Technology brings students from behind closed doors into a world of knowledge. I began work at the eMINTS National Center in Columbia, Missouri (USA) in 2000 and since then I’ve been training and coaching classroom teachers and I am amazed at how much has changed in that time!! An eMINTS classroom looks like a regular classroom except that it has lots of cool technology for students and teachers. Each room has an interactive whiteboard, scanner, camera, internet connections, a printer, and computers for students and teachers to use at any portion of the school day. I am currently providing professional development to 7/8th grade teachers in my portion of the state that are a part of our I3 validation study. These teachers want to enrich the learning in their classrooms by integrating technology in meaningful and purposeful ways. They will do this using a 1:1 classroom laptop environment in combination with eMINTS and Intel Teach Thinking with Technology professional development programs. _____________________________________________ [Intel editor's note: Intel Teach Thinking with Technology is course designed to help teachers learn instructional strategies for addressing and assessing thinking skills, using technology to support deeper understanding of core content. The goal is for teachers to leave the course with a standards-based unit plan, support materials, and implementation strategies to improve and assess students’ higher-order thinking with the use of free online tools.]

Travel through Time and Space – Dialoguing with Su Shi As a Chinese language teacher in the Beijing Information Management School, I had long been bothered by a problem: vocational students generally lack long-term interest in study, and can easily acquire a long-term weariness of study and a capacity for troublemaking. In August 2000, after receiving training in the Intel Teach Program, I realized that students’ initiative must be motivated. I wanted to apply inquiry-based learning, group cooperative learning, and framework design strategy to teaching in order to help address his long-standing concern. In the second semester of grade two in senior high school, complex and even contradictory ideas contained in Nian Nujiao · Chi Bi and Former Red Cliff, two works of the great writer Su Shi of the Song dynasty, had long presented difficulty in teaching. Young people today often lack an interest in classical literature and may find it difficult to understand and therefore fail to recognize the beauty of the works. Understanding that today’s students have a strong sense of expression and group identity, I began my attempts in teaching reform, and changed the way I taught these two literary classics – away from the traditional way of giving instructed classes to brainstorming-style discussion classes. I raised several well-designed questions that interested students. For example, “If you passed through a time tunnel to meet Su Shi, what question would you want to ask him most?” Or, “What emotion of Su Shi was expressed in Nian Nujiao · Chi Bi and Former Red Cliff? Was this emotion truly shown?” I then asked the students to work within their own group to study and demonstrate their findings. As a result, laziness was reduced. The students not only gave personalized names to their own groups and put great enthusiasm into investigating and making presentations in their spare time, but also displayed results in the classroom and participated in some heated discussions. The difficulty of teaching was successfully conquered. Meanwhile, I was delighted to find that the modern young people’s passion of exploring and imagination was far beyond my imagination. It was the Intel Teach Program that has enabled students to travel through thousands of years and have a passionate dialogue with Su Shi.

One of the key moments in my professional development was learning from the Intel Teach Essentials Course («Design activity in the information educational environment of the XXI-st century») .The big thing, I consider, is the leading idea of the Program - effective use of information and educational technologies. Technologies which we practiced using during the course, I now use effectively in my pedagogical activity. Intel Teach has allowed me to understand this success: inner confidence that my pupils will live in life with values, knowledge and the skills that really are necessary for the person in the 21 century. It also is the most important thing - achievement of internal success, satisfaction and the professional work. The lessons of the Intel Teach course is an open door in new understanding at higher level of life, a new educational system, overall objectives and problems.

The Intel Teach Program helped me master Project Based Learning. Having completed the project “Information civilization” in the 11th form, I’ve found confidence that I’m on the right path. This project became the turning point in my professional life. Intel Teach was always a safe “abutment” (support) for me and I’m sure will be in the future.

When technology's door is opened, we let in infinite possibilities… That is how the Intel Teach program has entered my school and my professional CV. It has helped me to rethink methodologies, to plan new teaching practices and to reinvent the teaching/learning processes. Learning, experiencing and living are part of my daily life through this door. I believe the education is the door for new possibilities in children's lives. New technologies came to enhance even more our students' artistic productions, who now have new possibilities of creation.

