Technology Milestones

• Tweet

 

At least 75 of the 113 public high schools in Negros Occidental now have free access to the Internet, thanks to Ayala Foundation’s GILAS and other donors.

Forty beneficiary schools received a GILAS (Gearing Up Internet Literacy and Access for Students) package each at turnover rites in E.B. Magalona National High School in E.B. Magalona, Negros Occidental.

The 40 schools are in addition to the 35 beneficiary-schools that have earlier availed of the Internet connectivity through the GILAS project.

Ayala Foundation president Victoria Garchitorena said the GILAS project has covered 3,152 schools out of 6,789 public high schools in the country, and they aim to cover all of these schools soon.

GILAS has started the ambitious project in 2005 with the aim of providing access to all high school students in the Philippines, thereby bridging the “digital divide.”

With free Internet connection, students of these schools can now maximize the use of their computer laboratories, and use the Internet for their own researches and develop skills that will make them globally competitive, she said.

GILAS exemplifies the public-private partnership approach to development, and is the first private sector initiative that the government has taken on and mainstreamed in the national budget, Garchitorena added.

Starting 2009, the Department of Education included in its annual budget the subsidy for Internet fees of the country’s public high schools.

The GILAS package includes a teacher’s training on Internet literacy, local area networking, and computer maintenance and troubleshooting, as well as one-year technical support and monitoring.