'Pusong mamon' takes her first periodicals

PEP, MY "pusong mamon" of a daughter, took her first periodical test this morning at Grandview Elementary.

She is one of the millions of new Grade I students that trooped to the public school system when the school year opened last June. I was hoping theirs will be the first batch that would take a standard quarterly exam among all public elementary schools in the city.

That was the plan when we crafted the School Board budget for 2007 last December, justifying a 600% increase in funding for testing -- from a little over P140,000 in 2006 to around a million, including the acquisition of a high-speed top-of-the-line Risograph for faster reproduction. The equipment was procured and turned over; but the citywide quarterly test did not materialize, at least for the first quarter.

So we had to cough up a little contribution for her testing fee -- all public school parents had to in the absence of that standardized test that would allow us to compare which school did better and which ones did not every quarter.

Pep, unlike her older sister Pia who is growing up to be as tough as nail, is one who easily gets cold feet. So her mother, whose patient hands-on in-your-face tutoring last summer has yielded handsome payback as Pep is now able to read -- earlier in fact than Pia -- came home before noontime and brought them some food. But her unexpected presence, and constant reassurance that giving her best is enough for us, was more than enough to perk Pep up.

After securing her baon after lunch, her mother told me on the way home this afternoon, Pep quickly disappeared. When we arrived home just before sunset, she was already playing with friends at the still roofless Grandview multipurpose center. "How did your exams go?"I asked. Her thumbs-up sign I think said it all.

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The institutional requirements of CEP

I ORIGINALLY envisioned to cover this topic only in three parts ending with this one, which is supposed to outline a more realistic iteration of the CEP (Cyber Education Project). Apparently, I wrote too soon and will have to beg your indulgence. Anyways....

IN 2003 or thereabouts, the Naga City School Board invested about P4 million to provide at least 10 computer PCs in each of the 23 elementary schools at the time. It did so in response to the parents' clamor to introduce IT as early as Grade IV, as well as school heads who want access to equipment their high school counterparts already had.

Last year, in one of the Board meetings, when a request for the repair of more than 20 monitors came its way, it was found out that one of the reasons behind the spate of malfunctioning monitors is the PCs' underutilization.

When we asked the local DepEd why, fingers were pointed to the curriculum, which provides only 20 hours of IT instruction per year. There was also the issue about electric bills: school heads are better off with the PCs gathering dust than being saddled with increased payables to Casureco II.

And when we inquired why school heads do not have the incentive to maximize the Board's investment, we found out it is not a performance measure within DepEd; insofar as they are concerned, having graduates who are already well-versed with IT will make no difference to their superiors.

I mentioned this -- that the Field of Dreams philosophy of "build-it-and-they-well-come" does not apply in public education -- because I am afraid the CEP will suffer the same fate as our initiative, unless matched with corresponding changes in its institutional policies, culture and values.

Are its school heads ready? I have no access to the profile of the average school head in the DepEd, but I believe that having moved up the ladder, it is fair to assume that majority of them joined the department before the advent of the PC in the early '90s. Therefore, most of them are not really comfortable with IT, especially an ICT-based distance education in the classroom which is what the CEP essentially is.

If a successful school is usually anchored on a good school head and a supportive community, according to an Ateneo de Manila study, and if efficient use of an IT resource depends on the school head's readiness to embrace it notwithstanding the constraints (as our experience showed), I am afraid the strategy of striking everywhere to cover the archipelago will not work. Some sort of demand-driven criterion will have to be built into site selection.

Are its teachers ready? Three things about the teachers must be mentioned: One, similar to school heads, concerns their readiness to embrace IT. Again, in the absence of an average DepEd teacher's profile, we can only hazard some educated guesses. Like, if the Arroyo administration managed to create 50,000 teaching positions over the last six years, and assume that her post-Marcos predecessors came up with another 50,000, the total is only one-fifth of the 500,000-strong teaching workforce of the DepEd. Consequently, you are talking about 4 of every 5 teachers used to the traditional ways and in all probability not comfortable with ICT technology.

The second concerns the role they will play inside the classroom with CEP. The DepEd will certainly argue that they have long been promoting the teacher-as-facilitator instead of the teacher-as-fountainsource-of-learning model in countless seminars year in and year out.

