by Ms. Jan Tan Co-Chua

It was less than a year ago when we in the Library and AV Center were dreaming of a Learning Resource Center.  We imagined it to be a modern, fully-equipped center where instructional materials can be custom-produced for our faculty and where inter-active materials will be available for our students.  We thought modern technology should be a big part of that LRC.

Last September 23, 2008, that dream became real – and functional.  The LRC was inaugurated by the Mayor of San Juan, JV Ejercito in a simple ribbon-cutting ceremony.  After the Opening Prayer, Sr. Dina Ang, MIC gave her remarks on what is envisioned for the LRC.

The four-storey building houses the KP Learning Center in the basement, the Archives on the ground floor, the extension Library on the second floor, the Instructional Media Services office and a Multi-media Room on the third floor, and the Viewing Rooms on the top floor. 

Colorfully designed, the KP Learning Center is where the little ones can enjoy activities and be encouraged to start their learning adventure in ICA.   For many of our students, that adventure will take all of twelve years.  By then, they will have become a big part of ICA history.  All that history will now be preserved in the elegantly laid out Archives.  Hopefully, the Archives will allow alumnae visitors to rediscover their ICA roots and rekindle within them the ICA spirit.  Moving up one floor, we get to the extension Library which has, in a very short period since its opening, become a popular venue for our students to browse and research on Filipiniana and the Chinese Section.  Teachers, too, have frequented the new Teachers’ collection corner.  The all-new Multi-media room on the third floor is envisioned to allow our students to experience inter-active lessons as well as provide them with the equipment to do on-line research.  For our students, these activities may serve as an introduction to navigating in cyberspace where most of the world of the young take place now.  The Instructional Media Services Office on the same floor welcomes members of the faculty who need assistance in producing or enhancing their instructional materials such as powerpoint and audio-visual presentations.  And finally, on the fourth floor, the viewing rooms are expected to give the students pleasant viewing experiences to better understand their lessons should their teachers choose to make use of audio-visual presentations.

The LRC hopes to play a special role in supporting our students in their search for information.  We would like to think that through technology, we can bring our school community to be in touch with the wider world, to appreciate the goodness we have been bestowed but at the same time, to learn to be more responsible students and citizens and care more for each other.