Doing it right

Wendy Hawkins, Intel’s director of education

At Rajprachasamasai High School in Samut Prakan, students were recently given an interesting assignment: to come up with a workable business plan for a school-owned plot of land and then implement it. After ruling out ambitious but impractical projects like constructing a hotel, they settled on raising chickens and planting vegetables.

These were not ordinary student farmers, however. Throughout their project the computer was as important as more traditional agricultural implements like the hoe and spade. The students did their research on the Internet and they used the computer to produce an explanatory brochure, a booklet and even a webpage.

When it comes to selling their produce, the Rajprachasamasai students might seriously consider consulting with their peers at the nearby Navamin Rachutit Trium Udom Suk Sa Pattanakarn School on the Bangna-Trat road. There, the students have just completed a major project in e-commerce.

The impetus was an equally innovative assignment which challenged the students to figure out how to start a business with a minimum investment. Setting up a store seemed a good idea, and what better way to save on costs, reasoned the students, than to make it a virtual store with no rent, no electrical expenses and no time limitations. They could keep it open 24 hours a day. As for what to sell, the logical choice was their community’s most abundant commodities – bananas and the gourami fish (plaa salit).

It is safe to say that neither of the projects would have been attempted a year ago even though both schools had the resources. What was missing were subject area teachers with basic training in the use of information technology in the classroom. In the end, it took nine days of a remarkable corporate-sponsored training programme to turn things around.

This is not the typical corporate sponsorship involving equipment donations or student scholarships. Instead, it is a high-impact programme developed by the giant Intel Corporation aimed squarely at teachers. Known as “Intel Teach to the Future”, the five-year-old programme has trained more than one and a half million teachers worldwide, almost half of them here in Asia.

Less than a year old in Thailand, Intel and its local partners, which include the Ministry of Education and the respected Kenan Institute Asia, have just completed a pilot programme involving 47 schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. The project has now been extended to 100 schools countrywide and the intention is to train 200 master teachers who will then train additional teachers at their schools.

Intel funds the project, the staff who carry it out, and the post-training evaluation. Perhaps the company’s most valuable contribution, however, is the model the programme provides for corporate assistance to the educational sector. Indeed, there is much for local corporations to emulate.

Wendy Hawkins, Intel’s director of education, readily admits that Intel’s long interest in basic education is one of self-interest. “We decided we really needed to involve ourselves in elementary and secondary education to make changes early along so that more students would end up successfully pursuing technical degrees – science, math, computer engineering – preparing themselves either to work with Intel or to support the environment in which we work,” she explains.

The company’s focus on teachers was also consistent with its investment strategy, Hawkins observes. “Intel is one of those businesses that always looks for the highest leverage, the highest return on investment. You invest in one student and you’ve touched that one student and you’ve changed one life. If you invest in a teacher, then you’ve changed all of the students that that teacher reaches.”

One of the keys to the programme’s success, says Hawkins, lies in the partnerships it has established with experts in the field. “We’re not education experts, so rather then seeing ourselves as creators and inventors, we looked for programmes that had demonstrated success.

“We developed a relationship with a non-profit organisation – actually a virtual school district in the state of California,” Hawkins relates. “They’d been doing the training of teachers on the effective integration of technology. We began with their programme and used it as a pilot and trained about two or three thousand teachers – which we thought was a huge number at the time. It is now four years later and we have one and a half million teachers trained and two million before the end of this year. Out of that number, less than a quarter of a million are from the US and the rest are around the world.”

One of the most important results of the collaboration has been a detailed training curriculum based on the principles of inquiry-based learning.

(from left) Intel’s education manager for Asia, Debjani Ghosh, and Tatsanee Setboonsarng, the company’s local education manager

“It’s basically a curriculum framework,” explains Debjani Ghosh, Intel’s Asian regional manager for the education programme. “It’s ten modules. It begins by asking each teacher to create a lesson plan on a topic that he or she will teach, hopefully, in the near future.

“They start with their learning goals. Then we introduce them to the tool of essential questioning. That really enables the teacher to structure a class in a way that promotes inquiry-based learning. Then they go into different technology skills like Microsoft Powerpoint and Word.”

An important element of the training is having the teachers assume the role of the student, Ghosh says. “It is something that teachers don’t find fun in the beginning but then, later on, they say ‘aha, that made so much sense.’ It really helps them to define their teaching strategies much better.

“Once they’ve done the student projects, then they start defining their own teaching support materials. At the end of every module they go back and they evaluate their work against the learning objectives they have set for the plan. They leave the training with a CD which has a lot of case studies and their own lesson plans, student work, teacher work, an implementation plan and a evaluation plan which they can then go out and implement.”

The curriculum has been designed with localisation in mind, Ghosh says. Here in Thailand that is being done in conjunction with curriculum planners in the Department of Education.

“They review it first and they see what works and what doesn’t. For example, the module on essential questioning is completely new to Thai teachers, so we have had to add a lot of explanation,” Ghosh relates.

