October 15, 2021
by Jeremiah Agonia
In the last week of September, the Asian International School of Aeronautics and Technology held its 3rd POWWOW week since the online learning set-up started. It has been part of the school calendar to allocate an academic break for their constituents. The official publication of the event’s opening was made through a Facebook post with an image captioned “Anong “break” ang worth it?”. Together with the announcement were the different webinar sessions that the young aviators could join. The week-long rest period started from September 27 to October 1, which was a “cuties” granted for the students as the post reached 21 shares and 24 reactions.
On September 28 at 1 in the afternoon, the first webinar session of the POWWOW week began. The Get-To-Know activity was facilitated by various administrators, faculty, and staff from different departments. Students were randomly grouped and assigned to different facilitators to get to know others in connection to the webinar’s objective. With Dr. Gerlieta Ruiz’s group, the webinar started with the question “What made you smile today?” to commence the first part of the activity which is the Kumustahan. As time goes through, the atmosphere has become safer for the students to share their sentiments. Various games with prizes were also played to enhance the mood and distress everyone. For the last part of the session, an open discussion towards academics, emotional, mental, and spiritual issues were tackled, engaging each student.
The second webinar entitled “Techniques and Tools on how to make videos” began at 10 in the morning of September 29. Atty. Myra Ann Wee-Toe Hio, the School President, delivered her welcome remarks emphasizing that everyone must enjoy the week. Before the main topic of the webinar, the students played the first part of the ice breaker activities, where 15 brand new headsets were set as prizes. After the game, Ms. Kelly Serenio, the main speaker, presented the webinar’s topic outline covering content creation, shooting, and editing. In the content creation part, several tips on how to summarize articles from sources were given out by the speaker. Additionally, a sample audio-video script was also presented by Ms. Kelly while discussing its importance in the shooting phase of a video. Lastly, the efficient way of using the Canva and Adobe Premier was also covered in the webinar, where the participants openly shared their experiences with the said applications.
Moreover, the last session of the webinar series held last September 30 was dedicated to all staff of the institution in which they were divided into three groups categorized as aviation, mixed faculty, and admin. Several online competitions and games were launched, starting with the talent show. The entry of Mr. Arbe Jay Polancos, a representative of the mixed faculty, bagged the championship title with his full band cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together.” The mixed faculty also won the quiz bee competition, making them the overall champion of this year’s staff POWWOW week.
For the remaining days, the staff and students are given the opportunity to spend time for themselves. There were no academic activities or requirements given to maximize the POWWOW week. Certainly, the event was a success as many students appreciated the appropriate moment to take a break, relax and prepare plans for the 2nd half of the semester.