So yelled the ever famous Fab Four in 1968, at a time when the disheartened citizenries from the Western side of the world were seeking lifestyle reforms while an Asian nation was caught amidst the then protracted military conflict between its forces factionalized into two.

Thirty-seven years and several worldwide social battles later, one of what must be intense confirmations came not unheard… And it echoed from the Far East. Though blowing towards the same direction of the much-coveted goal that is transformation, the wind, this time, cried for education progression.

To be exact, the voices echoed from the Science and Technology Education Center (STEC) located in Barangay Basak, Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. Their battlecry: information and communications technology for their academic community.

Heeding the call was the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Group of Companies, led by its chairman Manuel Pangilinan, through the Smart Schools Program.

"It really is a privilege for Smart to be providing you these (Internet) facilities," states Pangilinan, who is also chairman of Smart Communications, Inc., in his keynote speech during the blessing and inaugural ceremonies of the pilot Smart Schools Program facility for Visayas held recently at the said school.

He adds, "The Smart Schools Program is part of the PLDT group’s modest efforts to help make computer technologies and the Internet accessible to teachers and students of public high schools. We hope that the Smart Schools facility here at STEC will help our teachers learn how to use computers and the Internet in teaching their students," thus, forever changing the path to attaining high school education in this small island at the tip of the Queen City of the South.

A community service initiative of Smart, the Smart Schools Program is meant to promote ICT in basic education through partnerships with public high schools, its officials and parents-teachers-community associations.

Specifically, it is aimed at providing public school teachers with Internet access through the PLDT group’s wide range of communications solutions, access to online content and teacher training.

"I believe that this project could be an effective instrument in enhancing our teachers’ competencies and improving the academic performance of our students," ecstatically avers STEC principal Cristino Baguio, as he welcomed everyone present in their school’s momentous event.

Under the Smart Schools Program, STEC will host a teachers’ learning resource center equipped with 10 networked computers and peripherals such as printers, scanner, and web camera. Given for free for a period of one year, the service will be connected to the Internet via Smart subsidiary Meridian Telekoms, Inc.’s wireless broadband solution, which makes it easier for Smart to deploy important elements of the project.

The Smart Schools facility is expected to serve STEC’s 14 elementary and high school teachers, as well as faculty from nearby public schools. The 14-teacher-and-334-student-strong STEC, established in 1994, is home to gifted students schooled in science and technology-based curriculum.

Prior to its Visayan debut, Smart recently opened its pilot school for Luzon at Malabaon National High School in Malabon City.

In her response to the school’s benefactors, division superintendent Dr. Serena Uy lauds the support given to the teachers of STEC and how great a factor it is towards improving the delivery of quality education in public schools – a venture that cannot be given solely to teachers and administrators.

Citing other such contributory factors to the deterioration of the quality of education in the country as shortage of teachers, classrooms, textbooks, desks, learning facilities and the needed upgrading of the teachers’ knowledge and skills, Dr. Uy makes everyone realize the fact that "our government cannot carry the whole burden of education due to budgetary constraints and limited resources."

"Thus, this day (the inaugural) gives us abundant reasons to be happy," she says.

Making this program of Smart unique is the support from the PLDT group’s wide range of connectivity solutions, according to Pangilinan. This monumental endeavor is implemented through the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), likewise chaired by Pangilinan and in which STEC is a partner school since 1998, with the support of the Department of Education (DepEd) and Microsoft Philippines, Inc.’s Partners In Learning (PIL) Program.

Access (Internet access), Content (access to online content and various hosting solutions), and Training (ICT trainings for teachers and stakeholders) or ACT sums up the three major components mentioned earlier on which the Smart Schools Program is anchored. At the same time, the program will also offer entrepreneurship training and workshops to help prepare the schools to sustainably run the facility in the future.

By partnering with Microsoft’s PIL, teacher trainings for STEC started in December 2004, with the first batch of participants finishing the Microsoft Office User Specialist training.

Among them were Mathematics teacher Joan Miasco and Physics/Math teacher Jeggar Apiag, who underwent sessions for five days in that period.

"We were taught about the basics regarding Microsoft XP, Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs," shares Miasco, "which I know will help us a lot in conducting our lessons and computing our students’ grades."

For the part of the students, Apiag deems the program as "very much of great help as they could speed up the conduct of research of the students and so meet all the projects they are required to submit." He adds, "Overall, these efforts of Smart shall serve as hands-on training for the students."

As for plans on expanding the program, Smart spokesperson and Public Affairs head Mon Isberto divulges, "Yes, we are expanding. While we are finishing off the pilot phase of Smart Schools, in which Cebu’s STEC is a part of, we are now looking for 10 additional schools for the regular phase."

Isberto further relates that Smart is targeting 40 more schools, bringing the total to 50, this year to become part of their company’s program.

"True, the Smart Schools Program is a welcome development in our city, an undertaking that should be emulated in other areas, as well," acknowledges Lapu-Lapu City First Lady and STEC Foundation treasurer Paz Radaza, who spoke in behalf of her husband, City Mayor Arturo Radaza, to close the program. "Our teachers will be greatly aided in their work of imparting knowledge and skills to our young students and they themselves will have the opportunity of being well informed and updated."

"We are very serious on pushing the technology of the use of the Internet to really lift at the end of the day the welfare of our people and make them competitive with the rest of the world," Pangilinan emphatically declares.