Unfortunately, that is hardly the case on the ground. I have three kids in a public elementary school: they way they are being taught is still the same way my teachers taught me at Anayan-Sagrada Elementary School three decades ago. Will they be comfortable in a reduced role, fielding questions when the national resource persons are no longer online?

Thirdly, can they competently clarify questions that are bound to arise, considering that the current DepEd hiring policies have lowered the bar insofar as quality is concerned?

Are its policies ready? The CEP will work perfectly if the DepEd adopts the Bernidos' DLP approach: "the heavy emphasis on 'learning by doing,' the radical trust in the youth's capacity to learn, the learning as pseudo-play, and the unparalleled transparency through simultaneous instruction."

But sadly, the current system is anathema to it. Why do I know? My wife, a high school geometry teacher, tried DLP under existing rules: she prepared and reproduced all the required activities, minimized lecture as designed, and allowed her students to learn lessons by doing the activities themselves, including the mistakes they made in the process. And the response was overwhelmingly positive, where reactions like "I enjoyed Math for the first time!" becoming commonplace.

But in the end, she had to abandon it -- not because it was not working, but the rules are stacked against her. Her supervisors are evaluating her performance under the same rules, which require lesson plans day in and day out. They do not like it when she lectures less, and merely lets her students to the activities for the most part. And there are certain requirements, like simultaneous instruction, that are beyond her authority to implement.

Another critical policy support concerns accountability. If CEP is intended to improve the students' learning proficiency, these should be reflected in clear targets for every school, every district, every division and every region within the public school system. These targets should be widely disseminated to allow monitoring and evaluation, so that in the end accountability can be exacted from those who fail to deliver. But is DepEd ready for this long overdue idea?

Are the local communities ready? Finally, local communities, especially local governments, must also own CEP if it were to be sustainable for the long haul. To my mind, local resources will help guarantee its continued operation when ODA funding runs out.

But shared ownership can only be possible if they feel they have a stake in the undertaking, ideally from the very start. The worst thing that can happen is for the CEP to be dropped on their lap like a hot potato starting on the 6th year.

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Cyber Ed Project: Upsides and downsides

OK, BEFORE I proceed, this Inquirer story this morning, among others, says that the Cyber Education Project (CEP) has not been finalized yet, and the requisite papers are still being pushed through the bureaucracy. Which is good since any discussion of its merits can hopefully make it better.

The upsides
Like this June 4, 2007 editorial of the Inquirer, I too can sympathize with the CEP and Secretary Lapus's bold vision, but for a different reason: the idea, I think, was inspired by this article written by Christopher and Marivic Bernido, the Jagna, Bohol-based PhDs behind the Central Visayas Institute.

About two years ago, I had the pleasure of working with the couple in trying to graft their Dynamic Learning Program (DLP) into the Naga public school system, with mixed results.

In part, the article says:

Suppose schools all over the country have simultaneous science periods, 7:30 a.m. to 9:10 a.m., what we call "science time." This allows students all over the country to listen to a lecture by a national expert teacher on TV via satellite. (For example, imagine having as Biology expert teacher the international awardee, Dr. Josette Biyo, for students all over the country.) Twenty to 30-minute lectures for general science, biology, chemistry and physics can be aired on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, respectively. Questions may be asked of the national expert teacher through phone, text messages, or e-mail. During the periods when students are not listening to the lectures, they will have learning-by-doing activities such as problem-solving exercises, reports on learning stations, concept notes and research, to be filed in their comprehensive portfolio. The same procedure can be done during "math time," 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.

The other thing has to do with scope: it is of course national, with bias towards schools outside 1st and 2nd class cities which are obviously in need of more help from government. Jess Mateo's slides (especially No. 15) place this at 90% of all public elementary and secondary schools in the country, representing at least 13 of their combined 17 million enrolment.

The downsides
Unfortunately, the 20-or so minute live classes is the only thing the CEP shares with the Bernidos' model. The differences are more stark:

Coverage. The CEP covers both elementary (22,855 or 62% of the total) and secondary (3,763 or 77%) levels; the Bernido scheme covers only secondary. Now, one must ask: wouldn't this technology fit high schools better, considering that elementary is supposed to focus on developing fundamental literacy and numeracy skills?

If I recall my conversation with the Bernidos right, the choice of high school as most suited for DLP has its rhyme and reason: it is driven by the fact that children of high school-age are at the peak of their creative and inquisitive powers.

