AUF-IT students during their oral defense. (L-R) Innov8 Adviser Eugene Quiambao Castro, Ponciano Vieira, Gaudencio Vidigal, DepEd EPS for ICT Lourdes Dela Cruz, CCS Dean Dr. Gilbert Tumibay, Mariano Carmo, educational Attache for Timorese scholars in the Philippines, Innov8 Project Manager Norence Tan, Karen Reyes, Lizel Hombrebueno and Florindo da Costa.
Contributed photo
ANGELES CITY – A group of Information and Technology (IT) students of Angeles University Foundation have created a computer program that would lessen the work load of public school teachers and personnel here.
Project Manager Norence Aaron P. Tan said that if the program will be implemented in various public schools in this city, “teachers will have more time for students and lesser time in dealing with paper-based and other administrative works.”
Dubbed as “School Management Record Electronic System”, the said program include automating data gathering and interpretation, student grading and performance analysis, generation school forms and reporting, and the E-Gate attendance monitoring system with short messaging system (SMS).
Compared with the manual system being used by public schools in the city, Tan cited various advantages of the program which include:
1. Organized management of school records leading them to fast, reliable, and accurate state;
2. Easy-to-use and user-friendly interface;
3. Anytime, anywhere access as long as you have a computer and a relatively fast internet connection;
4. Increased transparency on grades where students can also see how their grades are being computed;
5. Increased school-parent communication in terms of students’ attendance;
6. Parents or guardians receive SMS (text) message informing them that their son/daughter has entered or left the school campus;
7. “Redundant” backup measures and easy-to-perform recovery functions making data secured; and 8. Fast and easy generation of forms 1, 18, 137, and 138.
“To give you an example, say a teacher would be encoding and computing grades of a single section, there would be around 10-20 minutes spent on writing the scores to the class record, and perhaps another 30 minutes spent on computing the grades of students in a section on a particular grading period.
This is under the manual system,” Tan said.
“However, in the new [automated] system, it would only take 10-20 minutes for teacher to encode and only 20 seconds (tested under 1 mbps internet connection) for it to compute and give the results,” he added.
Asked about its accuracy, Tan stressed that the system ensures repeated (or “redundant”) verification of data collected before it will be accepted for processing or analysis. This he said lessens or “even eradicates data anomalies leading to data accuracy.”
The IT students, together with officials and personnel of the Department of Education (DepEd) here, made a dry run of the program in four public schools: Angeles City Science High School, Claro M. Recto ICT High School, Northville 15 Integrated School and Governor Rafael L. Lazatin Integrated School.
Teachers lauded the program saying that it would “significantly lessen our work in dealing with so many school-related forms to be accomplished.”
They also said that much of their time can be used in attending to the academic needs of their students. “We are looking for the system’s full implementation.”
The AUF students said teachers or DepEd personnel who will use the program should undergo a series of trainings since “not everyone is technologically-oriented.”
“We expect that at first, they will experience a little difficulty and would make some adjustments in using the program. However, our team sees it as an opportunity to advocate using modern technology in education.”
Other members of the group which they named “Innov8: Think Innovation” include: Karen Cate B. Reyes, Florindo G. da Costa, Ponciano Vieira, Lizel F. Hombrebueno , Gaudencio G. Vidigal and their project adviser, Mr. Eugene Q. Castro.
