Intel Worl Ahead Program Principal Architect Visits Armenia

On March 15 a workshop aimed at finding proper places and the ways where the Intel Corporation and the Armenian Government as well as IT industry and related organizations and individuals could collaborate best was held in Yerevan.The workshop was organized jointly by the RA Ministries of Economy and Education and Science, Enterprises Incubator Foundation (EIF), the Unicomp CJSC, from one side, and Intel, from the other. The guest speaker was Robert Fogel, the Principal Architect of the Intel World Ahead Program, as well as of the Corporation's some other (educational) programs.

This workshop was a result of the RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s extensive meetings with top managers of the world IT giants such as Intel, Cisco, and some others held within the framework of the ArmTech-3 ICT and Hi-tec Congress which was held in November 2009 in San Jose (Ca, USA). Mr Fogel’s extensive worldwide voyages, according to him, is "to help the countries all over the world to improve their education system by putting into it e-learning programs."

And the Intel World Ahead Program has been designed for "connecting ever new people to computers and communication technology," as its Principal Architect said. "Today only 1.2bln of the world total 6.8bln popula­tion are connected to computer information technologies. And our target is another 5.6 billion," he continued.
The World Ahead Program is focused on three areas, primarily: education, healthcare and business development, which are, in Robert Fogel's words, "the three legs of sustainable social-economic development of the world soci­ety."
Healthcare programs include h/c educa­tion, creating of mobile units and ICT-connection between local clinics.
In business, the Program's main target are small and medium enterprises as.
As to education, according to Mr Fogel, today the school teacher is no more a person who's teaching a single subject: math, physics, biology, etc; he /she is rather "a mentor," who is to teach the feeling of per­sonal responsibility, and, indeed, the six (principal) skills of the 21st century: creativity and entrepreneurship; technology and media literacy; effective communi­cation; problem solving; critical thinking; collaboration.
And for that reason Intel has created Partnership for 21st Century Skills program www.21stcenturyskills.org.
Mr Fogel said. "The very reason of my (very first but we hope not the last - G. Kh.) visit to Armenia is to learn about the country by this workshop, meet­ings with managers, educators and the Government indeed: tomorrow I am meeting Minister of Education and Science Mr Armen Ashotyan. (In Robert Fogel's next day meetings at the Ministry Armen Baldryan as well as Intel South Caucasus and Central Asia Regional Manager Dmitry Kissel, who especially arrived in Yerevan, participated Government of Armenia" (expect­ed to he signed soon).
As to Unicomp, our long time partner, I believe that we've been doing very good things with it, and we are looking for to contin­uing those good things with Unicomp."
Armen Baldryan, who is also member of the IT Development Support Council (ITDSC) under the RA Prime Minister, said: "For all of us, the IT community, Number One priority is to promote maximally the develop­ment of Armenia, and education is a key-tool for that develop­ment. And for this I will use all my contacts throughout the world."