400 candidates out of thousands of applicants qualify to the first local Intel ISEF competitions

The competitions will assume the form of local fairs, which aim at selecting a number of creative students in the fields of science and engineering and giving that number the opportunity to partake in Intel's International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), a prestigious annual event that will be held in May this year, in the state of Indiana, USA.

The tripartite of Intel, The Ministry of Education, and MobileCom was formed in November 2005 to elevate the level of support provided for the activities of Intel ISEF, considered part of Intel's "Innovation in Education Initiative".

The Ministry of Education explained that December 15, 2005 was the last date to receive applications from students in grades 9-11, pointing out that all applications were evaluated by a special committee designed for every directorate. Afterwards, the committee forwarded good applications to the Ministry of Education who contacted candidates through different directorates. "Very soon, the qualified students are expected to receive their participation kits, needed for the next stage," The Ministry said.

The qualified students are preparing to take part in the local fairs, which will be held in the north, middle and south of the Kingdom from February 1 to 8, 2006. Each fair constitutes three phases, preparation, evaluation, and visits to the schools to enhance the awareness on Intel ISEF and encourage all students to participate in next year's local fairs.

"The arbitration committee that includes a number of university professors, selected from different Jordanian universities and holding academic degrees suitable for the prize, will evaluate the students' projects during the fairs according to Intel ISEF's international criteria in order to measure different matters such as creative ability, team work, scientific thinking, project's scientific objective, and project's fulfillment", Ministry of Education's Spokesperson Ayman Barakat said.

The Ministry declared that they are now orienting and training students to participate in the local fairs through interviews and consultancy, thus assisting them in setting a complete project that meets the standards of Intel ISEF's required projects and hopefully will help them reach the final local arbitration fairs, which will be held in the mid of February in two fairs, one for the students who qualified from the Kingdom's northern and southern schools, and the other for those who qualified from the Kingdom's middle region schools.

During the last quarter of 2005, Intel, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, also held orientation and training workshops in different areas in Jordan for teachers and students.

"We are delighted with the great number of promising students who applied to participate in Intel's fairs this year and who realized the importance of these events as a golden opportunity to show their skills and creativity. We also thank MobileCom for their valuable support that helped us drive awareness of Intel ISEF and its international reputation by running advertising and public relations campaigns, and thus, increasing the number of participants from last year where only few hundreds applied and around a hundred students qualified. This noticeable increase in the number of students will definitely result in greater competition and creativity, meeting the goals of Intel ISEF, which always looks forward to motivating and encouraging development and scientific research," Rula Habash Intel Education Manager for Jordan & Lebanon said.

MobileCom's CFO Majd Shweikeh commented: "MobileCom is always keen on supporting the youth sector and highlighting local talents. The great number of applicants this year for Intel ISEF local fairs comes as a true translation of this company's direction. As we look forward to continuing this fruitful partnership, which bears positive results on the future of Jordan's youth, we also hope to increase the number of local participants going to the USA fair by making the count 8 students and 4 supervisors".

It is worth mentioning that Jordan Telecom Group has been always committed to contributing to education development in Jordan. The Group has also worked continuously to support the Jordanian Education Initiative for electronic education and has connected Jordanian universities in addition to computerizing the Arabic curriculum for Jordanian schools. This is financed by France Telecom and executed in cooperation with E-Dimension. All These efforts come as attainment to the vision of His Majesty King Abdullah the Second in eliminating the digital gap and using all the technology at hand for reach that goal.