building walls and benches. A bottle brick, also known as an ecobrick, is a reusable building block created by packing clean and dry used plastic into a plastic bottle to a set density. Bottle bricks can be used to build furniture, garden and other structures. “Bottle bricking has been gaining attention locally and across the globe, as it presents a practical solution to how people minimize their contribution to plastic pollution, particularly as it tends to end up in the ocean. Through our corporate citizenship activities, we aim to create sustainable impact on our society,” Mercado said. BASF’s nonprofit activities in Philippines are dedicated to supporting the United Nations Strategic Development Goal No. 4, “Quality Education.”
Makati Boyz represent PHL in Asean leg of AWS competition
TEAM Makati Boyz is composed of (from left) Joseph Nathaniel Segovia, Raphael Francis Quisumbing and Marco Valmores. Not in photo is Gonzalo Relova III.
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EAM Makati Boyz composed of four tech whizzes represented the Philippines in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Hackathon’s Asean grand finale held in Jakarta, Indonesia on September 19 and 20, 2018, after defeating 17 teams during the 12-hour AWS Hackdays 2018 on July 19 in Manila. The team is composed of Raphael Francis Quisumbing, Gonzalo Relova III, Marco Valmores, and Joseph Nathaniel Segovia. Quisumbing, from Cebu, has been an AWS Community Hero since 2015, notably the only Filipino among AWS roster of heroes. Also the coleader of the AWS User Group Philippines, a role he has held since 2013, he regularly answers questions, gives advice and organizes events for the AWS community. Relova is a Data Scientist, an expert in guiding strategy and designing systems. A scholar of the Department of Science and Technology, he took up his data science specialization at John Hopkins University. He graduated cum laude for his degree in BA Anthropology from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2016. Valmores is the founder of MacAppsLab and Chief Executive Officer for CrowdNet Project. His career in the information-technology industry spans several years, previously serving as the lead developer for several projects under Ntek Communications and senior software developer for Smart Telecommunication Inc. from 2006 to 2011. Valmores earned his Bachelor of Science Major in Information Technology from De La Salle University in 2005 and his Masters in Business and Administration from Manila Business College in 2011. Segovia is the President of Segovia Development Corp., a privately owned firm in the real-estate industry, and the vice president and business development officer of WL Segovia & Associates, which specializes in construction and interior design.
Friday, November 8 and 9, 2018 (Module II); and Thursday and Friday, December 6 and 7, 2018 (Module III), at the Manila Marriott Hotel, Pasay City. Be one of the first batch of PPP Advocates! This program is addressed to fill in the capacity gaps of PPP in the Philippines and to increase the tribe of the “PPP Champions” who will be at the forefront of their respective organizations’ quest for PPP projects. This program is designed to skillfully train attending participants to become a Certified PPP Advocate through a ladderized approach to master the following: Policy and Legal Framework (Module I); Technical, Financial and Environmental
The solution developed by the Makati Boyz for the Philippine leg of the AWS Hackathon competition sought to leverage image and video recognition to improve business insights for customer retention. AWS Hackdays is an annual education and hackathon event held across six countries in Southeast Asia, which saw competing teams build artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-based solutions around the themes of transportation; media and entertainment; e-commerce; and fintech. The Philippine leg of the competition gathered a total of 18 teams comprising 61 participants, who used AWS services including Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Polly, Amazon Rekognition, and Amazon Lex, to build their solutions within 12 hours. These solutions were then evaluated by a judging panel based on their innovation, business impact, implementation and user experience. Team Makati Boyz impressed the AWS judging panel with their intelligent customer-relations application. It aims to help the local e-commerce sector to improve their customer experience through inclusive instore technology. “We wanted to touch on certain aspects that not a lot of retailers are working on. We call it in-store analytics,” Segovia said. “Retailers ordinarily don’t know how many people are coming in their store. What they are sure of is how many people are buying and how much they are spending. That is all captured through their point-of-sale system. But you don’t really know if people coming in your store are interested or just looking. That actual event is an opportunity for the retailers.” “Retailers can study how to optimize interest then actually convert it to more sales. The solution that we proposed is an AI-driven camera. The moment people come in your store, there is a foot-traffic count. Every time people move from one section of your store
Aspects (Module II); and Contract, Drafting, Terms of Reference Preparation and Contract Management (Module III). Attendees completing this three-part module will simply have to take the final assessment to confer the title of a Certified PPP Advocate. This learning initiative will feature lawyer Agra, one of the only two in the world who are both a Certified PPP Specialist and Certified Regulation Specialist. He drafted a proposed PPP Code/Ordinance for local government units which to date has been adopted by 81 LGUs in the Philippines. He was also part of the team that developed the 2008 Neda Joint Venture Guidelines. He has conducted over 100 lec-
