Intel inside education

Anuradha teaches Physics at New Delhi’s Modern School. Till recently, like

many other teachers, she just about used a computer. Some e-mail and Word pretty

much summed it up. Today, she actually heads her school’s technology center.

Does she enjoy her work? You bet. Her classroom has the works: Pentium 4s, Net

connections, projector, software. Oh yes–and a bunch of students who’ve

decided that Physics is fun!

Anuradha is one of 80,000–and counting–who have been through Intel’s

Teach to the Future program. Just what was Intel doing going to school in a

country far away from home instead of making sure everyone bought the next

Pentium? Well, in a sense it was doing exactly that: developing one of the

largest markets for technology in the world. And while the chipmaker went about

doing its business, it’s impacted education in India on an impressive, and

very welcome scale.






The first brush




Back in the late 1990s, Intel figured there were some places where it was

critical for technology to take root if it was to spread to everyman. In homes,

in small towns and cities, and especially in schools. Intel kicked off its

education initiative in India with a pilot project called Vidya in 1999. It set

up computers in selected schools and showed everyone what a difference

multimedia and the Internet could make to learning. The findings were both

exciting and challenging. Kids didn’t need a second invitation to fool around

with computers–they seemed to be born loving them. But teachers weren’t so

quick to get excited.

Breaking new ground



It was fairly obvious to Intel that unless teachers became comfortable with
technology, computers wouldn’t be invited into the classroom anytime soon.

Intel figured that training teachers was the cornerstone to the whole

initiative. This was at a time when the only technology you had in education was

a handful of computer labs teaching BASIC–that too in the most elite schools.

Using PCs, multimedia, the Web, e-mail etc for regular learning was unthinkable–no

money, no time, no inclination.

The whole system seemed technology-proof.

Intel began its teacher-training program Teach to the Future in India in

2000. At first, teachers were understandably a bit reluctant. It meant extra

time spent on the job, re-doing schedules and timetables, and fitting things

into a structured syllabus.

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