Intel celebrates training of 10 million teachers

Intel Corporation this week celebrated 10 million teachers trained through Intel Teach, a professional development program that enables educators to effectively integrate technology into their lessons to promote problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills among their students.

Working with national, regional and local educators and governments in more than 70 countries, Intel Teach is the largest and most successful program of its kind. In fact, according to Intel’s estimates, more than 300 million students have been prepared to learn, lead and succeed by teachers trained in Intel Teach.

 “Solving tomorrow’s challenges begins in today’s classrooms,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. “We invest in teachers so that they will inspire our students to be innovative, creative and prepared with the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are imperative to our future. While we celebrate reaching 10 million teachers through Intel Teach today, we continue to focus on developing the next generation by improving the quality of educational opportunities around the world.”In Sri Lanka, the Intel® Teach Program is the largest, most successful program of its kind and has, to date, trained over 21,000 government teachers from the Western, Uva, Central, Sabaragamuwa, Northern, Eastern, and Southern provinces.

An End of Training (EoT) Analysis of Intel Teach in-service program of 2010 conducted by Lanka Market Research Bureau (LMRB) revealed that over 95% of these teachers have benefited through integration of technology into their teaching and passed on illustrated effective uses to their students and their school work.

Indika De Zoysa, Country Business Manager, Intel EM Ltd, said,  “We work with government and policy makers to add quality to education and our efforts have indeed heralded a new beginning in the IT sector in this country. The turnout in support of this program has been outstanding and today we are extremely happy to recognize each and every person for their efforts put in.”

Intel Teach started as a simple idea, in which education is centered on student learning through project-based experiences instead of lecture and memorization. It included technology not just because technology was fun and different, but because computers and software appropriately integrated into the classroom promote students’ problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills, areas called 21st century skills by educators.

Independent evaluation of the Intel Teach program revealed participating teachers reported their students were “motivated and involved in the lesson” and that “student projects showed more in-depth understanding” than other comparable work.

Now in its second decade, Intel Teach, which relies on a combination of online and face-to-face instruction, continues to build more flexible course offerings and train teachers around the world. Intel Teach is but one element of Intel’s commitment to education, which includes extensive efforts by employee volunteers to help improve education around the world.