Still in Seoul and finished the most hectic lecture day. I started this morning with a lecture on Accepting Online Payments. The most interesting part of the lecture is when I get to demonstrate how I actually accept payment in my website. Furthermore, when the students get to try it themselves.

This is where it is great to have a supporter like YesPayments.com who provides us with the facility for my class go through the process of e-mail billing.

Tomorrow is a big day as the class gears up for their final presentation and graduation.

On August 4, 2005, from 9 am to 12 noon at the UP College of Law, UP-ISP will be holding an iBlog Mini entitled: “Blogging Gloriagate” as part of iBlog’s discussion series that intends to document the impact of blogging in Philippine society.

About the forum

The Philippine blogging scene was taken by storm as the Gloriagate scandal erupted. Freedom of expression to vent issues and share perspectives paved the way for alternative sources of information.

Even as government issued a ban on media outfits from playing the Gloriagate tape, PCIJ fearlessly posted it online and gave access to thousands of Internet users. Media blogs like Sun.Star offered consolidated articles through blog that allowed its worldwide Filipino readers to give a reaction to the issue at hand. News Reporter Jove Francisco tags readers along, through his blog, in his coverage of the issue. Columnists such as Manuel L. Quezon III and Connie Veneracion offered insightful analysis as well. These organizations and personalities have become truly influential in the blogosphere today.

Agenda:

8:30 - 9:00 Registration / Morning Snacks
9:00 - 9:30 Opening remarks; Bloggers introduction
9:30 - 10:00 Introduction to Blogging Gloriagate (Atty. JJ Disini)
10:00 - 10:30 Blogging Gloriagate: The PCIJ Experience
10:30 - 11:00 Blogging Gloriagate: A Personal Journey (Manuel L. Quezon III)
11:00 - 11:30 Open Forum
11:30 Closing

Snacks and unlimited coffee will be served. As seats are very limited, you are requested to register ahead.

I arrived yesterday at Seoul, Korea to teach at the APEC E-Business Training for Women SMEs. This is my 3rd year in being part of the trainer team for this program and always looked forward to it, year after year.

Today, I’ll be giving my students an overview about E-Community. Afterwards, they will start working on their respective e-community projects at APWEBIZ portal.

To showcase a sample on how the portal works, students may be able to check the ones I created for the Women in Web, Wireless, and Outsourcing (W3O) and Business Mentoring.

The week-long training is also documented in the website where photos and hand-outs are uploaded.

Expect more updates this week!

While checking out the latest DigitalFilipino articles being linked through Google, I encountered this media release from PhilRice. They happened to attend my 2-day E-Learning Workshop last May. Special thanks to PhilRice for making this media release. It is very much appreciated.

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News story

PhilRice staff gets e-commerce training

by Stoix Nebin S. Pascua, 10 June 2005

E-commerce. E-learning. E-payment. These were the "e" terms the staff of the Information and Communication Technology Division (ICTD) encountered during the "Build Your Own E-Learning Workshop Online" program, an e-commerce workshop which focuses on e-learning. Consolacion Diaz and Julie Lopez of the ICTD attended the said workshop at the University of the Philippines Information Technology Training Center, Diliman, Quezon City, May 2-3 this year. Janette Toral, founder of the Philippine Internet Commerce Society and site-owner of www.digitalfilipino.com, served as lecturer of the workshop.

Highlights of the workshop include setting-up and marketing an e-learning program, and accepting payments online. Topics such as introduction to ICT in education; trends, challenges, and best practices of ICT education; and introduction to e-learning were also discussed. E-commerce is the exchange of information or transactions using any form of communication.

"We want to learn the concept of e-payment and how to market online," Lopez and Diaz emphasized during an interview. E-payment is only a piece of a bigger picture of e-commerce. Simply, e-payment is buying and paying goods or services electronically. Lopez added that this knowledge would be advantageous since part of the program of the Open Academy is e-commerce in which e-business will be integrated into the system.

Through the e-business, extension workers and farmers could log-on to the Pinoy Farmers’ Internet portal and buy a product and pay it through the web using a credit card. Likewise, target clienteles could avail and register certification courses and degree programs through the e-learning section of the Pinoy Farmers’ Internet.

However, the major concerns of Diaz and Lopez regarding e-payment are the stakeholders’ access to the Internet and ownership of a credit card. Only a few extension workers and farmers own a credit card and have access to the Internet.

Aside from e-payment, Diaz and Lopez also undertook other activities. "We have to download seatworks from the web, answer it, and then upload it in the Internet so that other participants could rate our outputs," Diaz said. They also surfed websites that offer e-business services. "We tried the step-by-step procedure in purchasing a product online," Lopez added.

Diaz and Lopez also accessed e-learning and online training websites to fully appreciate the information that are abundantly found in the Internet. Websites like www.moodle.org and www.cbcpworld.com/moodle are examples of on-line learning sites. On the other hand, websites such as www.e-commercephilippines.com, www.b2bpricenow.com, and www.ewritersplace.com are some of the sites that offer products and services to the public.

For their final output for the workshop, they prepared an e-commerce project plan in which they mapped out all the project components and strategies of an e-commerce website.

Lopez said that the "e-commerce workshop is a useful guide in establishing an e-commerce website." Diaz further emphasized that "e-learning is an education for people who don’t have the time to go out and attend a regular classroom" and more importantly, "it should be for the benefit of the farmers."