San Pablo City is in Laguna province. It is about 80 kilometers south of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Its land is largely agricultural, with rice fields and coconut farms as well as orchards. The City of Seven Lakes, as it is fondly called, boasts of being the only city blessed with seven lakes plus breath-taking views of nature.

With a total land area of 21,400 hectares, a great portion of which is distributed to 80 Barrios and forested areas, our community is populated by an estimated 207,927 people (Census 2000). Progress and modernization have turned the City proper into a trade and merchandise center, the city serving as a center of travelers from the provinces of Quezon and Batangas to the provinces of Bicol region.

The lakes serve as rich fishing grounds that support the local marginal fishermen. Known also as a coconut village, there are manufacturing companies like Franklin Baker of the Philippines and San Pablo Manufacturing Company, which capitalize on coconuts as raw material.

San Pablo City offers a breath-taking panorama of its seven lakes from atop the majestic Mt. Banahaw and the bewitching San Cristobal Mountain. Rivers and creeks originating from the seven lakes dissect the community with swift flowing water all year round. Potable water supply from underground springs leaves no present demand for its lake water for human consumption.

Growing into popularity because of adequate facilities for big gatherings, the city now serves for athletic, academic purposes such as Regional Press Conferences, Southern Tagalog Regional Athletic meet and important national affairs.

With a perspective for tourism industry to thrive, the community hopefully will develop into a recreational center for Southern Luzon. We are very positive that with the growing awareness about our environment, we will be able to make it a reality.

Our Cyberfair Project is inspired by years of struggle to unite the people of our community to share a common goal—the restoration of Sampaloc Lake to its original beauty.

The project will expound on a group effort to give a picture of a community coming together to restore a paradise that is lost to the elements of decay and environmental degradation.

In the 1960s, Sampaloc Lake was a good fishing ground. It was also very clean that people can swim and frolic along the lakes.

In the 1970s, under Mayor Zacarias Ticzon, a circumferential road was constructed around Sampaloc Lake. Joggers and promenaders can go around the lake. The road was well-lighted and well-maintained and tourists can view the beauty of the lake from Doña Leonila Park, which is adjacent to the lake.

However, floating restaurants were constructed in the lake and soon there was proliferation of fish pens, resulting in the pollution of the waters. Also, houses in the lake obstructed the view of the waters.

When fish kills occurred several times, concerned citizens made a concerted effort of talking with the city government on how the original Sampaloc Lake beauty can be restored. It gathered momentum when groups of concerned citizens made a symbolic “Yakap sa Lawa” where people stood abreast and held hands to encompass the 3 kilometers road around Sampaloc Lake.

From then on, San Pableños began to contribute their efforts and resources to restore the Sampaloc Lake of long ago. In coordination with the city government, the non-government organizations initiated the beautification of the lake surroundings and the dismantling of unsightly structures in the lake waters. This project is all about the united action of different sectors of our community in the preservation of one of the pride of the City of San Pablo.

1. Percentage of students using the Internet at home - About 20 % of our student population have Internet access at home.

2. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classrooms - Four of our eight classrooms have Computers connected to the Internet for teaching purposes. The school has 30 computers with Internet access in the school's computer laboratory.

3. Connection speed used in the classroom - 256 kbps

4. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet - Since the school began its operation in SY 1996-1997, that is, seven years ago, we already have access to the Internet.

5. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access Our school's computer connections is served by MSC.net (www.msc.net.ph), which is owned by a sister company, MSC Communications Technologies, Inc. The school has its own server.

In the first meeting of our Cyberfair team sometime in October, plans were drawn, work teams were formed, tasks were specified, meetings were set and deadlines were charted.

The varied activities involved the whole MSC student body as interviews were conducted, lecturettes were given, symposiums were held, research works organized. Heritage trails around the seven lakes were scheduled. Water sampling and classification, pollution study documentation, Internets, emails were activated.

It was several months of hard toil of meeting people from all walks of life, visiting relocation sites for evicted lake dwellers, for follow-up and countless group discussions.

Finally with all task accomplished, important data gathered and synthesized, contacts accomplished, exhibits of the seven lakes, with its many faces and features successfully accomplished, the task of web page design began.

The process of documenting the issues about Sampaloc Lake was tedious. The students had to set appointments with government offices and private individuals for the interviews. Sometimes, data sources are insufficient.

With the school’s digital camera, photography was made easy to upload in the homepage. During the one hour trek around the lake for interviews and research, it rained when the students were halfway and there is no turning back. Lake dwellers would close their doors to the interviewers or dogs ran after them.

Since the students were asked to pick up garbage while going around the lake, it would be heavy carrying the load back. They rented bikes to carry the trash bags and thus combined fun with the task in hand.

Meeting deadlines is always difficult especially with the activities during the Christmas and Fiesta season. Collation of the content of the project entry was always a problem. But with the determination to join the Cyberfair, everything was overcome and the students learned much from the experience.

God gave us a beautiful world to live in. It is us who should be the caretakers of our environment. Modernization need not destroy the beauty of our natural resources. With everybody working together, putting in whatever he is able to share, we will be able to preserve these God-given gifts for the present and the future generations to enjoy, like what the people of San Pablo City are doing in the united effort to bring back the beauty of Sampaloc Lake.

The activities adhere to educational curriculum requirements and programs. Experiential learning, learning with relevance, integration, theme teaching and learning - all comprise learning modes that benefited the students.

Organizing research work, conducting interviews, community interaction, holding symposium, lecturettes, and community service are difficult tasks that were successfully carried out. Accomplishment the project taught us worthwhile values such as responsibility and accountability for assigned tasks, command responsibility for leaders, sharing and teamwork. All these compensated the difficulties and obstacles encountered by the team members.

The Cyberfair Project served as a proper channel for us to follow the required curriculum guidelines as we explored, investigated, and observed. It developed skills that are better learned in the process such as critical thinking skills, as we analyzed, synthesized and evaluated data gathered. Communication skills was also highly developed as we interact with different sectors of society, from the very learned ones to the common people of the community.

We have learned the essence of working together to achieve our goals and to answer the challenges of the time.

Under the auspices of community service we have grown more nationalistic. It gives us a sense of integrity as we give commitments for the protection of our environment.

The use of technology in our project, the access to the Internet to work with peer groups all over the world, to apply creativity in making the web page all made us technically advanced than others who were not given the same opportunity.

All these gave us better appreciation for our educational system for its efforts to fit it to the needs of the present generation… to the organizers of the Cyberfair Competition that serves as proper channel whereby we can gauge and measure our effectiveness as global citizens of the 21st century.