Teachers at Anurajprasit School in Thailand are learning how to integrate information and communication
technology (ICT) effectively into their classrooms. The Intel® Teach Program plays a key role for teachers by
helping students acquire 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and digital
literacy.
Challenges
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Improve integration of ICT for teaching and learning, in line with Thailand’s education reforms
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Provide teacher personal development relevant to individual needs
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Develop student-centered learning and outcome-driven educational approaches
Approach
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Implement the Intel Teach Program to provide training on how, when and where to incorporate ICT tools and resources into lesson plans.
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Expose teachers to new teaching approaches such as instructional designs,backward design unit planning and performance-based assessments.
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Engage students with real world situations through technology tools, learning with project based upon knowledge and simulated problem solving.
Benefits
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Changed teaching practices result in increased student engagement, greaterinteractivity, improved communications and critical thinking.
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Teachers develop inquiry-based, ICT enriched lesson plans that enhance students’ higher order thinking skills.
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School shifts from a knowledge acquisition level into knowledge creation level.
With students ranging from kindergarten to middle school, Anurajprasit School has more than 3,000 students, 80 full-time and 120 part-time teachers. Previously, the school’s lessons were based on the Ministry of Education’s curriculum. However, calls for education reform in Thailand led to the creation of the National Education Act in 1999. The Act aims for educational institutions to break away from traditional rote learning methods and instead to a more creative and inquisitive approach, using technology as a vehicle to enable this. As a result, in 2004, Anurajprasit School was one of the 900 schools in Thailand chosen to become an ICT model school.
Promoting 21st Century Skills for Students
Students today are growing up in a knowledge-based global economy, where critical thinking and life-longlearning are essential for success. Besides providing computer labs and 3,000 PCs to 46 schools in Thailand, Intel also encourages teachers to participate in the Intel® Teach Essentials Course, which helps K-12 teachers to be more effective educators by training them on how to integrate technology into their lessons and promoting problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills among students
Pairoj Klungnoot, Director at Anurajprasit School noticed that teachers barely used technology as part of their school lessons. Rather, technology was used for typing up school lesson plans or support materials for the students, and Pairoj recognized technology’s role in equipping teachers with the tools to promote higher order thinking skills. He realized that the reason that teachers were not integrating technology into their school curriculum was not due to a lack of interest, but because of a lack of confidence and understanding about technology.
“While the teachers were interested in using technology, they had little understanding about it and lacked the confidence to move beyond traditional rote learning methods. For some teachers, such as those that taught subjects such as PE, art or music, the belief was that technology could only play a minimal role in their school lessons.”
However, once the Intel Teach program was introduced to the school in 2004, Pairoj soon noticed that as the teachers increasingly became familiar with using technology, that they also become more confident about integrating it into their school curriculum.
“As Intel Teach focuses on supporting quality teaching, the curriculum and classroom applications, many teachers who at first felt intimidated by the program soon became confident to take risks and explore innovative teaching methods. By providing teachers with a better understanding of how, when and where to integrate technology into the classroom, they can encourage higher learning skills among students and expand their teaching methodologies.”
Inspiring the Teachers
Suparat Nochote has been an ICT teacher for 14 years. Suparat attended the Master Trainer Essentials Course, which operates on a ‘train the trainer’ model. While Suparat had ample knowledge and experience in using computers in her teaching, the course completely changed her perspective on the further possibilities that technology could play in education - not just to her students, but to her fellow teachers. Today, all of the 80 teachers at Anurajprasit School have completed the Intel Teach program.
“Once I completed the course, I found that it was quite simple to teach my peers about how we could integrate technology into our lessons. The weekly sessions were very interactive, and the more aware the teachers became of the existing technology resources that the school offered, the more keen and confident they were to use them.
“Soon, all of the teachers were sharing real-life examples of the exciting work they had done in their lessons to promote higher level thinking among our students, such as backward design planning, , which allows teachers to see the skills that students have learned in their lessons. These discussions helped us continue to learn from one another.”
In a survey conducted among teachers, all agreed that the Intel Teach program promoted new ways of thinking that were beneficial for the students. According to Suparat, Intel Teach places value on each student’s individual learning style and ensures that their needs are met through a variety of innovative teaching strategies. “Today, the teachers have fully embraced the skills they’ve learned from the Intel Teach program and are really seeing the benefits. Students have developed essential skills in collaboration, problem solving and being self-directed. Technology is a powerful tool to assist learning, and the Intel Teach program provides a solid framework for technology in the classroom.”
Due to its commitment and high value contributions toMinistry of Education, Intel Thailand was recognized on the 115th anniversary of Ministry of Education on April 1, 2007. Dr Kasama Varavarn Na Ayutthaya, Secretary General of the Basic Education Commission, Ministry of Education, said,”The Intel Teach Program is an exemplary project which supports teachers in concrete ways. Intel Teach creates tools to encourage and support us about the thinking process in classrooms for both administrative and teacher levels. The result will definitely impact our students.”
Inspiring the Students
As a result of integrating technology into the curriculum,teachers have also noticed that the children are more eager to come to school and are more active participants during lessons. For example, students have showcased their new critical learning projects in math, social science and Thai at school assemblies as well as external events attended by parties including the Ministry of Education, universities and the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. Other projects included students creating blogs so that they could interact with students in different schools and share projects online. Similarly, teachers at Anurajprasit School, many who previously had a limited understanding of ICT, discussed their experiences of using Intel Teach during a school conference and highlighted some of the key projects and achievements. Several teachers also created their own websites hosted on the school server, which acted as a learning and collaboration tool for both the students and themselves.
Intel is committed to improving education to prepare students around the world to thrive in the global knowledge economy. In Thailand, the Intel Teach program commenced in early 2003 and initially covered schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan area, followed by the training of teachers in other provinces from April 2004. To date, Intel has trained more than 3,000 Master Teachers. Each
Master Teacher has to train 20 teachers and this has resulted in a total of more than 40,000 trained and covered all 76 provinces in Thailand for both public and private schools.
Intel has collaborated with the Ministry of Education to hold an annual Master Trainer forum since 2004. One of the objectives is to improve teaching practices by providing advanced training on content and teaching methods in line with the Intel Teach program course from worldwide. At the same time, in this forum the master trainers who have been trained will exchange their experiences and share their problems, solutions, and feedback. This is a good opportunity to receive feedback from the Intel Teach program that can bring about improvements in the teaching practices.
The Intel Education Initiative is Intel’s sustained commitment to prepare all students, anywhere, with the skills required to thrive in the knowledge economy by improving teaching and learning through the effective use of technology and advancing math, science, and engineering education and research. Through a sustained public-private partnership with educators and governments in more
than 50 countries, Intel works with international organizations and governments at an international, national, and local level and invests approximately USD 100 million per year in education programs
adapted to address the needs of each country to advocate for 21st century educational excellence through policy work and awareness efforts.
