Intel supports Education Ministry’s “1000 Schools Project”

5 June 2012 03:46 am

Intel Sri Lanka signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Education recently in support of the government’s 1000 Schools Project. Under this MoU, Intel Teach, a professional development program that enables educators to effectively integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into their lessons to promote problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills among their students will be introduced to enhance the teaching experience across these schools.

At the signing ceremony, Minister of Education, Bandula Gunewardena said, “ICT education is vital to succeed in the 21st century and our work with Intel has helped make significant progress towards achieving this. Our initiative of launching 1000 schools across the Island is aimed at taking the benefits of good education to the rural children. Having trained over 23,000 teachers, island wide, the Intel Teach program will help teachers in these 1,000 schools too to integrate ICT into their lessons and empower our students to keep abreast with the rest of the world.”

The MoU was signed by H. M. Gunasekera, Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka and Indika de Zoysa, Country Manager for Intel Sri Lanka in the presence of the Minister of Education, Bandula Gunewardena, Anura Dissanayake, Additional Secretary to H.E. the President’s Office, and other Ministry officials.

Indika de Zoysa, Country Manager for Intel Sri Lanka said, “Intel has always worked towards improving the standards of education in Sri Lanka and supported the Government’s initiative of taking ICT to the students. Intel® Teach program helps young minds compete in an innovative society that comes from the teachers.”

Now in its second decade, Intel Teach, which relies on a combination of online and face-toface instruction, continues to build more flexible course offerings and train teachers around the world. 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 over 10 million teachers trained in Intel Teach.