The program Intel Teach "for the Future" led my students and me to discover the way to success and recognition through projects. Now, we are members of this unique educational community, which aims to make education truly modern.

The program has opened new opportunities for me to implement a profession! I am happy that I belong to this unique community of teachers! This is a breakthrough in education!

Thanks to the Intel Teach Program, my professional and personal growth has taken off. I’m not only a teacher, but a methodologist and a postgraduate student, where the subject of my dissertation is deeply connected to Intel Teach. Project-based learning, information technology, WEB 2.0—all help my students be more successful, compatible and competent.

My Intel Teach trainers used a very different approach to teaching teachers to use technology. It’s not about mastering the technology. What matters, they emphasized, was our desire to translate what ‘little’ we could learn into magic tricks in the classroom.

Intel Teach has shown me how easily technology can be incorporated into the classroom. I participated in a summer training called Intel Teach Elements: Collaboration in the Digital Classroom [www.intel.com/education/elements], where I discussed how teachers could collaborate with their students and other teachers using technology. I also attended several webinars that showed me how to best utilize the tech tools I already have. All of these Intel trainings helped me look at my classroom in a different way. Rather than thinking about what my students will learn, I am now thinking about how they will learn that objective. In the Collaboration training, it was amazing to think about how I could do research while incorporating technology. Intel is an excellent resource when I need ideas for how to use tech tools in a productive way. [http://engage.intel.com] These doors are special to me because these were the first doors I saw walking into my new school. For me, every time I see these doors it reminds me how lucky I am to be in a school that encourages me to explore my passion for technology and how I can make my teaching better using technology.

New friends, constant forward movement, the desire to know today what we couldn't imagine yesterday.

Before I came to this training program I was unaware of preparing subject-wise projects. Now I am fully equipped with the skills and knowledge required for project-based learning. It is only through this training program that I received a complete idea of using computers and related equipment in preparing projects in my primary subject -- Mathematics. I can proudly say this training has delivered many benefits – all made possible by the talented and untiring lecturers of Intel Teach.

Dewan Farooque Memorial High School Badin didn’t have a single computer in 2005 when I joined the school as a Science Teacher. Earlier, in 2002, I attended a workshop conducted by Intel Education. It was very stimulating because I didn’t have any knowledge about computers. I realized that ICT could really be a challenge for a teacher. After the training, I implemented Intel Teach Program in at least five schools successfully. I shared the positive aspects of ICT in education with the Managing Director of Dewan Farooque, who was very supportive to establish a lab. The school became the best in the district. I love to teach and had 17 years of teaching experience before joining Helium Pvt. Ltd. RTA as a Senior Trainer. “Inshallah, I will always continue to teach with the skills learnt through Intel Teach Program, wherever I am.” view a science project that I did: http://educate.intel.com/pk/ProjectDesign/UnitPlanIndex/Cash_the_Waste/index.htm The door represents my joining the regional training agency team which opened many new vistas to explore...

The thinking tools of Intel Teach have enabled my students to discuss subject matter in a systematic way. Because of this, they have become more involved in class, and were able to cooperate with each other more effectively to complete the project.

My Own Teaching Style in Creation The change that education drives could happen unconsciously but with far-reaching impact. As a teacher at Longhu Middle School in Huainan city, Anhui Province, I have experienced magic by changing my way of teaching. The school I have been working in is located in mining area, so students are mostly descendants of miners and some are living in the linkage area between urban and rural areas. Parents of these students work outside of their hometown all year round. Thanks to Intel Teach, I learned that reflecting interaction in activities, displaying cooperation in class, embodying exploration in homework, teaching benefiting teachers as well as students, and emotional communication can gradually create my own unique teaching style, which will make me a better (and more popular) teacher among my students.

The teacher training program in the Municipal School of Basic Education “Francisca F. P. Saile” has motivated significant actions, such as the initiative of some teachers to immediately apply their new abilities on their classes. In the computers lab, as they interact with different softwares, they discuss the use of them in the classroom and the related concepts from different subjects, always towards a solution of a certain challenge. This is the Educational Computers Lab's door, which opens a world of possibilities! On it, there is a piece of work made with a 4th year group with satellite images, that allowed the construction of New Perspectives.