Recently while walking in a parking lot with my brother, he stopped to observe the adhesive material of a stop sign.  He spent several minutes observing this stop sign as if it were a piece of art.  He detailed the type material used, its characteristics and even shared the adhesive manufacturer. Prior to this moment, I had driven past thousands of stop signs and only saw red, white and the word stop.  What I would typically see prior to this event was of course adequate.  But who wants to be adequate when you can be great!

What my brother shared provided me with a deeper understanding of signs and adhesives. It opened up a room in my mind that would have been otherwise untapped.  This is the essence of how diversity thrives inside of Intel. The diverse individual experiences enrich what we see, innovate what we design, and challenge us to look at things from unique perspectives. We walk away collectively having learned more and with stronger outcomes than we each individually bring to the discussion.  Diversity is the one thing we all have in common and at Intel, it is much of the magic behind our successes. 

Annually,  the Arizona site formally celebrates our diversity efforts with an award event.  This month, we honored 16 leaders, 13 employee groups and Veena Mahesh was the recipient of our prized AZ Lifetime Achievement Award.   Congratulations to all of the diversity leaders.  Malcolm Forbes once said, “diversity is the art of thinking independently together.”  It is indeed and is also the glue that weaves innovation together at Intel.

Every year, Intel honors U.S. schools that implement innovative, replicable programs that inspire their students and lead to a positive educational outcomes in the areas of math and science. If you know a school who demonstrates excellence in these areas please encourage them to enter the 2012 Intel Schools of Distinction Awards.

Six winners will be selected – two from each grade range (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) – in each of the two categories of math and science. Don’t miss this opportunity to have them apply – the application deadline is Feb. 23, 2012.

The Intel Foundation and sponsoring companies distribute a total of $1million in cash and awards to the winning schools. Last year’s winners each received an estimated $100,000 in a combination of cash grants from the Intel Foundation and an award package that includes curriculum materials, professional development resources, hardware and software from sponsors including BrainHoney, Brainware Safari, Dell, I-CAN, KDS, LanSchool, SAS, SMART and Pearson.

Valley Christian Junior High took home the Star Innovator Award, which brought an additional $15,000 from the Intel Foundation and other prizes for a total of $125,000 in cash and prizes.

According to Amanda Alonza, a Science Teacher from Lynbrook High School – winner of the High School Science category, “going through the application process allowed us to reflect on our best practices and see areas we want to improve.” And her thoughts on attending the festivities in Washington D.C., “There are so many creative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning that I have learned, which I will definitely bring back to implement in our schools.”

Mike Duffy, Principal of Byron High School – winner of the High School Math category expressed his thoughts, stating that “Intel’s commitment to highlight the best of education and bring together teacher-leaders from around the country validates the work we all do for our students. To be in the company of so many amazing, innovative educators focused on student learning and achievement speaks volumes to the strength and potential of our entire educational system.”

Get deserving recognition for your favorite School of Distinction. Have them apply by Feb. 23, 2012.  www.schoolsofdistinction.com

I recently wrote about the Intel University program, and the impact it had on closing my skills gap (all the stuff I didn’t learn in school). Earlier this month, Martina Roth posted on the ATC21S presence at the Educational World Forum. ATC21S, a collaboration between Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco, aims to address this gap by providing tools and assessment frameworks to teachers.

So, when a last minute opportunity to visit an ATC21S pilot session in Arizona arose, I jumped at the chance. It was great – and fortunately, you don’t have to read about my experience – because ATC21S recently put out a video explaining what the program does. Enjoy!

Yesterday afternoon, Intel welcomed the President of the United States, Barack Obama, to our Ocotillo campus in Arizona – future home of the FAB 42 manufacturing plant. Several thousand Intel employees and guests attended the event, which was covered by both local and national media outlets.

As I supported the core planning team for the President’s visit, I have first-hand knowledge of all the early mornings and late evenings that this event required. If you’re wondering how we were able to pull this together in such a short time, look no further than our very own employees.  Intel volunteers stepped up to make this event happen, pitching in just as they do with their service in our communities and schools. Last year, Intel employees logged more than 1 million hours of volunteer service in their schools and communities through our Intel Involved volunteer program – more information is available in our 2010 Corporate Responsibility Report.

Renee Levin, our local Community Engagement Manager, writes:

“We had over 240 volunteers that supported President Obama’s visit. They were enthusiastic, resourceful, and organized and did it all with a smile on their face. It took all of them to pull off this amazing event in just three days!  Teams supported getting people to/from the parking lots, getting through security, making sure people had water, helping the visitors get back to their cars via a bus or a scenic walk next to the big crane.  As always, Intel volunteers came through! Intel volunteers ROCK!”

A group of Intel employee volunteers in their blue “Intel Involved” shirts. Over 240 employees volunteered their time to help make this event successful

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When I graduated from university two years ago – getting old, I know , I experienced a number of emotions – exhaustion, pride, happiness, and above all, an overwhelming sense of relief – no more classes, no more homework – EVER!

But when I started my first “real” job, I quickly realized that the learning was hardly over; in fact, it was really just beginning: homework was also replaced with plain old work. It seemed like somewhere in between calculating the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and writing reports on deforestation in Southeast Asia, my professors had conveniently neglected to school me on the skills I use every day, on the job. The more I look into it though, the more I realize that this is a widespread phenomenon (check out this fifty-something page report from the Harvard School of Education on the “skills gap”).

