Three great days in Bacolod. Taking part in a once-in-a-sweet-while workshop on organic agriculture in beguiling, bountiful Bacolod gave me three good reasons to go gaga over organic.

First reason. It’s health-promoting. Sans synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetic reengineering, organically grown foods are more nutritious and safe. It’s been said that people get sick because they have a genetic predisposition to a particular illness, or their lifestyle kind of did it for them. A big part of one’s lifestyle is the way one eats, or does not eat.

This was the question posted by Mr. Ramon Penalosa, owner of a micro-model of an integrated farming system practicing natural farming system in a 0.3 ha. farm in Silay, Bacolod, Negros Occidental (it was already my third time to visit the farm but the man never fails to arouse my interest and enthusiasm to become an “agri-preneur” and become a millionaire someday).

Last April I was given the privilege of speaking before the 2012 graduating class of the UPLB College of DevCom. For most of my speech, I talked about my real world experience at ATI, with e-extension. Just how many of them would join us in extension work? I wouldn't know, but here were my talk-points, abridged.

It was the 4th e-learning mass graduation hosted by ATI-Caraga and the first that I attended. No, of course it was not virtual, not online. It was12-01-2011 in real time, with the characteristic personal touch of ATI as seen and felt in its trainings.

We'd like to give a salute to the man who made us realized that Philippine e-Extension and ATIiNteractive possible. He made himself a part of the ATI family and pushed us to embrace change and think outside the box. With him, we were able to push through with e-learning and expanded it further to embrace the different components of the e-Extension Program for Agriculture and Fisheries. We were able to put up the Farmers' Contact Center, which now serves as a frontline helpdesk of the Department of Agriculture for farm and business advisory services and a technical support for e-Learning.

Powerpoint® presentations in training programs are ubiquitous as the proverbial energizers. The use of Powerpoint® is so pervasive that it is accepted as "THE way" to deliver a lecture in the classroom, that without it, the lecturer is deemed ill-prepared. But quite often, a resource person’s lecture is actually dictated by his own Powerpoint® presentation, eventually leading to the lecture's "death by Powerpoint®". (This term first appeared in the web in 2001; coined by Angela R. Garber.) This is the traditional linear presentation.