Focus. One also must question the inclusion of elementary in the context of modern-distance education (MDE, shorthand for ICT-based distance education) of which China is a world leader. The proposed partnership with Tsinghua University is, I believe, in order considering its reputation that even the NASA (the US space agency) recognizes.

Unfortunately, my readings suggest that MDE, even in Tsinghua, is primarily intended for adults -- for their higher education and continuing education needs -- and not primary education. Resources on MDE here, here and here support this point.

Cost. If the inclusion of elementary (which, in my estimate, accounts for 85% of the total cost) is unnecessary, then question must be raised about the P24.6-billion price tag, considering that it originally was a P5.2-billion BOT project a year ago. This was the essence of the Inquirer editorial, which suggested to DepEd and Secretary Lapus: "Let's keep it real. Let's scale back the project, let's reconsider the funding, let's make the entire process transparent."

If the Bernidos in fact will have their way, it should not even be P5 billion but only a tenth of it:

Since we will be working within the existing DepEd and DOST infrastructure and organizational setup, the significant additional expenses will be the actual costs of yearly simulcast and the initial purchase of television sets for schools all over the country. The DOST and private networks may offer better estimates of the cost of televised lectures, videotaping and reproduction. (Lack of computers limits use of videostreaming technology.) For the cost of TV sets, we note the latest DepEd statistics (school year 2003-2004) of an enrollment of 5,025,956 in 4,830 public schools. For around 100 students per viewing cluster (1 TV), an estimate budget of P500 million may be needed. This amount (only about 7 percent of the annual net income of some large private corporations) is within feasibility margins. Additional sources may come from realignment of DepEd and DOST budget for training workshops (instructional materials, travel and accommodation costs for trainers and participants) since the science and math teachers will have on-the-job training throughout the school year in their own schools.

Ah, but of course: private individuals and corporations, unlike state agencies like the DepEd, do not have the luxury of soft budget constraint, which is among the arguments raised in the Fabella and De Dios paper.

What happens on the 6th year? Finally, the DepEd presentation is silent what happens on the 6th year of the CEP, assuming it is fully implemented and Lapus et al are no longer at the helm. Who will now absorb the maintenance and operating cost of the school-based equipment when ODA funding runs out? Who will shoulder the replacement cost for these equipment, considering wear-and-tear for the entire period?

Considering that the CEP is not entirely without merit, as can be seen from the above, my final post will suggest a way forward.

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Contrasting views on DepEd's Cyber Education Project

THE "no-go" declaration by President Arroyo's legal adviser notwithstanding, the controversy over the $329-million National Broadband Network (NBN) project proposed by the DOTC has clearly overshadowed its more expensive twin, the DepEd's $460-million Cyber Education Project (Cyber Ed).

All along, I thought these two projects will use the same national telecommunications backbone, thereby improving its utilization indicators and other related evaluation benchmarks that would strengthen the government's hand.

It must be said though that the Fabella and De Dios paper does raise far more significant policy questions, especially on the wisdom of government re-involving itself in a liberalized sector where there are already two underutilized privately owned facilities.

The official line
I was therefore horrified to find out that Cyber Ed is an entirely different animal. The DepEd website describes it thus:

The Cyber Ed Project uses satellite technology to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution to the need to deliver educational services to public elementary and secondary schools throughout the country. It links these schools to a nationwide network that provides 12 video channels, wireless wide area networking, local area networking and wireless Internet connectivity.

Under this project, a total of 37,794 schools or 90% of all public schools nationwide will be connected in the next three years. These schools will receive live broadcasts featuring lectures and presentations from master teachers as well as coursewares on demand and other valuable resource materials.

In theory, Secretary Lapus appears to have taken the bull by the horn. "(Increasing the Philippine education system's capacity) can only be done with the use of technology," Lapus said. "And Cyber Ed is the technology that will enable us to deliver high quality education to all learners throughout the country. It is, without a doubt, the best response to the challenges we face in the basic education sector."

ACT's putdown
But contrast this with the position taken by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), calling Cyber Ed simply broadcasting, not computer-based learning. It can be found in the latter part of the Inquirer story on Apostol's "no-go" declaration:

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) asked the government to sober up on its "Cyber Education" program, calling it a white elephant that has nothing to do with cutting-edge technology.

ACT chair Antonio Tinio said the money to fund the project could be better spent on building classrooms, subsidizing the education of children who cannot afford to go to school, hiring more teachers, and producing quality teachers.

