Never Too Late

There's a saying that you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. To convince himself, my seatmate during the Online Writing Techniques Training in Palawan had to run a poll in his blog with the question, "Should teachers 40 years and above be qualified in the iSchools Project?"

I was reminded of these things when my colleagues narrated to me their experiences during the first roll-out of the Computer and Internet Literacy Course in Marinduque.

First day of training. There were supposed to be 20 trainees and all trainees turned out to be first time users of Edubuntu and Open Office productivity tools. Their ages ranged from 40 to 50 and six of them, more or less, were first time users of the computer.

Familiarization with the parts of the computer. For the first timers, it was exhilarating to be acquainted with the letters on the keyboard and to feel, move, drag, click, double-click and scroll the mouse. The arthritic hands felt the pressure but the eagerness to learn overcame the discomfort.

It was already break time but the trainees just went on to explore the computer and master whatever they had just learned from the session. They were simply amazed by the ease of using the computer and how they were able to do what was required of them.

From the second day up to the fifth day, the trainees came to the laboratory ahead of the schedule and stayed longer after each session to spend more time to practice what they have learned and explore other applications. They started to appreciate the usefulness of the productivity tools in preparing their lesson plans, reports and grading sheets. No sweat!

Closing program. The principal expressed her joy and gratitude that after being given sets of PCs, printer and air-conditioning units, they were also trained to use the computers and got fed while undergoing the training. She was so impressed with the outcome that she thought of conducting the training to the rest of the faculty, staff and students in their school.

Now, who says it's too late?