me and my credit card

I think that the Philippine call center industry is beneficial to a lot of Filipinos because of the numerous skills and values it equips individuals with. True, the working hours are harsh and exhausting. However, I believe that the countless of perks it gives people outweigh the various disadvantages it presents.


Philippine call center


First of all, call center training is a great way to hone and improve your English communication skills. Come on, admit it. This is a fabulous advantage for any person. We may claim that the Philippines is the best English-speaking country in Asia, but the reality is, a lot of us lack the ease and the effortlessness of conversational English. The best way to get ahead in any career is to possess a commanding presence and an impressive proficiency and mastery of the spoken and written forms of this language. So think twice before you snigger at the “fake” or “trying hard” accents of call center agents. They actually have an advantage over you.

Second, the financial compensation is better than most Filipino jobs out there. I’ve met a lot of people with impressive educational backgrounds and awe-inspiring professions. But if you ask them what their salaries are, you’d be surprised to find out that majority of them make less than Php 17,000.00 every month. Call centers compensate their agents well mainly because of the grueling shifting schedules. Aside from your usual benefits, a good call center agent makes around Php 21-25,000.00 every month. Unfair? It may seem that way for people who spent four years of their lives studying for a noble profession. But that’s how the cookie crumbles.

Third, the speed by which agents move up the career ladder is extremely fast! In other jobs, it may take you more than three years to get a good promotion. In the BPO industry, a lot of managers and supervisors are in their early twenties. What does this imply? This means that working in a Philippine call center is not just some backend job. You have opportunities to develop as a professional and can actually work on a career path.

I’ve browsed through countless of elearning development tools, software and trends, but nothing impressed or excited me more than Second Life’s immersive, 3D virtual world. I only learned about this today, when the Kapp Notes blog (karlkapp.blogspot.com) talked about the Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education Conference, which was held in the abovementioned environment.

The organizers used Second Life to hold an event in the virtual world where they presented a lot of interesting topics and discussions. It provided attendees with an experience of a traditional conference, but this time, they got to enjoy it in the comfort of their homes.

When I was looking at the captured scenes from the 3D conference, I immediately thought of the Sims game. The attendees were in the form of avatars that were designed to look like real people. They got to “walk” around the world and interact with different individuals and “listen” to discussions and participate in various learning activities. It was an extremely beneficial method of delivering information because the people were immersed in what the Kapp Notes blogger called an “effectively moving environment”.


e learning development tools

I think that no matter what other people may think 3D is possibly the real future of elearning development. A lot of people are already familiar with such a setup, considering that role playing video games are extremely popular and appeal to a wide demographic. Young or old, a virtual classroom in 3D is very interesting. Moreover, the design Second Life avatars, partially, if not fully compensates for electronic learning’s infamous missing “human element”.

I believe that if used effectively, elearning courses can become even more accessible and engaging with Second Life’s 3D world, which is the ultimate goal of the instructional designers of today. It is the next logical step towards progress, especially for an industry that is solely dependent on technological advancements and the evolving needs and interests of society.