IT training will be delivered to 2500 government school teachers in NSW, QLD and Victoria this year, with the rollout of an Intel-backed program designed to promote the use of technology in the classroom.
The Intel Teach to the Future program - run in conjunction with state education departments - includes teacher-led lessons which incorporate the internet, website design and multimedia software. The program aims to train educators on how to fit technology into the classroom curricula, Intel said.
Participant teachers leave the workshops with a documented unit plan to engage students in the use of ICT, and teachers who are trained can use their expertise to teach the program concepts to other teaching staff at their school, Intel said. The K-12 curriculum consists of 10, four-hour modules.
'Master trainers do an intensive course and then go out in the field, said Phil Dows, national marketing manager at Intel Australia. He added that ICT in the classroom often gets 'under-utilised.'
The announcement follows successful pilot programs last year involving more than 600 teachers in primary and secondary schools in NSW and Victoria. Queensland will run a pilot this year. Worldwide, Intel claims it has already trained 1.5 million teachers at schools in 33 countries.
Technology is 'daunting' for many teachers and the program was designed to remove the barriers for teaching staff, Dows said. 'It's not just a PC skills course,' he said.
Intel Australia would spend 'hundreds of thousands” of dollars each year on the program and courses would be updated annually, Dows said.
There are 60,000 registered teachers in NSW alone and Dows admitted that training as many teachers as possible was a 'large task that would be done over many years.'
In April, Deakin University completed its evaluation of the impact of the program on teachers and found that over 99 percent felt it prepared them to support students in using ICT for their schoolwork.
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