The Lesson Plan

THIS is my huge Humanities Week post. So what did I think about BK1? Is it true that there was supposed to be a KKKorny Joke contest during the KKKwiz? And was I even supposed to speak during the Future Summit? All these and more in the post that follows. Read on.

So what goes behind the scenes of Humanities Week? Quite a lot. Actually, there’s so much going on that accomplishing all of them merits the real celebration. Not to make my students’ jealous of course — they still have to present on Monday — but my Humanities Week is done!

It all began last September 8 for me with Bloggers’ Kapihan, a project I’ve undertaken together with Mong, Ederic, Shari, Bikoy, Sarah, Jhay and Vencer.

As my first major collaboration on an event born from a communication on the internet, this was an incredible experience for me. But since I was on the hosting side of the event, it did get a little crazy. We had Family and Card Giving that day, so it was more than a little hectic as I was pulling triple duty. And being a weekend, the school was running on a skeleton crew that made it more difficult to get what we need when we wanted them. Regardless, the BK Crew and AKSIS all pulled through together and made the event a success noteworthy of some ABC-5 coverage.

As our first event, we were incredibly fortunate to have a powerhouse panel. Running with the theme of going beyond the basics, we wanted to survey what more we can do with blogging. We had Victor Villanueva (on student blogging), Abe Olandres (on technology and professional blogging) and Manuel Quezon III (on political blogging) as our guests and indeed, it doesn’t get any better than this.

All three speakers represented their fields of expertise well, although I would like to commend Bikoy’s presentation the most for being just what I wanted my students to hear. A lot of them are blog upstarts and thus, definitely welcomed the insights from a fellow student blogger. Nonetheless, Yuga’s and Manolo’s speeches blew open the possibilities for them, introducing the notion of earning through blogging and influencing people through the blogged word. What else my students took from this event, I’d like you to read in the links that follow:

• Kyou Kara Maou-God Save Our King!
• Change of heart by Jejo
• Deviations by Joe
• Blogger’s Kapihan by girl_onthewall
• Bloggers’ Kapihan by the Magical Flying Chicken
• In which I pretend I’m still a Pisay student Part2: Blogger’s Kapihan by Potchi

That’s it for BK1. I look forward to BK2, 3 and beyond! I’m game to help out whenever my schedule allows, and you can be sure that if you do need that speaker on education, I’m your guy. It has been a wonderful experience and one of the highlights of blogging here at AKOMISMO. Thank you.

What followed next was the KKKwiz on the 13th, the major event of the Social Science Unit for Humanities Week. But before that, some quick pit stops.

September 10 was my TV debut on ABC-5’s Light Talk. I think the segment was done well and I have yet to e-mail the producer, Chi Burgos, my thanks — and my request for a copy of the tape!

On September 11, I had an early morning appointment with Jose “Ping” de Jesus, the President of Manila North Tollways Corporation for an interview I’m doing for Blue Blood magazine. We had a nice, quick conversation that spanned his leadership philosophy, his history, and his thoughts on Philippine politics. I’m still in the process of writing his article but here is all I have to say — when people say we don’t have alternatives in government, they’re wrong. I met one last September 11. It’s just that these few good men choose to fight their battles elsewhere. For Ping de Jesus, it is by building one road at a time. (And there goes my article’s concluding sentence.)

Now, the KKKwiz 2007.

This event was a true team effort every step of the way, thanks to the dynamism of our unit head, Ma’am Tina Bawagan. My initial workload for the event was to work on the PowerPoint and be the clicker, but I switched to taking on the quizmaster duty when Ma’am realized that I was doing so much for the Humanities Week already (the PowerPoint required a lot of my free time which I didn’t have).

Everything went down in a pretty straightforward way. There were no incidents whatsoever but nothing too spectacular either. So Sir Vlad and I were wearing our Clash of Civilizations costumes — I was in a Chinese-style shirt and he was in Roman armor — but that was about it for us. We couldn’t sustain being in character for two whole hours and so we didn’t try.

(TRIVIA: When planning the KKKwiz, I proposed a “KKKorny Joke” contest where we would draw out categories from a hat and participants will race to give the most and best corny jokes. For example, when the category of ‘Filipino presidents’ is drawn, contestants will make up jokes using the names of Filipino presidents. My unit members didn’t think I was serious. )

Congratulations once again to all the contestants, especially the victors! The following table details the results. Yellow column would be average (2 pts each), Blue for difficult (4 pts each) and Red for impossible (6 pts each).

