This continues the posts from the ACCE Study Tour.
At the start of our tour to Intel we visited Intel’s Museum a place that highlights the work of Intel and its construction of the processors they create. Spread around the displays were quotes like the one to the left from Robert Noyce, Intel founder.
Its was interesting listening to big business in America talk about their educational plans and what they are doing for teachers. The Intel briefing we listened to was talking about transforming education for a world of opportunity.
Having participated in the Intel teacher program it was interesting to hear that it had reached over 10 million teachers in 70 countries. In a time when most of our students will have 15 careers in their lifetime, Intel is helping support this by providing 21st century skills to teachers and students to increase competitiveness in our students chosen careers.
Intel is continuing to assist students gain 21st century skills through strong curriculum standards that include critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills. It feels that robust assessment approaches including formative assessment are important and that there is a need for teachers to understand the new digital media tools and resources available to them. It wants students to be able to answer the question “What did you learn?” and stop relying on them being able to simply copy and paste to answer a question or assignment.
Intel is not just working with teachers, it believes that effective policies are critical to establish the conditions for success of all children and is working with government departments.
To achieve these goals it’s putting its money into providing a range of resources for teacher professional development. It realises that the key to ICT integration is that one-off sessions are not viable options so they are providing teachers with the right tools and training to support a student centric environment. They are achieving this through a range of initiatives and resources. They have seen that even though students consider themselves to be proficient users of technology they are naive about the benefits the technology has for them to express their learning.
The major funding is going into the Intel Teach Elements series, a collection of elearning resources that are convenient, compelling, free and include a practical action plan for you to walk away with and implement in the classroom.
The series each have a range of modules between three and five and cover the following topics.
- Project based approaches
- Assessment in 21st century classrooms (looks at formative assessment)
- Thinking critically with data (teaching kids to manage data that’s available to them)
- Collaboration in the digital classroom (kids becoming more proficient)
- Inquiry in the science classroom (Is new and looks at transition from textbook to authentic inquiry and will be available from 1st of August 2012)
- Blended learning, helps teacher learn how to design a blended learning environment that includes using parents and community (this will be available in November)
- Educational leadership in the 21st century (three modules – technology integration, collaboration with technology and technology trends- and is based around the NETS-A standards developed by ISTE.
To get these free resources you will need to register and then you will have access to the guide.
For more information visit these sites.