Tertiary education has been bombarded with the hype about information technology (IT) since it is believed to be a cure for certain problems in education. Creed (1996), referring to that technology as electronic communication, noted its potential to help educators extend and enhance the activities that transpire in the classroom. Such technology is already available to faculty and students and it does not even demand any complexities to use.

 Availability of this technology is highlighted by the result of a survey on the Filipino youth as an interactive generation conducted by McCann-Erickson, Phils last year. The survey noted the easy access to the virtual/digital world with the proliferation of Internet and cyber cafes. These places have become hang out places for the youth. Although the survey found that there is a drop on time spent on studying and that only a few enjoy reading, the youth seem "to be getting more intelligent." This is attributed to the interactive media – Internet, chat rooms, interactive games that the youth enjoy.

 All these interactive media, based on the survey, seem to improve IQ levels since the patterns used like spatial relationships and interactive dynamics are similar to IQ tests and somehow train the mind. Another factor pointed out by McCann-Erickson is that the more informal ways of learning have increased as against the traditional ways and that there has been changes in the teaching of some schools to adopt this trend but unfortunately, not fast enough and not to the degree that it should.

 The McCann-Erickson survey appeared to be a precursor. A conference and exhibition on instructional technology dubbed E-ducation Tech 2001held in August, 2001 further emphasized the role of information technology in education through its theme: IT and Education, Optimized Learning Through Instructional Technology. Pres. Gloria Arroyo in her message for the conference conveyed that current administration’s recognition of social empowerment as a paramount tool for national development relies primarily on quality education where "global integration has given much emphasis on making information technology an indispensable aspect of learning". She also emphasized the urgency and need to call on both public and private learning institutions to establish, maintain and enhance their interactive educational programs and IT-based teaching materials. It is therefore the hope of this author to contribute to this urgent need. This article presents a synthesis of concerns relevant to the use of IT in enhancement of classroom learning. It would somehow help educators in designing IT-based teaching methodologies and learning materials.

 There is a growing need to link education and information technology to lead our workforce towards the doorsill of global technological competence; specifically to incorporate IT in the educational growth of every Filipino. Such growth shall be evident through efforts that would deal with information on what and how IT is linked with the teaching of specific areas like English in the classroom. Coming from a race that is proficient in two languages, Filipino students have the advantage over other Asian and Pacific counterparts who have adopted a more specific and extensive IT Policies. Moreover, with a reputation of having excellent facility of the English language, the Filipinos cannot afford to be left behind. It is but fitting that educators move to strengthen the tertiary English language programs through IT. The adoption of such programs, however, involves a lot of technical and administrative concerns. Three major means of IT-based classroom learning, the academic club, the homepage, and e-mails are discussed to serve as springboards.

 Various Filipino teachers of English personally known by this author have actually felt the need to create IT-based learning. One wrote: "I felt that it’s high time for me to make one of my own which could be related and could be used to aid my students in their internet research about the literature course I teach…as a reservoir of accessible useful links in intensifying student’s understanding and appreciation of the many intangible treasures learned from the study of literature ." Ortiz (2001) sees the Internet as a means of further enhancement of students’ learning. Inspired by various scholarly designed web sites, he created an on-line academic club called "Sir Wendell’s Pool". The club was used by students to e-mail reaction reports. Thus, it reduced the bulk of paperwork Ortiz normally has to carry home. In addition, he also observed that his students could chat and clarify issues that were otherwise taken for granted in the regular classroom setting. "Sir Wendell’s Pool" also had some connections to games, general student interests from romance to friendship, and some "cool" sites where students could easily relate to. After five months, the club site now boasts of three thousand and thirty eight (3038) page views or the number of frequency to which the club has been visited or accessed. This is just one of the many aspects that an educator may draw from the use of IT. The continuous documentation of efforts in linking IT- based teaching in the classroom provides perspectives on various issues pertinent to the use of IT in classroom teaching.

 Guevarra, a philosophy professor at DLSU-Manila, also cited one advantage of creating an e-group among students in a particular subject. He encouraged them to e-mail their comments on certain assigned readings. The class, however, meet at least once a week only to conclude a certain topic that was discussed by the e-group. Guevarra also noted that students through e-mail engaged in a creative activity that is writing. Since there is a close link between thinking and writing, students are able to think clearly as his writing skills improve. Moreover, students have more time to reflect and thus come up with better ideas.