Congratulations to all the participants for an excellent contest!

Thank you again to all the AKSIS members and volunteers for pitching in! It was also very fun hanging out with you all at the end. Hehehe.

And finally, the Future Summit on the 14th.

I wasn’t originally supposed to speak at the Summit until the Humanities Week Committee wanted someone to speak on Education. They didn’t even look outside Pisay anymore — they pointed to me. At first, I was reluctant to take it since the audience are students who know me and I was going to talk about them. Then, I realized how weird that sounded — it was a forum and a different venue for students to hear from me. Thankfully, I’ve learned a thing or two since the last time I’ve handled Batch ‘08 and ‘09.

What worked against me however, was the sheer amount of workload I’ve already been doing. Note to self: Do not organize and speak in the next forum you handle. It’s stressful; I just prepared for my speech an hour before the event. I am lucky to have such an awesome group in Ellie, David, Criselle, Jarelle and Gippo. The six of us basically ran the event from top to bottom, and it wasn’t bad at all. Our biggest glitch would have to be not having our own screen for the projector but we really couldn’t compete with ValEd’s ACLE which needed everything. I vividly remember mumbling, “12 o’clock, 12 o’clock, 12 o’clock” while walking with Ellie to the gym. “By then, all this will be over.” (Almost. We had a slight overtime and ended at 12:20. Heh.)

But of everything I’ve done this past week, the Future Summit was the icing on the cake.

My good karma began when at the last minute, Abe Olandres joined our panel. Just fresh from Bloggers’ Kapihan, he returned to Pisay to be part of our panel to speak on technology. More good karma came when Steve Tsao, President and COO of IP e-Games confirmed his attendance. And of course, Ma’am Etta Rosales, the sister of Ma’am Tina Bawagan, has been there with us since the start.

The panel was able to give a good sweep of how technology changes the way we govern, learn, earn and play. I really appreciated Abe’s presentation this time around as I believe it demonstrated his grasp of technology and clearly described the fundamental shifts we have seen lately. I’ll definitely be getting a copy of his PowerPoint as I think it summarizes what we’ve been going for in the Summit.

Our final speaker was probably our most pedigreed one. With an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Steve Tsao is not only the President and COO of IP e-Games, he is also an avid player of WoW or World of Warcraft.

His presentation gave a good picture of the business of online gaming and one thought I carried from his talk is this — countries like South Korea and China have invested in online games because they believe that this will get their people to use the Internet. Indeed. People use the internet for entertainment first and foremost, and online games will drive people to use the technology which we consider to be very important in developing our high-technology sector.

His presentation also began to sound like a career talk towards the end. He made it clear that his background in Chemical Engineering gave him that set of “problem solving” tools he needed in his IT work and I hope the message got to my students.

Steve and Ma’am Rosales both had to leave right after the event. Steve had a 3pm flight to catch and Ma’am had to attend to a domestic matter. Abe was able to join us for lunch and with that, my Humanities Week was officially over.

Whew. That was quite a lot, wasn’t it? Do I feel like I bit off a little more than I can chew?

Before all this began, I couldn’t look forward to how it would all end. There was just so much to do and so little time. In my presentation at the Summit yesterday, I showed a slide where our 24-day has stretched on to become 56. For the past two weeks, mine felt like 112.

Now that this is all over, I can slow down a bit. Thank heavens, I can finally go back to just teaching.

Of course, I learned a lot over the past two weeks. Perhaps I can sum it best with the feeling that sometimes, we don’t get to choose our work; our work chooses us. In these moments we discover what we are capable of and what our limits are. But above all, even though I was busy, all I did meant something to me. I’ve always said, “Do what you love.” The past two weeks was all about that, and I am thankful that I ended it by doing something I love the most.

During the closing hours of Friday, I was with the person who drives me. She always did, always will. We were supposed to “talk” that night but the words had to get out of the way — we were hungry, and Dayrit’s was pretty good. And as if rounding out my week that began with blogging and ended with the future, my parcel from Amazon.com arrived. (Thank you, flat world.) Sometimes, the stars just align for you and everything just feels right and bright. I told you — you were my light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you.

And that goes for everyone too.