to another, we can generate heat maps. Essentially, we can determine which sections are being visited by people more,” he said. “With smart cameras in place, we can determine how many people are coming in 365 days a year. By giving the retailers these kinds of analytics, we can tell them if their store layout or flow is actually working well.” For now, the group’s focus is preparing for the upcoming competition in Indonesia since it is expected to be more challenging than the Philippine leg. “The level of competition in Jakarta is a bar higher because their science and engineering schools there is really top-notch,” Segovia said. The solution they built in under 12 hours using Amazon Artificial Intelligence and Amazon Machine Learning services impressed the judges the most. “AWS seeks to educate developers across the region on the opportunities to build innovative solutions with AI and ML. By harnessing AWS technologies, especially Amazon SageMaker to build, train, and deploy ML models; Amazon Polly to build speech-enabled applications; and Amazon Lex to build chatbots, these solutions can help contribute to ongoing advancement of Southeast Asia in the region, and inspire the next generation of talented developers,” said Nick Walton, AWS managing director for Asean. “When considering our project, we first had to identify the top issues and trends facing the e-commerce sector in the Philippines. We realized that while virtual stores are growing in popularity, in-store locations still provide valuable insights to customer experience. The idea banks on using the stores’ CCTV cameras that capture images and moods of walk-ins to enhance data on customer behavior through improved demographic and psychographic matching. With AWS technologies, such as the Amazon Rekognition, we were able to build our solution by adding image and video analysis to our application. We expect to develop it even further after this competition,” Quisumbing said. At the AWS Hackdays 2018 grand finale in Jakarta, Indonesia, Team Makati Boyz competed with the winners from Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand for the coveted grand prize—an all-expense paid trip to attend the world’s top cloud conference, AWS re:Invent 2018 in Las Vegas on November 26 to 30, 2018. When asked what their strongest asset is, Quisumbing said, “We have a data scientist,” then added. “We hope the five other teams competing in Jakarta will not be as prepared as we are.” Micah Hatulan
tures on PPPs and JVs. He is also the author of the Proposed PPP Ordinance; annotated and coauthor of the book Knowing PPP, BOTs and JV: A Legal Ordinance. Currently, he holds the position as chairman of the Philippine Reclamation Authority and is a PPP, local government professor and political law bar reviewer at Ateneo Law School. Master your PPPs and create billions of transaction value for your country. This program is open to the general public. Public officials and government employees attending training programs like this are exempted from the P2,000 limit set by the COA based on the DBM Circular 563 dated April 22, 2016. Interested
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Diwa kicks off nationwide traveling quiz show
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EADING provider of Kto12 educational resources Diwa Learning Systems Inc. (Diwa) ushers in a new season of Diwa Pasiklaban sa Paaralan for school year 2018-2019. The country’s first and only information and communications technology-integrated traveling quiz show for grade-school and junior high-school students, Diwa Pasiklaban sa Paaralan pits the best schools against each other in science, math, language, literature and general information. As part of Diwa’s 35th anniversary, this school year’s participants will be in for a whirlwind of competitive learning and excitement with new features added to the game mechanics in the form of mystery questions for participants, as well as a special quiz for audience members. Another addition is the Selfie of the Week Contest where participants can take a selfie with the Diwa Pasiklaban van or tarp and post it on Facebook with a caption that answers the question “What is your most unforgettable experience in Diwa Pasiklaban sa Paaralan?” Winners will be chosen every week and will be given special prizes. This school year, the nationwide quiz show kicked off in August, with the first competition held at Saint Paul College Pasig. Isabelle Victoria Arnaez and Sophia Valenzuela took home the first-place medals in the grade-school and junior high-school categories, respectively. It was followed by a competition held at Trinity University of Asia in Quezon City. Here, Siena College of Quezon City students Bea Theressa Santos and Marielle Odosis took the top spots. In the Diwa Pasiklaban leg held at National College of Business and Arts (NCBA) Quezon City, NCBA Cubao student Raven Charles Castillo and NCBA Fairview student Marcus Zidian Briones brought home the top honors in the gradeschool and junior high-school categories, respectively. Another round of competition was held in Escuela de Santo Rosario in Pasig City, where Joriel Loise Recido of Calvary Christian School won the grade-school category and Julienne Mae Iguiron from ADT Montessori School topped the junior high-school category. At the Pateros Catholic School leg, students Arturo Miguel Saquilayan and Ashanti Paulin Roldan triumphed. The caravan also made a stop at Virgen del Pilar School in Rizal, with the champions being Ayla Angeles of Gain Christian Academy in the grade-school category and Ken Rainer Kabashima of Kids World Christian Academy in the junior high-school category. Diwa Pasiklaban will continue in Metro Manila for September before heading to North Luzon in October to start the regional legs. The caravan will be at South Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao consecutively from November to December. Students going head-to-head will be playing for a spot at the National Finals, which will be held in January 2019 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. participants are encouraged to avail themselves of the early registration saving until September 14 and group discounts. Seats are limited and preregistration is required. Please check www.cgbp.org for a complete list of best practices programs, including “How to Prepare Your Bidding Documents,” “Best Practices and Remedies to Avoid COA Disallowances,” “How to Joint Venture Effectively with the Government,” “How to Prepare Unsolicited Proposals for Government Projects” and many more. You may also call landlines in Manila (+632)842-7148/59 and (+632) 556-8968/69, in Baguio (+6374)423-2914, in Cebu (+6332)5123106 or 07, or Legazpi City (+63 52)736-0148.