When a school burns to the ground it tends to stir our own childhood memories of where we went to school, what we learned and the teachers who taught us, and of schoolmates we shared with in the classroom and on the playground. When the cause of the school fire is arson, it also tends to galvanize the community, rallying in concert to ensure that the impacted students and teachers can quickly return to the joys of learning, and forget the scars left by the fire.
Intel has a long history of supporting the advancement of education — from kindergarten to graduate studies — but recently we had a chance to lend a hand, literally from the ground up, for the community of Merritt Trace Elementary School in San Jose, California. Trace is one of the largest elementary schools in the San Jose Unified School District, with almost 800 students; more than 64% of the students are Latino and 60% of Trace’s students are in the free or reduced lunch program.
When Intel’s Ken Brown says he’s doing a deep dive, that’s precisely what he means. Ken—he’s the guy in the black flippers—has been spearheading a remarkable undersea photography project. (And Intel support has been pivotal. More on that in a moment.)
Diving to depths up to 100 feet at an astoundingly rich coral reef off Little Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Ken and his extended team are now shooting and assembling a super high-resolution “Portrait of a Coral Reef.” The monster image—created from as many as 500 individual hi-rez shots, and stitched into a single eye-popping terabye-size image—will show the dazzling ecological richness of the so-called Great Wall West, with its teeming schools of multicolored fish and coral formations and plant life.
English translation of Jun Ge’s post originally published on Intel China’s blog
In this sultry July, Intel held a host of education activities, aiming at exploring ways for education transformation under the theme “Educate to Innovate.” I attended the “Innovation Education Forum”, “Intel Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge Summer Camp”, and “2010 Intel Cup Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest - Embedded System Design”. I had the opportunity to communicate with officials from the Ministry of Education, and domestic and overseas education experts and scholars including Wei Yu, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Prof. Yuan Si, vice president of Tsinghua University, Elizabeth Marincola, chairman of the Society for Science & the Public (SSP), Christina Maslach, vice president of University of California, Berkeley, and Wang Yue, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. We have one purpose — through extensive exchanges and cooperation, to discover and sum up experience and models that truly contribute to systematic education transformation and development of innovative talents. As Xunzi, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, put it, “Although the road may be near, you cannot reach it if you do not go there; although a matter may be trifle, it cannot be accomplished if you don’t do it.” We hope our efforts will contribute to China’s education innovation.
Anyone who knows Intel culture would understand how much importance we attach to education and how much we have invested in education. Based on our efforts and expertise over the past decades, Intel summarizes five topics for global education transformation: 1. How to provide stronger policy support to promote education reform; 2. How to improve curriculum standards to meet the demand for talents in the 21st century; 3. How to provide a broader and more reliable platform for teachers’ professional development; 4. How to propel education reform and development with information technology, to enable high-tech companies like Intel to better align our specialties to needs in the educational circles; 5. How to evaluate education in a more objective and accurate manner, to achieve continuous optimization and improvement.
Wanted to share this blog post today from SmartPlanet - an interview with my colleague Lorie Wigle who heads up Intel’s Eco Tech Program Office. Lorie’s been a good sport about her nickname - “the Green Queen” - but in my mind, her leadership both within Intel and out in the industry to drive sustainability initiatives and look for innovative ways to push for greater energy efficiency, certainly has earned her that title. In addition to her day job, Lorie also serves as president of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) - which has a lot of ideas for how you can help to reduce your own emissions associated with computer use. Lorie knows - as many of us do - that it’s not enough to just get your own house in order, you need to also look at the big picture opportunities and partner with others to get to real solutions.
You may already know a bit about what Intel’s been doing in the environment. But some of the things Laurie touches on in her interview that you may not have heard about:
Intel is the largest voluntary purchaser of green power in the US, per the EPA - representing approximately half of our US energy use.
When we looked at the first billion connected PCs vs. our projections for the “second billion” connected PCs, we estimate that the second billion (targeted by 2014) will be much more energy efficient; the second billion will have 17x the computing power, but will require about half of the energy use of the first.
Use of power management features on computers is still relatively low (an estimated 18% of all desktop computers use them) - that’s why Intel and CSCI are encouraging more people to make sure they use these features. By improving the efficiency of power delivery and power management, CSCI is targeting the elimination of 54 million tons of CO2 from IT equipment by June 2011 - to date the IT sector has collectively saved an estimated 32 million tons of CO2 associated with computing equipment.
Yesterday evening the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network Teen Summit kicked off at Northeastern University. For those of you who don’t know, the Teen Summit is a bi-annual conference held in Boston, the location of the flagship Computer Clubhouse.
The Teen Summit provides an opportunity for Clubhouse coordinators and members to come together for an exciting, fun-filled week of developing new skills, exploring ideas, problem solving and building confidence through technology. This year’s theme is Mobilize, Act, Inspire. Youth are asked to collaborate on projects to address socially conscious challenges such as reducing urban violence and improving the environment. The youth will utilize technology in a variety of workshops throughout the week and showcase their finished projects on Sunday, Aug 1, in a project fair open to the public.