"The project is very expensive with little or no proven benefits to the students. It is simply broadcasting a 20-minute lecture to selected schools via satellite. If that is the only thing the Department of Education (DepEd) wants to do, it might as well tape the lectures, place them in compact disks and distribute them to the schools for viewing," Tinio said.

The devil in details
With these contrasting information, what then is Cyber Ed all about? In trying to find some answers myself, I stumbled on this Powerpoint presentation by Jess Mateo, director of the DepEd Educational Development Projects Implementing Task Force (EDPITAF).

My own take on Cyber Ed in my next post.

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Local milestones the week past

1. AVENUE Square Hotel soft launch. This was 'the' social event that gathered together the upper crust of Naga's society, held at the convention center of Avenue Square last July 28. I got in thanks to a last-minute invite from Donald -- one of the perks of blogging, I suppose.

It had two main highlights: one, of course, was the public presentation of Avenue Square Hotel, positioned for the upscale market, which will open its doors by September, just in time for the Peñafrancia fiesta.

The brochure says guests can choose from a wide array of rooms ranging from Superior, De Luxe, Executive Suites and a Presidential Suite, with rates starting from P3,000 per night. Of course, the hotel is located just at the back of Avenue Square, Naga's lifestyle center along Magsaysay Avenue.

The other highlight is the launch of Allée, dubbed as the city's first lifestyle magazine, which featured University of Nueva Caceres president Dr. Dolores Sison; Atty. Leni Robredo, Naga's first lady; and interior designer and Avenue Square's managing director Gwen Cu on the cover.

The thick crowd that trooped to the event however had its downside; just ask Benny Decena, Elmer Abad, Al Ubaña and Johnny Dematera what it was.

2. Danny Gerona, Ateneo's first-ever full professor. Monday evening (July 30) was Dr. Danilo Madrid Gerona's big night at the Arrupe Convention Hall of the Ateneo, marking his conferment of the rank Professor by Fr. Joel Tabora, university president, in a celebration that overflowed with food and wine.

Irvin Sto. Tomas relates here this is a first, and a source of singular pride for their hometown, Canaman.

'Eminence' was the dominant word that evening, becoming synonymous with Danny especially in the field of local history and culture. It was more than enough to compensate for a most generous offer from the other Catholic university along Taft, who almost took away the city's foremost local historian.

His lecture on the topic The Chinese in Spanish Kabikolan: Cultural Resilience and Entrepreneurial Process was both enlightening and timely, as the Ateneo embarks on a partnership with China, starting with educational and cultural exchange programs, and possible business opportunities for the city and Bicol as a whole.

High-ranking officials of the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce were among those who listened to Danny's lecture, a vintage performance that reminded me of a similar presentation before our visiting UBC graduate students, one of whom exclaimed, "You're a very good storyteller!"

3. 'Miskol.' Bikolanos again took centerstage in the annual Sawikaan event at UP last August 2-3 that brought together Filipino language scholars, teacher delegates and students. Ateneo's Adrian Remodo took the word of the year top prize with 'miskol,' followed by Kristian Cordero's 'roro.'

Cordero blogged about it, as did Aldy Manrique who thankfully pointed out it is a Philippine Star article (William Esposo should do something about the Star's notoriously unreliable links), with Irvin reacting, including a reference to Composed Gentleman's objection to the word of the year, arguing that 'miskol' is not even a word. Ah, but such is the vitality of a living language: maybe today it is not, but soon it will be.

I only hope the evolving Bikol language will be just as vigorous, even more, to capture modern concepts, ideas and realities alien to Lisboa when he wrote Vocabulario de la Lengua Bicol in the 19th century.

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Poll: Mercury or New South Star?

SATURDAY evening, I found myself at the New South Star Drug branch at the corner of Juan Miranda and Panganiban, sitting by my scooter and waiting for Lynn buy some pasalubong for the kids at the Lucky 9 convenience store. It's my favorite NSSD branch owing to its promixity to City Hall.

The branch is undergoing a facelift, with the NSSD colors now dominating the front and side signages whereas before, Lucky 9 had half of the front. The reason is obvious: just across the street, a Mercury Drug branch is just about ready to open shop, a veritable dagger strike at the heart of its newest stiff competitor.

For NSSD, whose slow rise to prominence was recently featured in the Inquirer, traces its roots to Naga City, even antedating its bigger rival which, according to Wikipedia, came into existence only towards the end of the Second World War.

