School of music and robotics open in Cebu

MINERVA BC NEWMAN

CEBU CITY – Looking for a school to unleash the genius and creativity of your children?  Worry no more, two private schools focusing on music and robotics operated and managed by Louella Go and Albert Causo respectively, opened in August this year at the 2nd floor of Banilad Town Centre, Cebu City and enrollment for both schools is still ongoing.

Virtuoso School of Music (VSM) has been providing high-quality music education since 2015 but, it was closed during the pandemic and reverted to online classes for almost two years until it reopened on August 21 this year.

“We are back! It was very difficult to teach music via online hence, we really tried all means to stay afloat as we faced those COVID-19 challenges and now, we are ready and excited to meet our old students and new ones,” VSM operations director, Louella Hannah Go said in her emotional message during the opening event.

VSM offers after-school music lessons for piano, voice, violin, guitar, ukulele, flute recorder, drums and music theory both for in-studio and online platforms and for students from all ages, Go added.

She bared that to achieve its goal to provide affordable, quality music education and instrument training, VSM created its Music Academic Program that provides quality music theory and instrument playing classes to students in academic schools through the partnerships established with schools from Cebu City, Mandaue City and Lapu-Lapu City.

Almost 4,000 students, and counting have benefited from its Music Academic Program since 2017 and with school partners that included Paref Southcrest School in Cebu City since 2016 to the present; Paref Southdale School, Cebu City from 2016 to 2020; Asian Learning Center in Lapu-Lapu City from 2017 to present and St. Louis College - Cebu in Mandaue City from 2019-2020.

ALGOrhythm Robotics Center (ARC) on the other hand, is a robotics school that aims to provide competitive and dynamic education to children of all ages to gain knowledge and skill in programming and building robots to help them have a limitless future and become competitive 21st-century citizens.

ARC program director, Albert Causo said that ARC offers both Robotics Academic Programs and Robotics Enrichment Programs and these are available for in-person studio classes, online or virtual classes, and hybrid formats.

“ARC offers Robotics creation, design, assembly and programming. We chose a very colorful school logo because we have to allow children to go crazy and build anything they want.  To provide kids and people to build and building a robot is just like building a rocket.  Building robots is making sense of a very chaotic world,” Causo said.

According to Causo, the Robotics Academic Program assists academic institutions in providing their students with affordable but in-depth, hands-on, and progressive robotics classes. The Robotics Enrichment Program holds small-group and one-to-one lessons at our studio.

Both Programs cover topics from robotics and mechatronics, software programming, basic electronics and mechanical engineering, advanced programming, and Al & Deep Learning. classes cater to students from Kindergarten to Grade 12.

ARC has also partnered with schools in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City since 2020.  More than 600 students have benefited from robotics classes in the last two years, Causo said adding that ALGOrhythm Robotics Center officially opened on October 8, 2022 and is presently partners with Paref Southcrest School in Cebu City and Asian Learning Center in Lapu-Lapu City.

School founders and partnership

Virtuoso School of Music is founded by Hannah Louella Go who is also its operations director. Hannah is a music education graduate from St. Theresa's College in Cebu. She is also a Violin Scholar Alumnus and a former Assistant Concertmaster of Dr. Ingrid Santamaria's Cebu Youth Symphony Orchestra and Peace Philharmonic of the Philippines.

She is a professional violinist who has performed with different local and international artists both locally and internationally.  Some of the distinguished artists that she has performed with are Andrea Bocelli, Cecile Licad, Eric Santos and so much more. She used to be an on-call violinist for Manila Philharmonic Orchestra, and has also performed with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra.

She is the founder and owner of Virtuoso School of Music, and is also the co-founder and managing director of ALGOrhythm Robotics Center.

Albert Causo, Program Director of ALGOrhythm Robotics Center (ARC) has been a roboticist for more than 15 years. He obtained his Master's and PhD in Robotics from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan and finished his Chemistry and Computer Engineering undergraduate degrees at Ateneo de Manila University.

He was a faculty member of the Department of Electronics, Communications and Computer Engineering at Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Robotics Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU).

As a robotics scientist, he has published more than 40 papers on various applications of robots in logistics and manufacturing, education, and rehabilitation.  Causo has led robotics teams that have won international competitions, including the Amazon Robotics Challenge in 2017, 1st Place;  DHL Robotics Challenge in 2017, 3rd Place and  JD.com Robotics Challenge. (Photos: MBCNewman)