As part of the curriculum, the 5th and 4th year Mechanical Engineering students are expected to initiate an Educational tour on a specified destination and be out of school for almost a week. We the fifth year mechanical engineering students and few electrical and electronics engineering students were out of town and been in Manila for 4 days and a day in Laguna.
We travel to Manila. We arrived at UNEP campus by 4 in the afternoon and straighten out the bus provided by the 111 tours and travel. We had our dinner in Kakanon Bikolnon in Naga City An eat-all-you-can buffet restaurant. After that, we travel immediately to Manila.We headed to Manila last January 26th, 2014, and arrived there the 27th of January in Paco Manila.
We were accommodated by the Garden Plaza Hotel and Suite. On the same day, we had our first visit in MAKBAN Geothermal power plant located at Los Baños, Laguna we manage to know and see the instruments and devices that the company is utilizing for gathering data. We had our lunch in Mang Inasal by mid noon then headed to Fuji-Haya in Quezon City. We had discussions there about electronics and tour on the facilities.
We used the leisure time in Duty Free malls to do some shopping then back to accommodation.January 28th 2014 we departed to Clark, Pampanga to visit Philippine academy for aviation training (PAAT), PAAT is a joint venture Airbus A320 type-rating and recurrency training center of Cebu Pacific and CAE. We departed past 10 am headed straight to Subic international airport. Lunch is Serve eat-all-you-can at Rico Restaurant. We finish early earlier than we expected, so we again used the time to take a mall trip. Then back to accommodation by 7 pm to have our dinner.
January 29th 2014 we had head our way next to MERALCO Foundation Institute (MFI), Pasig City. I pretty much enjoyed all the things about this company especially the machines. It’s amazing how the inside looks so good despite the very unwelcoming front gates, there were tons of cool gadgets and testing facilities, innovations and newly designed crafts made by students and professionals. We were given the chance first to take a look of those stuffs before ending up in a room for a discussion and a demonstration.The student and professor of the MFI show cased their works. I was given the chance to control one of the robots they have and the one got will be entered on an international competition soon in Malaysia.
Later on, we traveled to Sta. Rosa Laguna to visit BAYANTEL but I decided not to come i used the time to sleep. TOYOTA, the last company that we are supposed to visit did not give an approval for our visit so we used the time to go shopping again. Then back to accommodation by 7 pm to have our dinner.
January 30th 2014, the last whole day in Manila. Before we leave we check out of the hotel. We visited the heart of Makati the Makati City Hall C3 (Command Control Center). We saw many monitors and personnel monitoring the traffic and activity inside Makati. We had our lunch in their canteen and after that we took our leave straight to Mall of Asia (MOA), we spent half day to do shopping.
We enjoyed our time there, had bonding with each other, we played, took pictures, drink, and chatted with each other mostly about the tour. By 7 in the evening we travelled back home.January 31st 2014 is the day we head back to Bicol. We made a stop to eat our breakfast by 6 am then continue our travel. By 7 am, we are in already in Naga City and hours later on we are back in UNEP campus that officially ended our tour.
Objectives of the Tour 1. Reinforcement - The tour can reinforce or support what a teacher has been instructing in class about a subject and help students understand a topic better.2. Engagement- Teachers turn tours into mobile classrooms, and engage students to collect data then assigning a project based on what they learned during the duration of the tour.
3. Socialization- Taking students into a new environment give them the experience of traveling in a group and teach them to socialize and to be respectful of the locations they visit. 4. New Insights- The tour can give new insights of the things outside the school which can raise encouragements. 5.
Bonding -They may be able to connect on more of a personal level without the structure of the normal school days. Students may be able to spend much of the trip day in small groups, observing, chatting and learning about each other, and it will form a new bond among the students. 6. Real-world experience - Students practice their skills and critical thinking abilities outside of the controlled class setting. Being about able to ask experts about their particular area of study on the spot requires thinking. He is able to learn real-world lessons.
7. Fun - No matter how much the students learn during a tour, their favorite memories may be based on their enjoyment of the day. Students will have fun with their friends and they also may return to the classroom with a renewed focus on their schoolwork.Significance of the Tour The tour provided valuable educational opportunities away from the classroom, without using textbooks and other used in normal school setting. Students on educational tours can often learn while having fun in a more informal environment. Part of how students benefit from educational tours is by gaining new perspective on the world.
This is especially true for more extensive educational tours or trips where students travel farther away from home. By coming into direct contact with a different environment or even a new culture, students can better understand their place in the community and develop openness to differences in others.Discussion I gained understanding to a lot of things, some are new stuffs for me and some are not. Mostly, what I have learned are not about the things the company are being particular of, actually, it’s about how Mechanical engineer current trend and the impact it causes in the National Capital Region and on other places. In addition, I also realized that we should be more particular in what we are doing right now to face such challenge.
How job mismatch happens that causes unemployment and this caught my attention. I’m surprised that there are such certifications and trainings that can help to determine the right job for someone and fill the job mismatch that is happening between the academe and industry sector. It was mentioned that grades and school you’ve come from is not a big deal anymore whether you’ll be accepted on a company but rather it’s all about the skill you got and the certifications to prove it.Conclusion By making the tour and having those companies visited actually planted the reality of life to us. It made us realized what to do, how to do things, why we should do, when to do thing accordingly, most common questions were answered.
The exposure and engagement we had will greatly affect our attitude towards the movement on the industry today.
