A sad news was emailed to me by my former student. Most of us heard the news about a plane gone missing over Spratlly Islands. On board the missing plane were Capt. Gavino Mercado Jr and Capt. Bonifacio Soriano III. Until now the plane and its crew remained missing.

I was informed that Capt. Gavino Mercado Jr. was a 1992 graduate of Davao City National High School. I went on to confirm this by browsing all 1992 records. True to it, he is enrolled in Datu Bago class. We call on all the city highians to pray for Capt. Gavino Mercado Jr. and his family. We believe in the power of prayers!

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I have made some major changes in DCNHS web. This is part of the series of website face lift that I am going to implement this year. The first part was done several weeks ago when I changed the website's overall look. As a continuation, the following changes were implemented today.

1. Changing the URL format.  From the default SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URLs, I have installed a more advance component that converts our website's url into a more search engine friendly format.  The URL is now easier to understand since it now uses the category name and section to identify the contents of the URL's page.
   
   
2. Installation of Calendar. Organizing events and activities are now easier since we have installed a calendar.  Modules are also available for this component. This is accessible through the Activities link in the main menu.
   
   
3. Image Gallery.  The image gallery is now available from the main menu.  We will be posting images soon.

These are the major changes we've made so far.  More to come soon.

Please do check my new Lyric site. 

Last September 21 & 22 was the 7th Division Student Technologists and Entrepreneurs of the Philippines (STEP) Conference and Skills competition. A week later, I received an e-mail from my former student with an attached link which then brought me to a blogger's site. Reading its contents surprised me that it was a reaction/comment of a defeated ICT Webpage coach from Maa NHS.

Nasty words were written. Tsk! tsk! tsk!... accusing the event's judges of somekinda LM ("lutong makaw"). Well, let me tell you this Mr. SOUR LOSER COACH of Maa NHS, first of all, the Division Officers and Staff requested our school the use of the computer rooms; second, the Event Coordinators were not from DCNHS; and lastly, the invited judges were from prestigious and respected schools of STI, Interface College and the event administrator himself.

Our school and ICT staff had no hand whatsoever in the conduct of the even, except in assisting - in case of technical problems. Now Mr SOUR LOSER COACH, as the DCNHS ICT Coodinator, I cannot let you go maligning the integrity of our school. I invited my online Webpage Specialists from Manila, Legaspi, Cebu and Davao to view your participant's output. We reviewed all the created webpages and made up these remarks:

1. Your entry does have a good layout (index) with roll-over images;
2. Your index page does not have hperlinks to the main step activities as your participant indicated and no pages for activities at all;
3. Your participant placed a link on a picture which brought us to a website of Davao Oriental;
4. Your Read More does not have a link;
5. Your More Activities again moved us to the Davao Oriental website;
6. Your Contact Us linked us to a Friendster account with a pornographic video below;
7. Your Portfolio linked us to a website of your participant's sibling (I believe); and
8. To sum it all, your participant only created an index or a main page.

My golly! The contest clearly states to construct a homepage for the 7th Division STEP Skills Development and Competition. It also states to highlight and showcase the different skills to be competed and give short descriptions to such skills. You see Mr. Sour Loser Coach of Maa NHS, the contest guidelines never stated not to use frames. The outputs were based on the completeness of the required homepage. To score your work, it should have been 5th and not 2nd. Sta. Ana NHS should have been the 2nd best.

As for your public (online) remarks, going public is not bad at all - that's your free expressed opinion. What seems to be wrong was your UNPROFESSIONAL behavior - as a coach, a teacher, and a government employee. You seem to forget the word ACCOUNTABILITY. You could have filed a protest right after the declaration of winners, or ask the judges, or go to the grievance committee instead. You are writing against the credibility of STEP and DepEd! My Gosh! why pick our school? Pick your nose instead hehehe...

I think this Mr. SOUR LOSER COACH of Maa NHS should publicly apologize to the STEP Officials, the event judges, and to the DCNHS administration.

Now, if you think you have no guts to apologize, I challenge you Mr. SOUR LOSER COACH of Maa NHS for a one-on-one webpage design (open competition)!

visit this link:

http://nickilo.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/ma-a-nhs-soliver
-mazo-won-2nd-place-in-step-competition/

For the teachers, engineers, nurses and other professionals out there? How did you know you passed your licensure examination? Where did you first see your result? Who told you?

If I'd ask my mom, my dad or any professional adult I know these questions, they might give 'Newspaper' as an answer. The national papers are the one which first get information about released results coming from the Professional Regulation Commission. So most likely, during those times, newspapers and periodicals are the fastest mediums in publishing examination results nationwide.

But today, we have lots of mediums which offer fast, reliable and accurate way to deliver exam results to the anticipating public. We have the world wide web, e-mail, and sms. A lot more if we would go deeper to the existing technologies in information and communication.

Let's take www.prcboardexamresults.com . This website, which was launched a couple of days ago, offers three basic services to alert users of the much anticipated Licensure Examination for Teachers August 2007 Results. They offer subscriptions through e-mail , through RSS feeds and through SMS . All of these services are free. Once the results get published, these users are automatically informed through their subscription channel.

Why would you wait for tomorrow's newpaper issue if you can get results right away?