Teaching ahead with technologies

Teachers exchange teaching tips and participate in an afternoon forum on effective evaluation techniques.

Promphen was one of 400 teachers who participated in the Intel annual Master Teacher Forum in Pattaya this year. Part of the Intel Teach to the Future programme, the four-day forum brought together teachers who had earlier completed 50 hours of in-service training on how to effectively integrate the computer technology into classrooms. This year's forum celebrates and reflects on such skills as effective assessment techniques, designing project-based assignments, and asking thought-provoking questions.

Ajarn Malee Promphen

As a teacher of computer science at Saraburi's Debsirinphukhae School, Ajarn Malee already felt comfortable using the technology in her classes before joining the Intel Teach to the Future programme in 2004. In fact, her teaching concentrated very much on computer applications and too little on using the technology to foster the students' participation and active learning. Learning how to write lesson plans that allow her to do so, she says, is the reason she wanted to join the programme in the first place.

"The programme's key objective is to train teachers to apply ICT in developing students' thinking skills in every class subject, not only in computer subjects," says Dr Rangsun Wiboon-uppatum, a key driver of this programme from the Ministry of Education's Bureau of Information and Communication Technology. In doing so, the programme encourages teachers to work across academic disciplines and collaborate on developing an integrative lesson plan. For example, the programme points out how reading online news can teach students about morals or how mathematics is related to the student's daily life.

Teaching with a difference

As a Master Teacher, Ajarn Malee has completed her duty of training 20 additional teachers within her school, based on what she has learned from the programme. With 400 Master Teachers fulfilling this same requirement per year, Intel intends to extend the number of participating teachers to 30,000 by the end of 2006.

The increasing number of participating teachers each year alone, however, does not reflect whether or not the programme is having a positive impact on Thai education. Rather, this impact is measured by the changes in the way teachers teach and the improvement on how students learn.

Last year, Intel conducted an impact survey on 308 Master Teachers five months after they finished the training. Out of 256 teachers who responded, 88 percent says that students became more motivated and actively involved in the lesson, while 85 percent says that students communicated their ideas and opinions with greater confidence. On the teachers' part, 88 percent says that they had diversified the use of technology - from application-based to project-based teaching, for example.

In Ajarn Malee's case, she has witnessed an increased enthusiasm by students to learn, and more cooperation among fellow teachers in developing their lesson plans. "Our lesson plans used to be characterised mostly by activities that simply asked students to memorise or look up answers from textbooks," she says. "After the training, we apply the thought-provoking questioning technique, in order to create a dialogue where an on-going debate can take place in class."

More importantly, teachers at Debsirinphukhae School have begun to write lesson plans together, so that teachers of different subjects can collaborate on assigning and evaluating homework. In a computer class, for example, Ajarn Malee asked students to develop a website comprised of content learned while studying Thai language courses. This way, the students complete only one assignment for both subjects, while earning points in both Thai and computer classes.

To Dr Rangsun, this kind of inter-departmental collaboration truly reflects the programme's success in promoting integrated learning, one of the key reforms that Ministry of Education would like to achieve at the school level. In fact, the programme's ability to address the issue at the policy level has contributed to its sustainability, unlike many projects on education that usually have a much shorter lifespan.

The other equally important sustainability factor is the programme's systematic approach. Before starting implementation at the teachers level, the programme creates a preliminary understanding among three key players - policy makers, local administrative bodies, and school administrators. By doing so, every person involved in the programme can move along under the same vision.

Localised model

Since 2003, Intel Teach to the Future has trained more than 20,000 teachers from all over the Thailand. The programme is a collaborative effort between Intel Microelectronics (Thailand), Ltd., and the Ministry of Education to reform Thailand's education by training the teachers to change the way they previously taught in schools to a more student-centred model.

Although the content for training was developed in the United States, through this collaboration it has been localised to fit the Thai curriculum, which is highly fixed, inflexible, and relies heavily on teachers as the centre of instruction.

"Intel Corporation consulted with experts in the education field to design and develop this training course," says Intel's Education Programme Manager Pornwalee Saithongkhum. "These experts researched which skills are fundamental for children to live in the twenty-first century, which mainly are communications, teamwork, and [analytical] thinking."

Given these skills, she adds, teachers need to ask themselves how to take advantage of the technology in order to achieve this goal. "It's not by asking students a yes-or-no question or asking something that students can simply search and find on the Internet, then cut and paste the answers," she says.

In the programme's "backward design" model of training, teachers assume the students' role. "Before assigning students to create a power point presentation, for example, teachers must try to do it first. Through completing the assignment, teachers will see the overall concept of what they actually would like the students to learn," Porwalee explains. Only then will teachers be able to write a lesson plan that effectively integrates the technology into their teaching methods.

In the end, Intel would like to see the Ministry of Education as a full owner of this programme. "Teachers are the ministry's staff. We try to drive for the development of [teachers] because it's one way to help improve the ministry's efficiency in the long run," Pornwalee says.

For more information on Intel Teach to the Future, visit the Thai language site at: www.teachfuture.net/index.php ; or the English language site is at: http://www97.intel.com/education/teach/ .

The big picture Intel Teach to the Future is a worldwide training course for professional teachers. Through partnerships with local governments and industries, the programme has trained more than 3 million teachers in 40 countries since its launch in 1999. In Thailand, the programme commenced in early 2003 and initially covered schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. Starting in 2004, the programme extended training to teachers in other provinces around the country. To date, the programme has trained more than 1,000 Master Teachers, each of whom has a duty to train 20 additional teachers within his/her school. Each year, Intel and the Ministry of Education hold an annual Master Teacher forum for the purpose of providing advanced training content and allowing teachers to share teaching experiences.