The Pandemic Drives New Era of Tech Collaboration
From Rich Echevarria: One hundred days ago, our CEO, Bob Swan, announced the Intel Pandemic Response Technology Initiative. Intel would invest $50 million to combat COVID-19 in ways we knew best: using technology to study and help with the diagnosis of the coronavirus, helping disrupted educators and students, and supporting innovative new ideas and projects.
I've had the privilege of leading this initiative and seeing an extraordinarily committed group of Intel employees, customers and partners mobilize. In just over three months they have made possible new and creative uses for our technology to address a range of challenges. We've come a long way, learned a lot and still have much to do. On behalf of this team – at 100 days in – I wanted to share some of that journey.
So far, Intel has partnered with over 100 organizations on close to 200 projects totaling more than $30 million in contributions – from the original pandemic response to first early steps toward recovery. In those early days, we provided ventilator manufacturers with vital parts. We assisted with the creation of virtual intensive care units.
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Intel's PRTI at 100 Days: In Los Angeles, Online Classes that Inspire
As public-school students around the world – and their parents and teachers – struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in California offers a sobering statistic. Roughly 30% of LAUSD students are not regularly attending their virtual classes. Some 15% of the district's students have not attended a single class.
For Los Angeles' sprawling system of more than 600,000 students and 24,000 teachers, remote learning is, for now, an educational reality. The challenge facing L.A. educators is to offer new and appealing online coursework for the more than 200,000 kids who are not consistently attending school – as well as the many others who are.
One hundred days since Intel launched its $50 million Pandemic Response Technology Initiative in April, Intel and ViacomCBS are close to rolling out a series of pre-recorded online classes unlike anything most L.A. kids have seen before in their classrooms.