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A little while ago I had the privilege of taking part in one of Intel’s global education initiatives, Intel Learn. It’s a non-profit program by the computer processor maker that is run in cooperation with governments around the world. Its aim is to enable students in developing communities to develop not only information technology skills, but also the equally important soft skills that today and tomorrow’s information workers do and will require.

Intel Learn is a program that I had come across last year whilst looking for resources that might help me with my own IT extra-curricular class. Stumbling upon their site was a bit of a revelation as, in detail and articulated beautifully, was a curriculum for IT education that could have literally been written for RCEF.

Compare our mission statement,

“To promote education for people in rural China that empowers them to improve their lives and their communities.”

with this description from their brochure:

“The Intel Learn Program is a… hands-on curriculum… that tap[s] into children’s interest in their own communities while nourishing their curiosity with creative, technology-driven projects.”

Creativity? Tapping into children’s interest in their own communities? Hands-on curriculum? It’s like they’re describing us. I hope you can understand why I was so excited about this opportunity now.

After thoroughly going through their site I got in contact with their representative in China, who in turn put me in touch with their rep in Shanxi that works for the Shanxi Association for Science and Technology (SAST), Intel’s partner for the project in the province. Before I knew it I was invited to observe the program the next time it was due to take place.

Intel Learn China’s Structure

As mentioned above, the teachers that invited me belong to SAST. Intel works with a select few of these teachers from this organisation/work unit from each province, providing them training, after which they become core or “backbone teachers” (骨干老师). The teachers tell me that the training is very rigorous, covering the teaching techniques needed to execute the lessons in the communicative manner demanded by the curriculum. Having observed their classes, I do believe this to be true. But more on that in a moment.

But two or three teachers in each province is obviously not enough to scale plans of Intel’s ambitions – the program, since beginning in China in 2003, has reached over 100,000 students. How is this done? Well, each of those core teachers will then identify other teachers in their province (let’s call them provincial teachers for convenience) who have access to some form of IT facilities. The core teachers then in turn train the provincial teachers. It’s actually somewhat similar to what we are trying to achieve here in Yongji by training up local “master teachers” at Guan Ai, who will then be able to go on to other local schools and propogate the “RCEF method”.

These provincial teachers are generally based in their schools all year round, and so have the opportunity to deliver the IT curriculum in such a way such that IT can be seen as an integral part of the rest of their curriculum, rather than, say, an add-on extra-curricular activity.

Intel core teacher Mrs. Zhou playing with the students

The Site

The site I was invited to visit turned out to be in a county outside Luliang, northern Shanxi. It’s a mountain area several hours west of the state capital and still quite cold even in March (luckily I’d come prepared and had already dug out the winter fleece in anticipation). The school itself was pretty good by rural standards, with quite a bit of open space, clean dorms and a large cafeteria that served good food (including an egg a day provided by the government and 100g of meat per week provided by a local business).

Teaching

Intel teacher Mrs. Guo leads a class, where students use MS Paint to create postage stamps or postcards.

The Intel Learn program is divided into two units: Technology and Community and Technology at Work. The former is taught to younger students (3rd-6th grade) whilst the latter is typically reserved for secondary schoolers.

At Luliang the Technology and Community unit was taught to a class of 21 fourth graders. For SAST staff the Intel Learn program is only a part of their work, and so they do not spend all of their time delivering the curriculum in schools. Due to their other activities, which include science competitions and robot building with youths, they are only able to teach the curriculum themselves about three times a year. Hence more classes are delivered in fewer days than would be normal, but the same amount of hours are taught. At the school 10 hours (1/3 or the curriculum) was delivered in two days this time.

The survey that was used to get the kids to know more about each othe (click for a closer look).

To begin with the teachers used ice-breaking activities to loosen the kids up and, more importantly, get them working together. A list of questions was handed out which they had to fill by surveying classmates. This created the expectation that students were meant to ask questions of each other and co-operate in order to get a task done.

When classes began the class was split into groups of three to a laptop. Before even asking the students to start using them though a lot of time was spent getting students used to using collaborative methods. For example, in the first period groups were asked to write a plan, on paper, of what they were going to design. Discussions had to include all members and reach a consensus. Doing this beforehand gives teachers a much better chance that the activity will stay on track and lessens the possibility that one group member will dominate.

The curriculum itself is quite impressive. The basic skills they are learning are office software skills, such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation slideshows and illustration packages. However, all activities involve a choice for the students and they must together decide which one to go for. For example, in one activity they had a choice of making road signs, a postcard or a bookmark. This engages their critical thinking abilities, as they need to decide and justify why they should make, say, a local map over a series of road signs that the community needs.

A small group planning out their postcard project together

The teachers for the most part are fairly hands off, allowing students to experiment with functions by themselves. As I’ve discovered myself both in Guozhuang and in my extra-curricular class for the fifth graders at Guan Ai, it’s often the most effective method of teaching them what they need to learn most. With pairs or groups of three usually at least one set of eyeballs will see what the most appropriate function should be. [But don't take my word for it - here's Sugata Mitra talking about an experiment he did in India where kids taught themselves how to use computers.]

As I previously mentioned, the teachers have received excellent training and are well versed in facilitating learning rather than “teaching”. Some examples of their technique include:

• Asking students to come to agreement before moving forward with any plans.
• Getting a group member to read out that plan to the whole class.
• Asking other groups on feedback on that student’s speech. The teachers really emphasise not to repeat what others have mentioned before, which is an excellent way of getting them to listen more carefully.
• In order to build confidence and better cooperation between students the Intel teachers invited students to put on a small performance each day. Once again, after it students were asked to evaluate their classmates, and performers themselves were encouraged to reflect on what they did well and not so well on.
• The Intel materials come with textbooks and one much larger reference book that included step-by-step instructions on how to perform a lot of basic functions. Students were encouraged to look up these materials first before looking for help from the teacher, which they did. This was a good method of getting them to learn for themselves, and I could imagine this being used as a prelude to teaching students how to find information on the internet.

Overall I was really impressed by the quality of their teaching. I’m curious as to how well the provincial teachers teach and what sort of equipment they work with, but what I have observed of Intel learn has been excellent and has left a deep impression.

Below are some of the products that the students made. Pretty impressive for less than 10 hours study, no?

Community map

A postcard designed by fourth grade students

Reflections

I came away from this trip feeling quite uplifted in two ways. One, that my experiments in IT classes are going in the right direction and two, that there exist other organisations in China that are doing student-centred teaching like us.

So many of the methods they used are the same or similar to the ones I use in my class, including group collaboration, guided experimentation and letting students report on their discoveries of new functions. It’s nice to receive some confirmation that your methods work for other people too and that you’re not a mad curriculum scientist!

Ultimately though I think it would be even more beneficial for some of our local Guan Ai teachers to take a look at how Intel Learn does it, because no matter how much we espouse the virtues of student-centred teaching, our voices and reasoning cannot really compete with being able to see it in action themselves. That a successful program so huge in scale can succeed in China (and China is probably Intel Learn’s most successful country program) by utilising collaborative learning, and with it being backed by one of the world’s largest corporations, must mean that there’s something to these methods, right?

Intel have expressed an interest in targeting and working with more rural schools for their Learn program, and I hope that we’ll be able to collaborate with them more closely in the future. Theirs is an expertly put together curriculum that I’d love for us to be a part of in the future.

Three classmates hard at work

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