The Accelerating 21st Century Education (ACE) project aims to improve primary and secondary education in Kenya. The project hopes to benefit from a collaborative effort between Cicso, Intel, Microsoft, the Government of Kenya, and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to dramatically utilize technology to improve education in Kenya.

ACE will utilize a "one-to-one e-learning" classroom in 60 target schools in Kenya. Every student will have access to a laptop computer and use a curriculum that will center around problem solving and critical thinking.

To advance this plan, ACE will:

• Deploy 6000 networked computers for student and teacher use;
• Train approximately 7000 teachers;
• Train technical support staff for each of the 60 schools;
• Deploy a wireless infrastructure;
• Provide access to digital curriculum.

"We believe that public-private collaborations like the ACE project are the most powerful means to invest in 21st century learning and at the same time can help stimulate the local economy," said Lila Ibrahim, general manager of the Emerging Markets Platform Group at Intel.

Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft will establish a School Technology Innovation Center (STIC) in Nairobi, Kenya. This model has been used in other countries by the Microsoft Partners in Learning Program. This program is dedicated to highlighting the benefits of technology in the classroom. STIC will utilize 20 Intel-powered PCs, that are networked via Cisco wireless infrastructure and the Windows 7 operating system.

The ACE project over a three year period should benefit about 39,000 students and 7,000 teachers. Kenya's Ministry of Education anticipates that overall some 300,000 people will benefit from the program.

Source: Intel news release: Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Government of Kenya and USAID Launch Joint Project to Enable 21st-Century Education in Kenya Schools.