“The US curriculum is based on the assumption that teachers will have computers in the classroom. Here, we have to base it on the assumption that teachers will have to take students to a computer lab. That’s the kind of thing that we have to consider,” she observes.

“It is important to understand that this is not a programme to teach computer use per se,” stresses Kenan trainer Passara Bhurinuntakul. “Instead, the computer is simply a tool in the learning process.”

Indeed neither Passara nor her fellow Kenan trainer Sompoat Prakobnun are computer specialists. Instead, both are former elementary school teachers, an experience that is much more relevant to the Intel programme.

“The computer has three major functions in the learning process,” Sompoat explains. “It is a tool for researching information via Internet or the CD-Rom. It is a tool for presentation, such as PowerPoint presentations or the production of a newsletter. And it is a communication tool, be it through e-mail or the development of a website.”

The organisation of the programme at the country level is remarkably well thought out. “Intel provides the funding for the implementation of the project,” Sompoat relates. “The Ministry of Education (MOE) joins in at policy level; they determine the goal of seminar, the school districts involved, and so on.

“After that, we form a joint committee to specify the length of seminar, the dates and the target schools. Then we (Kenan) carry through, starting from inviting the target schools to join in. Last year, we invited them through the MOE. This year, we’ll also advertise through the Internet,” Sompoat says.

The trainers are busy throughout. Once applications arrive, schools are screened to determine if they can truly benefit from the programme. “Before we agree to accept any school to join the project, we’ll have to inspect that particular school first, Sompoat explains. We select only the schools that are ready in terms of infrastructure.”

Interested schools also attend an introductory workshop, he says. “Here, we present them with the overview of the project, so that the schools understand what we are doing, and what we expect from them.”

Schools that pass muster then choose one or two teachers to participate in the training programme. The selection of these participant teachers is especially crucial since they are to become “master teachers.”

“They are accepted under the condition that after the seminar, they have to go back to their schools and provide training for teachers at their schools. We expect one master teacher should train at least 20 of their fellow teachers,” Sompoat explains.

The work of the Kenan trainers does not end with the completion of the instruction of the master teachers. They also do follow-up visits to the participating schools. Together, Sompoat and Passara have visited almost all of the 47 schools in the pilot project.

Not surprisingly, they have found that master teachers often face significant obstacles at the school level. “We expect the master teachers to arrange seminars in their school within the first 60 days after their training ends,” Sompoat relates. “In reality, however, master teachers from some schools haven’t yet organised seminars, even though it’s going on six months.

One of the main reason is the inflexibility of school timetables, Sompoat points out. Consequently, fitting in major training programmes for teachers depends very much on the cooperation of the school principals.

“Successful implementation depends heavily on the decisiveness of school principals because it involves dramatic changes at the school, not only class schedules but also in the use of equipment. This project is technology–oriented, so computer availability is very important. Some schools don’t have enough computer labs so that students cannot get access to the computers to do their project,” Sompoat explains.

None of this is surprising to Intel’s Ghosh. The problem is much more acute elsewhere in Asia, she notes. Thailand, at least, has made significant strides in implementing a reform curriculum compatible with inquiry-based learning. Things have been much slower in India and China, Ghosh says.

“The biggest obstacles in both countries has been the lack of curriculum that supported inquiry-based learning,” she observes. “Both China and India have very rigid curricula. You have to finish from A to Z in order to pass the exam.”

The situation is improving in both countries, she says, but the path to success may be considerably easier in Thailand.

Paul Wedel, Kenan’s Asia’s Executive Director, is likewise optimistic. “It’s a good programme,” he says. “I like the fact that Intel is committed to this long term

and I’m pleased that Intel seems to really want extensive localisation – adapting it to the particular situation of Thailand and each region and type of school in the country.”

However, there are significant challenges ahead, he cautions. “The pilot schools were largely the better schools in and around Bangkok. We face a real challenge in meeting the needs of the schools outside of Bangkok.”

But if there are challenges, there are also opportunities. Indeed, upcountry schools can have significant advantages over their urban counterparts. For one thing, it should be a lot easier to find land for raising chickens and growing vegetables than it is in Samut Prakan.

Pictured here are five enthusiastic teachers from Thungmahamek Primary School who have undergone Intel-based training: (from left) Natthawan Numsai, Duanghathai Daramitt, Supranee Netsiri (master teacher), Suwari Ruttanapunt (master teacher) and Walee Jaruphong. If there were a contest for the most enthusiastic participant in Intel programme, Bangkok’s Thung Mahamek Primary School would stand a very good chance of winning. Since it’s two master teachers completed their training last October, fully 90 percent of the school’s teaching staff have completed a 50-hour seminar following the Intel regimen. The in-school programme was carried out three days a week from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. It began in mid December and ended in late February. That’s dedication! One reason for the programme’s success, the master teachers say, is the support they received from the school’s administration. The school’s director, head of the computer lab and deputy director for academic affairs had all attended an Intel seminar for executives and this made things much easier, the teachers say.