During our blogging and podcasting workshop last week I was surprised to learn that about a 3rd of those who attended the 2-day activity didn’t even have an email account. The hands-on session required them to create their own blogs on Blogger and signing up requires an email account for activation.
So, we had to have them signed up for an email account first. That made things a little different from my perspective. Here I am trying to teach these college kids the power of blogging only to find out they haven’t been using the Internet that much. To me, having an active email account is the rite to passage to the world wide web.
This reminds us that only a tiny fraction of Filipinos have access to the internet. I guess the bigger challenge is for all Philippine schools from primary to tertiary have regular access to the internet and encourage *every* students to be familiar with it and use it. Only then can we make them see the benefits of being online and help close the gap of the ever-growing digital divide.
Worry about internet access, most people don’t even have access to a telephone! There are no telephone wires more that 1 kilometer from towns. I live betwen Dasol and Infanta Pangasinan, there are no phone lines within 6 or 8 kilometers therefore no dialup internet. Smart Bro is a joke, you must be within 1 kilometer of a specially equipped Smart cellphone tower and have a special antenna to get it and then it costs more than PhP 1,000 per month. I have PLDT WeRoam and it costs more than PhP 10,000 to start and more than PhP 1,ooo per month.
If schools have no phone lines, they have no internet.
It will cost a lot of money to setup the Brgy wifi and there just are not enough customers. Most people here don’t have any use for the internet, they can’t even understand an ATM card and they don’t have PhP 30,000 for a computer plus they don’t have electricity.
You guys must all live in Manila and never travel out to the real Philippines.
Phil