This year marks Intel’s 10 year anniversary of support for the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network (ICCN). ICCN consists of 100 Clubhouses, in over 20 countries, serving over 25,000 youth annually. I was excited to hear that 350 attendees representing ~84 of the 100 Clubhouses are in attendance this week for the Teen Summit, making this the biggest Teen Summit ever!
Gail Breslow, ICCN Director, gave a brief welcome and interactive roll-call to the crowd yesterday evening. Members stood up and cheered when their country was called. She also thanked Intel for its generous support and announced the celebration of Intel’s 10 Year anniversary of support for the network during the Teen Summit. Monique Hayward spoke on behalf of Intel, sharing a brief history of Intel becoming the title sponsor of the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network and expanding the network to 100 Clubhouses. She also congratulated the Clubhouse coordinators and staff on the amazing work that they do daily, which changes lives and greatly impacts the community. Lastly, she gave a call to action to the youth attending the conference to embrace the theme and do GREAT things this week.
After everyone was fired up for the week, the crowd proceeded down the hall to the Project Extravaganza. In preparation for the Teen Summit, each Computer Clubhouse was asked to bring projects from their local Clubhouse to share with fellow Clubhouse members. The Northeastern hall was filled with music, digital art, videos, short films, 3D modeling, Scratch projects, and, of course, lots of energy and excitement.
This post focuses on one of my favorite examples of how, given the opportunity and encouragement from a company like Intel, young people can make big changes.
For the past seven years, Intel Israel has been an avid adopter of the Intel® Learn Program. The program targets youth 8-18 years old. It not only teaches them about the use of technology, but also empowers them to contribute to their communities. And I’m very proud to note that we recently celebrated our most recent milestone: 300,000 “Intel learners” in Israel. Given that in the whole country there are only about 1.2 million students in the program catchment age range, this is indeed a very significant achievement.
As I found myself climbing a ladder in a narrow stairwell ascending to the rooftop of Intel’s Chandler building in 111 degree weather, I wished that I had packed a dry shirt in the car. But if Intel’s Marty Sedler can do this regularly in the Arizona summer, then I could certainly suck it up. Sweaty clothes and all. Today’s mission was to get a close-up look at our new solar panel installation — part of Intel’s larger commitment to using renewable energy.
I refer to Marty as Intel’s own “green power ranger” — but his official title is Intel Director of Global Utilities and Infrastructure. He is one of the behind-the-scenes guys at Intel responsible for driving our green energy programs. He’ll tell you that he’s personally excited about this project because he’s found the sweet spot of corporate sustainability goals - AND economic goodness for Intel’s bottom line (which is important to all shareholders). He’s been closely involved in all of our solar installations across Intel campuses in Arizona, California and Oregon. Here Marty talks about the solar panels - provided by First Solar - on Intel’s rooftop in Chandler, Arizona.
In January, we announced Intel’s plans to build seven new solar projects in four U.S. states. This commitment includes ground and roof-mounted solar electric facilities that can produce approximately 2.8 million watts of power, enough to power over 400 U.S. homes per year. Since that announcement, I have had the fun of watching the construction of one of the projects from the vantage point of my cubicle in Folsom. It is amazing to me how quickly it was possible to move from announcement to operations. Today, we’re proud to report that our solar sites in Folsom, CA, and Chandler, AZ, are now up and running.
Intel’s Folsom solar installation is our biggest solar site to-date and the largest non-industrial solar site in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District service area. Spanning approximately 5.5 acres, it will provide nearly 25 percent of the building’s peak energy demands and is expected to produce more than 1.5 million kWhs annually - enough energy to power close to 175 area homes. Intel’s Chandler solar roof system will generate approximately 10 percent of the building’s energy peak demand. SolarCity managed the installation of the photovoltaic array at the Folsom site, and is also the project manager on Intel’s solar projects at seven other U.S. facilities.
How can we develop learning environments, build mechanisms and establish resources to help cultivate innovative talents? That was the topic of discussion of the Education Innovation forum hosted by Intel China and Tsinghua University last week in Beijing. This was the first time where prominent educators from the top universities, K-12 schools, research institutions, NGOs worldwide had all come together to share views and best known methods on the subject. As the sponsors, there was also solid participation from the China Ministry of Education (MOE), China Youth League Central Committee(YLCC) and China Association for Science and Technology(CAST).
It’s often said that you are judged by the company you keep. On Tuesday evening I was proud to be in company of other businesses who truly care about having a positive social impact while also creating great products and services for their customers. Intel was awarded the 2010 Corporate Engagement Award from the Points of Light Institute in recognition of the dedication and positive impact of the Intel employees who volunteer in our communities around the world each year. The award specifically recognized the 1.3 million hours of volunteering our employees gave back to their communities in celebration of Intel’s 40th anniversary.
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