 Another device that may be used to supplement the more traditional means of education is the use of a home page. An example is the page on ENGL122 or essay and essay writing created by this author. Notes and assignments were initially uploaded to this page. So basically, the home page served as a virtual syllabus and textbook. Since the page has links to various web sites devoted to famous essayists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Francis Bacon and Helen Keller (www.sirbacon.com, www.rwe.org, www.helenkeller.org/national) and others like www.members.aol.com/livingstn/essay, www.essaywriters.com, www.essaypunch.com, www.powa.org, it has directed students of essay and essay writing to other sources of information pertinent to prewriting activities, interactive online essay writing, parts of the essay and report writing. ENGL122 home page has also provided students accessibility to notes. Students easily refer to the notes since they are always there in the Internet. The creation of a home page, however, requires technical expertise. There are, however, some sites where one could create a home page for free. In the case of ENGL122, the author studied the basics of web page design using a software called Dream Weaver with the assistance of a competent web designer. Consultation with the designer was so rigid. It was not difficult for the author to upload the page in the Internet since DLSU-Dasmariñas has its own web site, technicians and an office called Information Technology Center (ITC) which oversees information technology development. The home page was uploaded under e-class (electronic class) hence the URL address: http://www.dasma.dlsu.edu.ph/eclass/engl122.

 As expected in any fresh undertaking, the use of the newly constructed home page has several birth pains. One is difficulty of access to DLSU-D’s web site. According to users of the page, there are times that downloading of notes or information takes a lot of time since connection is slow and sometimes they could not access the site outside of the campus. Another is the unavailability of slots in computer laboratory. Students who want to access the site have to wait for the class to end. Solutions to these problems are readily available since they are purely technical. The ITC has continuously upgraded its facilities. As a matter of fact each student is now given an account via My.DLSU-D.

 Free electronic mail accounts available from yahoo.com, hotmail.com and others may be an excellent way of getting students submit their assigned tasks or discuss topics like what Guevarra did. In the case of ENGL122, the only problem encountered is on the part of the teacher. Since the class regularly meets twice a week and since it is a class consisting of 45 students, checking of assigned tasks appeared to be difficult. The author, to partly solve the problem, required students to submit via e-mail, 5-sentence paragraph reactions only. The problem is confounded by a required task on the teacher to reply via e-mail too. Comments addressed to students were made simple and clear. Errors in grammar may not be pointed out in detail since editing using symbols is not possible when one uses e-mail. So the author has to use a comment like "please take note of the word or expression I have enclosed in quotation marks" either to check spelling or grammar. On the part of the students, one complaint was that they have difficulty sending and composing their mails because of their schedule. As a solution, students were given a maximum of one week to submit their work. Deadline of submission was set every Saturday. Since ENGL122 is not a full blown on-line class, other written assignments were still required.

 The need to provide activities as substitute for seat works in the classroom is a must to assure learning. Teachers using online learning will now find it less difficult to come up with Internet-based activities with the use of downloadable authoring tool like Hot Potatoes. With such tools, teachers may compose exercises, tests and even games online without the fear of students being able to cheat since the score recorded is only that of the first try of a student. These IT-based activities may then be linked with the home page. Other authoring tools available through the Internet are Interactive Exercise Makers, eToolKit, Webauthor, QuizStar and EasyTOnline Subject. Teachers, however, must take pains in studying the use of such tools through online tutorial lessons.

 Creating an on-line academic club, the use of e-mail and the home page may serve as excellent start for integrating IT in classroom teaching. To embark in such a move involves extra effort and certain difficulties that will always have something to do with technical and administrative concerns.

 Integrating IT in classroom teaching involves a certain degree of competence on information technology. For schools where the awareness on the advantages IT brings to education is most evident, and where technology hardware has been set up, competence will not pose as a problem. Schools like DLSU-Dasmariñas and DLSU-Manila have units that handle faculty and staff training on computer literacy. Educators who wish to come up with an IT complemented classroom will find it beneficial and practical to work with a web designer, programmer or technician along the planning stages. The more dynamic ones may find studying the basics of web design through tutorial training the use of software like Dream Weaver, an excellent learning experience. The more practical ones may find it easier to visit and use certain sites like www.netscape.com/home/how-to-create-web-services.html, http://www.net-language.de and http://www.ecollege.com/solutions/Teaching_Tool.html/ to create online supplements for traditional classes. The options are so varied that all an educator needs is to surf the net and ask the assistance of an IT practitioner.

