#iescphilippines

We work for Intel, can you tell? 

Zipporah was a bit shy and had to hide behind Damir who is kneeling. Aziz is the floating “i”. Ildikó is contorting herself into the “e”, a decent distance away from Lucille hair-waving-in-the-wind “t”, and Wilbert I’m-too-lazy-to-put-both-arms-up “l” 

As we stepped into the classroom Tuesday morning, thirty-four large brown eyes peered shyly in our direction: thirty-four of over five hundred children of Sto. Niño elementary school in the village of Tanauan. Although they were technically on school break, these children were sitting in neat rows, curiously observing us whirl around the room setting up the projector, plugging in the speakers, short circuiting an extension cord (oops!), flipping through notes, and blowing up the beachball. It was finally happening. 

“All right everyone,” Lucille and Zipporah called out, “stand up now and move your chairs to the side of the room.” A minute later, all the children were standing in lines. 

“Now put one hand out, then the other one, now flip it over, and then the other one,” Zipporah said, demonstrating the steps of the Macarena. At this point the group was smiling...

“... and the last step is this...” Zipporah shook her hips around in a circle to a shower of giggles.

Through a little bit of craziness in the morning, Aziz’s introduction to the parts of the computer was a hit.

“So hey kids, this is the screen,” he pointed to the 2-in-1 classmate PC’s monitor.

“What do we use this for?” inquired Aziz, looking up at the class to see what they would respond. Filipinos are very quiet natured: most of them shrugged, or shook their heads I don’t know…

To help out, Aziz continued:

“Well, it’s very shiny. Maybe you can use it to put lipstick on?” he said, smiling.

Almost instantly, the class burst out in laughter, covering their mouths in modesty.

To help their direction for the week, each group of seven or eight student groups picked one project slip. Each had a topic, such as “Places you would like to visit” or “What do you like to do during school break?” For the next week, they will be using this subject to put together a presentation using all the software we will be teaching them.

Pretty soon after we handed out the 2-in-1s, the children had already figured out how to connect to the internet, go on YouTube, and start programs such as “The Magic School Bus Game”, and also to crash the computer with the “Tux Type” learn-to-type app.

To get their attention back, Lucille and Zipporah introduced them to the camera app.

“Guys, open the camera and take pictures of all your teammates!” Lucille instructed. Soon after, they had found the video button, and just like any child of the human race would do, made faces while giggling at each other, replaying the videos again and again.

By the end of the morning, the children were getting quite antsy. In one corner of the room, Jenny was poking Romeo, in the other corner, Randy Boy was slumping in his chair, placing his pink name tag on his forehead. He had quit paying attention for the moment, and was fixated on me. Every time I tried to raise my camera to snap a photo, he ripped the name tag off with the most mischievous grin, then placed the slip back on when I lowered the machine. This continued for a minute or so, until I covertly took an LCD instead of viewfinder shot and nailed this photograph. I suppose they still have one or two things to learn :)