Globe Telecom
Texting to teach

If Filipinos can use the mobile phones to send millions of text messages every day, why not harness its power to help improve the quality of public education?

This idea became the brainchild of a consortium of Philippine companies including Globe Telecom Inc. and Nokia Philippines. Launched in May 2003, Text2Teach is the Philippine project under the BridgeIt program, a global initiative that aims to narrow the educational divide between nations by improving the teaching of basic education in developing countries using high speed, wireless digital connection.

The text message-based program was deemed ideal for the Philippines not only because everybody knows how to use it, but also because the technology is cheap and can reach the farthest islands of the archipelago.

Text2Teach aims to help improve the quality of teaching science in grades 5 and 6 classes in elementary school by providing multi-media packages designed so that learning science, math and English is more exciting and meaningful.

The method is simple: A teacher sends a text message to a dedicated Globe number to order teaching materials in the form of video, pictures, text or audio files. Another program partner, Dream Cable, downloads the requested materials during off-peak hours to a Nokia Mediamaster, a multi-media box capable of storing files. The device is attached to a 21-inch television inside classrooms.

During class, the teachers show these materials on television to their students who otherwise would not have access to such multimedia presentations.

The teachers are trained to integrate the multi-media learning experience into their lesson plans by experts from the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization. They can tap 334 video modules in the electronic library as well as 480 lesson guides for teachers on topics generally discussed in the fifth and sixth grades. All topics are part of the curriculum defined by the Department of Education.

Just three years since it was launched, absenteeism among students attending Text2Teach classes has been reduced. Student performance has risen as shown by higher average scores in science. Teachers and pupils interact better and the classroom atmosphere has become more invigorating.

Jeffrey O. Tarayao, head of community relations and social responsibility of Globe Telecom, says that teachers are clamoring for more content to show to their students. Some schools even share their content with out-of-school youth who come to the Text2Teach classrooms after regular classes.

Today Text2Teach directly benefits 920 teachers and over 32,000 pupils. It is now in 202 public elementary schools, from Quezon City and Batangas in Luzon to Antique in the Visayas and as far as Maguindanao in Mindanao . Text2Teach is being used in 118 schools in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao through a grant from the United States Agency for International Development.

Tarayao says the challenge is to further expand the program to cover even more schools that want to experience the benefits of Text2Teach. This is possible given the commitment of the many organizations behind Text2Teach.

Ayala Foundation is the lead convenor of the Text2Teach consortium. Globe Telecom powers the SMS network and provides the phones to teachers and schools. Nokia Philippines provides the Nokia Media Master and technical support. SEAMEO-Innotech crafts the lesson plans; Dream Cable houses the educational videos and beams them to requesting schools; Chikka Asia developed the SMS interphase to the cable system for video requests while the Department of Education provides coordination within the public schools system.

Text2Teach's accomplishments have not gone unnoticed.

In May 2006, Text2Teach was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge in Sweden, the world's leading ICT prize for entrepreneurs and projects that use information and communications technology to improve living conditions and increase economic growth. Then in September, Text2Teach was awarded Best in Support and Improvement of Education during the 2006 Asian CSR Awards.

“Text2Teach was made possible by a consortium of organizations that had the common aspiration of helping to enrich education in public schools,” says Globe president Gerardo C. Ablaza Jr., “For Globe, this was one way of making mobile phone communication and SMS technology relevant to the upliftment of education in our country.”