 Administration of an IT- complemented classroom requires planning and a lot of feed back monitoring. A teacher needs to identify first how the Internet will best serve his learners. If he is to create a home page, then he should decide what it should do to learners. Will the home page serve as a repository of information or as pure links to other relevant information? Or will there just be a need for a venue for discussion (as in the case of discussion groups, clubs, and rooms)? So that those who do not participate in the traditional classroom will have the chance to share a piece of their mind. Or will there just be the need to provide activities or exercises online? Or simply use e-mails to submit projects? Now this is presuming that the learners’ environment is one of an academe that has already setup technology hardware and cybernooks in the library or that learners themselves have convenient access to the Internet either at home or anywhere else outside the campus.

 Schedule is another important concern. An educator may not expect an immediate excellent student output if the class is traditionally scheduled. It would be wise to schedule online deadlines weekly or request for a holding of activity outside of the classroom from the administration at least every other week. One thing that educators should be careful of is the bulk of assignments that will be submitted by the learners via the Internet. Checking will be a problem especially if teachers handle a big class. In terms of planning, it will be best for educators to adopt IT-complemented class teaching in succeeding phases so that they could gradually see the feedback as the course develops into a real electronic and online classroom that could possibly meet only once a week or less.

 For instance, for the first phase, the teacher could create a home page simply to be used as a repository of information or a virtually, a textbook, that has links with other sites pertinent to the course. As such, it will entail a lot of encoding, designing, and uploading of files.

 For the second phase, the teacher or developer requires his students to create or use their own e-mail addresses so they can e-mail their assignments. In this phase, online exercises, drills, and tests will have to be fully designed and available from the site or home page. Moreover, students will also have access to their grades from the page.

 Third phase, aside from the homepage, students will already have access to electronic conferencing or watch their teachers conduct lectures through video streaming and eventually, they no longer need to come to school every day.

 To be fruitful, all of these require the assistance of an expert on IT and documentation of feedback from learners in all phases to improve the course. Moreover, designing such a program, needs a strong theoretical foundation on the use of technological innovations.

 Educators cannot afford to ignore information technology (Carague, 1998). Education involves information and learning is concerned with acquiring and absorbing that information. Any invention is prone to be used either for good or bad and IT is no exception. Educators cannot simply be mere onlookers. They must do their part to grab the opportunity and see to it that IT is put to good use. And once this is done, the benefits are overwhelming.

 Carague (1998) even noted that over 20 years of research shows that Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) produces at least 30 percent more learning in 40 percent less time and at 30 percent less cost. A survey on some 125 technologies or methods revealed that they help double the productivity of teaching, producing twice as much learning for the same time, money or other costs.

 Specifically in the classroom, learners can get the important, static documentation for the class from a wide variety of locations and on demand. The web is always there to serve as their electronic servant (Creed, 1998). On the side of the teacher, he can address their concern from any place. And if he forgets to mention something important in class that is always set on a very limited time, he can notify them through an e-mail list. So here, the web gives an increased accessibility to the information relevant to a certain course and to the ongoing discussion about it.

 Students’ e-mails also allow a sound way for them to accomplish writing assignments since their works are time and date stamped. They simply can not do their work or submit them elsewhere since they need to do their work at a computer terminal, a setting that has become associated with intellectual work for a lot of students.

 Using the web in the classroom also encourages thoughtful discussion. Since the format of discussion is extended through the cyberspace, hence not limited by time, both teacher and student can compose what they have to say as much time as they need. As such, they can ponder what they have to say and use the full editing power of a word processor.

 Another advantage is that, the use of the Internet, specifically e-mail and electronic conference, allows the quieter and more reflective students to participate in the discussion at their own pace. Students who are silent during traditional classroom discussion often come alive when they are given the time to reflect on what they say. They also have the opportunity to correct and make sure that what they say is right.

 A teacher would be amazed at how and when students write since anything they submit are all time and date stamped. Patterns on students work habits would always show up. This helps the teacher in pointing out to students how they might do better. Moreover, with all the awareness that they expect notices or announcements anytime via their e-mail or whatever web- based format, students are always kept on their toes.

 With all these benefits in tow, no one could disagree with the fact that IT has the potential to assist learning. This is a fact that educators of all ages will have to accept. Institutional policies on the adoption of IT as a tool in education, in many forms, are already in place since any government in any part of the world now recognizes the fact that power will no longer be measured in terms of war and nuclear capabilities but instead it will be gauged on how much usable information a country has in its disposal ( Verceles,1998). Since educators are the most involved in the transmission of knowledge, it is therefore their daunting task to use and develop this usable information.