What would be more strategic than go for the jugular and bring the fight right where one's rival is based? This explains why we are seeing, and will probably see more of, this tit-for-tat. For instance, an NSSD branch is the anchor tenant of the new commercial building owned by the Cabral family that is rising at the corner of Magsaysay and Peñafrancia. It is obviously in response to the Mercury outlet doing brisk business at Avenue Square.

So, for the week, why don't you indulge me by answering this little survey, which will run for the next seven days: Which drug store do you prefer, Mercury or New South Star? Again, the usual caveat that it is unscientific by its very nature. But it should be fun and enlightening, just like the last one whose final results is still available for view at the bottom of my right sidebar.

This stiff tiff however made me think: if I were NSSD, what would be my next best response? I'll probably do 24-7 door-to-door drug deliveries, similar to what fast foods do, which is what Mercury pioneered in 1948. For a small city whose farthest end is only 30 minutes away, I say this is doable.

What do you think?

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The DepEd union must be kidding

I AM typing this squint-eyed, no thanks to conjunctivitis that felled me and practically all my kids, but I felt I had to. All of them are well now, and I expect to be back in shape in no time; the problem with age is that one's eyesight begins to falter, and recovery from the seasonal illnesses takes a tad longer.

But I digress. I have always treated the DepEd National employees Union, the source of this Inquirer story, with distrust. This is the same union that wanted the late Raul Roco out when the Arroyo administration was still young, allegedly because of some shenanigans.

But I think it was more about the fat commissions they used to get from money lenders -- euphemism for loan sharks -- in exchange for facilitating the automatic deduction of loan amortizations from the hapless teachers' salaries. Roco did away with the scheme, refused to partake of what central office people used to divide among themselves, including the union officials, in the process earning their eternal enmity.

That is why when that union cozies up with their boss, one must take their pronouncements with a grain of salt. Because what they are saying can in fact be farthest from the truth. Let me offer the following examples:

Exhibit "A": "Secretary Lapus has clearly avoided using the DepEd for the political gain of the Arroyo [administration], especially during the May 2007 synchronized elections,” they said.

I don't know about the rest, but one of the most celebrated cases during the last elections happened right in our backyard. In a previous post, I wrote the following:

DepEd-Naga's acting superintendent Ruby Abundabar was unceremoniously replaced in the middle of the ongoing electoral campaign -- the first in six mayoral tiffs that he figured in.

Senator Mar Roxas, Robredo's Liberal partymate, and Solita Monsod, his fellow trustee at Synergeia Foundation, managed to finally track down Education Secretary Jesli Lapus for an explanation. They both got the same answer: "My hands are tied. Those are my marching orders."

Exbihit "B": "They said Lapus’ “professional management” of the DepEd had led to improvements in the guidelines for the hiring of qualified teachers to fill more than 7,000 vacant teaching positions."

This one is of more recent vintage, and easier to remember because right after GMA's SONA sbout 10 days ago, I wrote two entries. The first one takes Lapus to task for reversing efforts by his immediate predecessors to improve the quality of the hiring process.

The new policy of the Lapus administration in regard to teacher hiring is a virtual accommodation to politicians, particularly members of the House of Representatives where he came from.

Today, all an applicant needs to do is meet the 50% minimum rating (Sec. 2.3), sending him to the so-called Registry of Qualified Applicants (RQA). Once in the RQA, the rating becomes irrelevant: one who got 90% is just as good as another who squeaked in by getting the minimum 50%.

The decision to hire now rests on the school head, who will recommend to the division superintendent whom to take in, guided primarily by the Localization Law. This is where subjectivity comes in.

I will urge you to read back that piece in full, as well as its follow-up. And you will see why those benefiting from the new policies -- including that company union -- are happy, delirious even, but we actually have no reason to share their joy because, pardon my language, we are the ones being royally screwed.

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A way out of the margins

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

FOR about five days now, I've been running a survey on the following question: "Are you in favor of changing the name of Plaza Quezon to Plaza Arejola?"

Polls like these are unscientific, with my mostly anonymous readers being the universe of respondents, and actual respondents being equally unknown, except for those who explained their votes, like Bikolano writer Maryanne Moll and Irvin Sto. Tomas, a masteral student specializing on the Filipino language who I believe runs the most popular blog hereabouts.

