Every teacher wants access to European values and to the European education system. The goal is to improve on both personal and professional levels and, consequently, improve the education we deliver. Thanks to each Intel Teach course, I get closer and closer to that goal!

I took part in two courses in Intel Teach and found them beneficial because they gave me the opportunity to start up some collaborative projects for the school. The impact that Intel Teach courses had on my career was great in the sense that they have grown my knowledge about starting and developing some cross-Europe projects. They have had a great impact on my pupils because I have started five European projects and they have shared their experiences with students from other countries. They shared information about their school, town/city, countries, traditions and customs in English, so they improved their communication skills and IT literacy as well.

My experience with Intel Teach has been phenomenal in so many ways. Actually, because of this program I had faith in the teaching profession and chose to stay in teaching as I realize that for education in the 21st century to be complete it must have the input Intel Teach has brought to the classroom. I have experienced success in my classroom with innovative teaching and learning, making the learner to be a part of the teaching process. Learners having hands on activities and learning that take place outside the classroom. My learners are more critical thinkers and they enjoy working alone and in groups by collaborating and sharing. They understand the choices they make and how it affects their learning. Their scores in general is better with a significant increase. Somehow I find my self assigned to teach the supposedly slow learning class and they now stand their

The Intel Teach Program has changed my entire visualization on the subject teaching, because technology opens up prospects for a form for learning that can be modified to each student’s needs, using IT tools, such as multimedia, e-mail, presentation handouts, and commercial courseware.

I still remember those days that, when I thought of operating computers, I was very much troubled. I always refrained from touching the computers, thinking only scientists had the ability to operate them. I assumed that computers were never meant for a schoolteacher like me. But today the requirements are different and diversified.

Project-based learning (with help of modern technologies) helps educators to support the creative self-development of students. Working on school projects, students teach themselves and learn better problem-solving skills. Knowledge becomes the key to open ANY door in this world!

Every day I have to travel more than 150km through four elephant crossings to take part in Intel Teach training and for the last six days my wife has been in the hospital. But from the first day of this training I decided to leave all that stuff behind and follow this valuable training. Thanks to Intel, I will definitely use Project-Based Approaches to overcome the conflicts between humans and wild elephants in our area.

Technology is taking the information world to great heights and both the educators and the students have to gear up to the challenges of the changing world. The buzzword is e-education, which should enable one to provide learning stimulus beyond traditional methods. The Intel Teach programs aim towards this goal. The training imparted to me at the Intel Teach essential course in 2008 and the Intel TEO course in 2009 opened up a new horizon with computers making inroads in a big way into my teaching world. I could identify with the 21st century skills, which assisted me in empowering myself and in developing more competent and qualified students. Word processing, spreadsheets, multimedia and other unfamiliar areas became routine work. Making slide shows and incorporating animations in them to put life into teaching and joy for the students. Using Excel to prepare charts and graphs, data tables, percentage calculations, etc. became familiar territory. I learned to work with MS publisher. The Intel Teach training also gave me a variety of rubrics for assessing students’ work. The training programs gave me an insight into project base learning, PBL. I learned strategies to connect the school curriculum to the society at large and allow the students to investigate issues and topics in real world problems and try to evolve problem-solving strategies. The Intel TEO program taught me to collaborate with other teachers and discuss and develop new strategies of teaching and learning. As an extension of the training programs, I along with few other trained teachers, imparted the same to our untrained colleagues so as to make them familiar with the Intel Teach program. Further, to put my training into use, I decided to teach ‘Carbon and its compounds’ - a topic of class XI Chemistry syllabus, with the PBL method. The implementation plan had the following major thrusts— • Experiments to develop skills of ‘learning by doing’ • HOTS through brain storming sessions, model making and creating crosswords • ICT was integrated in making presentations, creating newsletters and a project website using MS Publisher and graphical analysis using excel spreadsheets. Students also became aware of global conferencing and virtual classrooms using Internet resources. • The project was taken beyond the classroom by conducting fieldtrips, surveys and interviews where the children role played as environmentalists and journalists and also carried out an awareness campaign on ways and means of curbing air pollution. • Besides integrating many subjects, the project helped to fulfill all the validities of a science curriculum in accordance with NCF 2005. • A major gain was that the underachievers gained in confidence after working closely with their peers and the teacher The project won the KVS and Intel joint contest award 2008-09. This motivated me to explore other forms of innovative classroom teaching and assessment tools picked up at the Intel training sessions. The class improved in academics as a result of these, more than half the class secured above 90% in Chemistry at the class XII CBSE board examination the next year.