Smart helps out 10 lucky schools in remote areas with their school in a bag program. Basically, the bag contains a solar panel for electricity, a laptop, a tablet, a mobile phone, a pocket WiFi with starter load, LED TV, and learning modules which students can use for learning.
Now, even location will not be a hindrance for Filipino children to learn more about the digital world.
“For so long, the Philippines has been divided by geography. This makes access to information extremely hard. Smart wants to unite the islands through internet connectivity. We go to schools in mountains, on isolated islands, places where there is no electricity, to bring School-in-a-Bag,” said Darwin Flores, Smart vice-president for community partnerships.
Schools in remote areas from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao like Rawang Elemetary School will receive School-in-a-Bag units from Smart this year, along with 9 others in the the country.
A Batibot mobile application pre-installed in the tablet. Developed by Smart in partnership with the Community of Learners Foundation and OrangeFix, this is the first learning app in Filipino that is aligned with the national kindergarten curriculum of the Department of Education. The Batibot app features fun games that help children in kindergarten up to Grade 3 learn basic concepts like matching, sorting, and grouping. Through the app, they are shown how to identify shapes, colors, numbers, the alphabet, and letter sounds. The children can also practice tracing letters with the proper strokes.
If you or anyone would like to also help and support this initiative, you can email to TechnoCart@smart.com.ph.. Each Set up costs P100,000.