Nonetheless, the verdict is loud and clear: as I write this with two days to go, only three of the 27 respondents (11%) agreed with the proposition; the rest thumbed it down.

Let me offer two reasons as to why this is so, after conversations with people like neophyte Councilor Nathan Sergio, Inquirer correspondent Johnny Escandor, his Bicol Mail editor Joe Perez and Ben Barrameda: One, Gen. Ludovico Arejola, a native son of Naga who led the resistance movement against the American invaders more than 100 years ago, remains a largely unknown figure in this city; and two, some people know him too well to believe he is not worthy enough to displace the late President Quezon from one of Naga's most important seat of honor.

The first reason is sad, reflecting a weak sense of local history which I discussed in a previous column. While blog-hopping, I chanced on this quote from Luis Bunuel, a Spanish filmmaker considered one of the masters of 20th-century cinema. It appears in Sonny Pulgar's weblog, which I think is most apt to our situation:

"Memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing."

"As time goes by, we don't give a second thought to all the memories unconsciously accumulate until suddenly one day we can't think of the name of a good friend or relation -- it's simply gone, we've forgotten it. In vain we search furiously to think of a commonplace work -- it's on the tip of our tongues but refuses to go further. Once this happens, this and other lapses, only then do we understand the importance of memory. Our imagination and our dreams are forever intruding our memory. And since we're all out to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths."

The second is understandable, but debatable. My conversation with Ben in particular brought to the fore certain unwritten accounts surrounding Naga's liberation from the Spaniards, which seem to diminish the bravery shown by our local heroes. That century-old urban legend probably explains why Felix Plazo was honored with a peripheral street -- that only gained significance lately when the LCC Group put up its mall in the area -- much unlike his colleague Elias Angeles.

But I don't think it detracts from the heroic role they played in securing our freedom from Spain and in trying to protect it from the new foreign invaders who were just as vicious, if not more. And it distracts us from the bigger issue of who should really occupy the highest seats in our local pantheon.

With the Sanggunian recently thumbing it down, on the heels of the National Historical Institute's (NHI) take on the matter, the name-change issue is already moot and academic. But I happen to believe in this marginal position, like Nathan who failed to convince his Sanggunian colleagues to force the issue if only to test the limits of our autonomy, that we should begin to value local heroism by rescuing it from the backseat.

If many influential people have discovered that the hope of our country is in the countrysides, in what Manolo Quezon called the New Philippines, we should believe no less. We should start believing that our own heroes, most probably flawed in the same manner that Rizal and Quezon were imperfect, were capable of the same heroism they showed and of the same greatness, albeit on a smaller context.

There may be sense in the basic unfairness of imposing the opinion of one generation over another. And consequently our original CBD, the city center of our three plazas, may have been taken for all intents and purposes. The new Central Business District might provide the way out, and a General Arejola Coliseum does not sound bad at all.

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Help argue for a Bikol Wikipedia

IRVIN Sto. Tomas first wrote about it here, and his second post, almost a plea, moved me to do my part.

The objective: convince the Wikipedia Foundation board of trustees to approve the development of a wiki in the Bikol language.

I urge you to do the same, even if, like Tito Valiente, you seem to have been burned by a past effort. I may not have Tito's elegant prose, or Maryanne's, or Kristian's jagged-edge poetry, but that's how his latest column at Vox Bikol strikes me.

If you are interested, Irvin's last entry has the how-to's.

Just for the record, this is how I justified a Bikol wikipedia:

The City Government of Naga has recently prioritized the standardization of the Bicol-Naga language. Toward this end, it will initiate the establishment of a local institution that will lead the effort. (See Mayor Robredo's Executive-Legislative Agenda for 2007-10 which is available here.) This is just one indication of a renewed, much bigger movement involving many other stakeholders to push the language's development, considering its influence over a substantial segment of the Philippine population as described above. A wikipedia on the language will be a powerful contribution to these efforts, considering that it will bring together Bikolano-speaking contributors that may be dispersed all over the globe but are joined together by the internet through this web-based project.

A fair warning: Notwithstanding its very useful toolbar, Wikipedia's approach to composition is not as advanced as Blogger's, which already has a wysiwyg option, or Wordpress.

But be not afraid: When unsure of what you wrote, simply punch the "Show Preview" button. It's not elegant, but it works as a trial-and-error safety net.

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