This is one of the reasons why organizations send their employees to be trained, or establish their own internal training programs. With close to 100,000 employees worldwide, it’s no surprise that Intel has its own internal employee development organization, dubbed “Intel University” (duh). In 2010, we invested about $250 million into the program, with employees logging over 2.6 million learning hours – an average of almost 35 hours per employee. Additional information about the program is available in our 2010 Corporate Responsibility Report.

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You probably already know that in addition to blogging, our team is also active on Twitter (I bet that’s how you got here). In fact, we have several handles – two of them being @Intel_Education and @Intel_CSR.

Recently, we changed the name of our @Intel_Education handle to @Intelinvolved to better reflect our passion and active involvement towards creating a better future. The increased scope of topics we’ll be tweeting on – topics like corporate social responsibility, environment, community engagement, social innovation, and of course, education. Intel does a lot in these spaces, and we want to share these stories with you more frequently.

Eventually, our plan is to merge the @Intel_CSR handle and tweet exclusively from @Intelinvolved (less work for me!). In the meantime, please continue to follow us for the latest news.

If you haven’t already, please take a second and follow @Intelinvolved.

As always, if you have questions, comments, or suggestions, leave a comment below – or send me a tweet!

This blog was posted on behalf of Laurie Buczek, Enterprise Marketing Manager in Intel’s Storage Division. Laurie’s social media journey began in 2007, while helping to launch and manage Intel’s first external social media community. Follow Laurie on Twitter @LauriegBuczek

The Arab Spring has set into motion an awakening….an opportunity that hasn’t been seen historically by women in North Africa and the Middle East. Women feel more empowered than ever to change their circumstances, change their status and change their communities. I personally witnessed the “stirrings” during a recent opportunity in Morocco to represent Intel as a Corporate Ambassador and speak to a conference of numerous business women about leveraging social media to grow their businesses.

Intel is actively involved in programs to empower girls and women. For over 40 years, Intel has been creating technologies that advance the way people live, work and learn. Intel believes that to foster innovation and drive economic growth, everyone, especially girls and women, need to be enabled with education, employment and entrepreneurial skills. It is evidence based that improving women’s economic status produces positive outcomes for society. Unfortunately, technology has been underused in unlocking women’s economic opportunities. My recent trip to Morocco was a chance to shrink that digital divide.

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Assessment and Teaching of 21^st Century Skills @ the Education World Forum in London

Systemic Education Transformation is not possible without innovative ways of assessing and teaching 21^st century skills in the classroom – perhaps one of the most challenging parts of the current reform on-going in Education.  The project Assessment and Teaching of 21st-Century Skills (ATC21S) [http://atc21s.org/] is exactly addressing this challenge. It is spearheading research, development and implementation of pilots and trials on 21^st Century skills assessment and teaching in primary and secondary school classrooms. A global partnership founded and funded by Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, headquartered at the University of Melbourne, with pilots and trials currently implemented by 6 governments, endorsed by OECD PISA and IEA. And ready for scale mid of this year.

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This blog was posted on behalf of Renee Kuriyan, Director of Social Impact in Intel’s Corporate Responsibility Office.

2011 showed the world that social media sites no longer solely signify just sharing favorite YouTube videos or photos with your friends. As social media becomes more integral to the way we live, protest, gather, support, and view politics– it is actually changing relationships between citizens and governments. This has been most clear in the collection of uprisings and revolutions in the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring. Social media, websites and wikis, and interactive geo-mapping are playing a key role in increasing accountability, participation and transparency in public administration.

The World Bank approached Intel to collaborate in investigating this topic given our expertise in the technology field, e-governance, and digital inclusion. Together, we wrote a report examining how Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to improve the accountability and transparency of governments in delivering services to the poor, women, and citizens more broadly.

If you want to better understand how social media and other ICT tools are truly going to revolutionize the relationship between citizens and governments and create new standards for transparency and accountability–this report attempts to start answering some of those difficult questions.

Download the report here.

The Intel Education Service Corps (IESC) is a short-term service and career development opportunity for a select group of Intel employees to support the deployment of Intel-powered classmate PCs in developing countries. In this blog, Heather Levin, an applications engineer at Intel, recaps her team’s second week of experiences in India working with CARE in Kushalda.

The last afternoon in Hardoi was full of tears as the teachers wrote long letters thanking us and the girls made us a card with a flame and told us that we were a light in darkness. We felt like movie stars as we said our goodbyes to little girls as they waved, and asked us to return soon.

Today we were introduced to the Udaan school in Kushalda (Orissa province). There were some noticeable differences with the Kushalda School. First, it was warmer in Orissa, and for the first time since arriving in India, the sky was blue, instead of the usual white. Unlike Hardoi, the girls appeared more shy, and they wore uniforms of pink, blue, and green dresses. The computer room was bare; the only objects within the confines of the cement walls were pigeons, tatami mats, and the classmate PCs. Where in Hardoi we relied heavily on Deepak’s Hindi, here we were relying on Deepak’s translation of our lesson plans into Hindi and the teachers’ translation of his Hindi into Oriya.

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