So if Filipinos use their mobile phone’s short messaging service to send greetings, stay in touch with their loved ones or share jokes, why not harness its power to improve the quality of public education?

A consortium of Philippine companies composed of Ayala Foundation, Globe Telecom, Nokia, Seameo Innotech and the Department of Education did just that with the launch in May 2003 of the Text2Teach program.

Education divide

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 in grades 5 and 6 classes in elementary school by providing multimedia packages designed to make science, math and English learning more exciting and meaningful among young learners.

The first phase of Text2Teach used the mobile phone, satellite technology, and media master to deliver content to the classrooms. The teachers use the mobile phone to order video clips which are delivered via satellite, stored in the media master, and viewed on TV.

For the second phase launched this year, the mobile phone is the storage device and is preloaded with the educational videos. All a teacher has to do is plug the phone to a TV and play the video lesson.

New videos will be accessed by downloading them through the mobile phone using Globe’s 3G technology. The videos are integrated with specially developed lesson plans that comply with the Basic Education Curriculum and designed for grades 5 and 6 students in public elementary schools.

The teachers then show these materials on television to public elementary school students who would not have had access to these multimedia presentations if not for Text2Teach.

The teachers were trained by experts from the Seameo Innotech on how to integrate multimedia learning experience into their lesson plans.

There are 387 video modules in the electronic library and 480 lesson guides for teachers on topics that are generally discussed in the science, math, and English classes of Grade 5 and 6 students.

More interesting

Teachers show topics in line with the curriculum defined by the Department of Education.

Jeff Tarayao, head of community relations and corporate social responsibility of Globe Telecom, says that with Text2Teach, learning about volcanoes, for instance, has never been more interesting.

The students agree.

Just six 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; teacher-pupil, pupil-pupil interaction got a boost, and, the classroom atmosphere has become more upbeat.

Tarayao says the teachers have been clamoring for even more content to show their enthusiastic students.

Since 2003, more than a million public elementary school students and more than 1,700 teachers and school officials in about 250 schools all over the Philippines have benefited from the program. And Text2Teach is reaching more schools in the country, targeting an additional 350 schools nationwide by 2010.

Text2Teach went to 118 public elementary schools in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao through a grant from the United States Agency for International Development.

Tarayao says some schools are even sharing their content with the out of school youth who come to the Text2Teach classrooms after regular classes.

He says the challenge is to further expand the program to cover even more schools that want to experience the same benefits of Text2Teach.

It is possible given the commitment of the many organizations behind Text2Teach.

Ayala Foundation is the overall project leader, handles resource and partners mobilization and technical support for the project; Globe Telecom is the cellular capacity provider and powers the SMS network; Nokia Philippines provides the private sector funding, which includes the provision of a 3G-enabled device such as the Nokia N95 8GB, equipped with the Nokia Education Delivery (NED) software that allows the teacher to select from the 387 education videos specifically created for the project; Seameo Innotech crafts the lesson plans and handles the teacher training; while the Department of Education provided coordination with the public schools system.

Text2Teach’s accomplishments did not go unnoticed.

Text2Teach was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge in Sweden—the world’s leading ICT Prize for entrepreneurs and projects who use information and communications technology to improve living conditions and increase economic growth.

Text2Teach was also awarded the best in Support and Improvement of Education Category during the 2006 Asian CSR Awards.

But for Globe, the reward is knowing that Text2Teach has helped make mobile phone communication and SMS technology relevant to the upliftment of education in the Philippines.