by Mr. Adrian Asis, 1-to-1 computer-Based Instruction Coordinator

As part of Xavier School’s celebration of the Xu Guangqi Day, the 1-to-1 Lesson Plan Design and Demo Class Contest was culminated last November 7, 2008.

Open to both grade school and high school teachers, the contest aimed to encourage the faculty to explore and apply 1-to-1 in their teaching, 1-to-1 being the setup where each student is given the opportunity to use a computer during class time.

The initial phase of the contest, concluded last October 13, involved teachers submitting lesson plans for 1-to-1 classes. From these entries, four finalists were named: Mr. James Nicolay (HS English) with his lesson plan entitled Show vs. Tell, Ms. Grace Manatad (HS Math) with Centers of Triangles, Mr. Leo Ocampo (HS CLE) with Practical Guidelines on Christian Charity, and Mrs. Vivian Ocampo (HS English) with Amnesty International: Writing Letters of Appeal.

In the second and last phase of the contest concluded last November 7, Xu Guan Qi Day, the finalists actually carried out their lesson plans – but with a catch: The rest of the members of the faculty played the roles of the finalists’ students! By signing up to be students in the demo classes of their choice, the rest of the teachers learned from the practices of the community’s best designers of 1-to-1.

In the end, Ms. Grace Manatad wowed the judges the most with her impressive use of the E-Learning Framework (ELF) and GeoGebra, two computer-based learning and testing tools. For her efforts, she received 10,000 pesos in gift checks in addition to an iPod Nano, which all of the finalists received.

The iPod Nanos were provided by Senco Link, a local distributor of Apple products. The Nanos were handed out to the contestants by one of the judges, Mr. Nicky Tapangco, a representative from Senco.

The other two judges were Mrs. Jane Cacacho, the high school principal, and Dr. Reena Estuar, instructional designer of the Ateneo JAVA Wireless Competency Center and also a professor of Computer Science and Psychology at the Loyola Schools.