iSchools Project Conquers Inapoy National High School

Despite the absence of computers, students manage to learn the basic of education through limited teaching aids

By Ersyl T. Biray

Amidst a remote mountainous sugarcane plantation in the upcoming urban city of Kabankalan, Negros Occidental is nestled a government-run high school named after its place, the Inapoy National High School. So distantly located from the city, this national high school can be reached through a 30-minute bus and a 40-minute motorbike rides passing by tenanted haciendas and dusty rough roads.

Notwithstanding the long and bumpy rides, panoramic views of sugarcane stretches, some under coconut plantations, and sacadas (or sugarcane cutters) walking in queues with sugarcane bundles on their shoulders capture your sight. Restless souls they seem but no traces of stress can be pictured from their faces. This is because Inapoy is one barangay where sturdy men and hard-working women rear their children in fear of God and love for education. Close family tie is a common thing.

Students content themselves to learning what their school can offer and what their teachers can give. They learn basic education in classrooms with no electricity and limited facilities. While most urban government-supported secondary schools receive supplies of books and other learning support materials, Inapoy National High School students make use of chalk and blackboard as good media for learning. They have limited books to scan and read, no laboratory room to work on, and not even a computer unit but pictures to talk about. Their teachers use personal cellphones to send and receive communications to concerned agencies.

But hopelessness never did come into the minds of Inapoyans. With the thrust of the government to uplift the standards of education by reaching out and providing electronic education to all high school students, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology - Human Capital Development Group (CICT-HCDG), in coordination with the Department of Education went through scouting for deserving recipients for its iSchools project. Luckily, the wheel of fortune run on the Inapoy National High School. After it passed the criteria as a recipient school, it will receive computer units and training programs for its teachers and students from CICT-HCDG.

The school community was overwhelmed when this news reached them. They knew that computer education will no longer be with the chalk on the board nor by drawing alone. This time they will finally grasp and touch what computer is and how this will be of help to their studies. Parents, too, were inspired upon knowing that their children will be able to use an information technology other students were privileged to use.

With this development, the city mayor of Kabangkalan has pledged to put up a computer room for Inapoy National High School, and the local leaders has shown support to its immediate implementation and operation by taking all possible means of connecting the school to a local electric cooperative.

Indeed, for the Inapoyans this is a dream-come-true!

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