Through a partnership with Foothill College, a select group of teachers in the Philippines completed a two-week course designed to provide the skills to leverage technology to teach science, math and engineering classes.

With more than $250,000 in support from the Filipino government including the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry, Foothill’s Krause Center for Innovation developed a two-week, 70-hour course that provided each participant with the tools and knowledge to pass on the curriculum to up to 35 more teachers.

The college sent a team of consultants in April to teach the course at the Daniel Maramba National High School in a region abutting the South China Sea.

The goal of “train the trainer” program is to instruct enough teachers to impact more than 120,000 K-12 students in the region during the 2013-14 school year, according to a Foothill press release.

Steve McGriff, teacher-in-residence at the Krause center, said he was impressed with the dedication of the Filipino teachers, who would often work on their new skills late into the night.

“The character of the Filipino teachers was amazing,” McGriff said. “Our instructional team was blown away.”

For the next six months, staff from Foothill will provide virtual support to the Filipino educators using a closed professional community website.

McGriff said there has been talk of repeating the two-week program in the future with past graduates providing support.

“(Then you’d) have a teaching assistant who can step into the learning environment to support the new group of educators,” McGriff said.

The Krause Center of Innovation was founded in 2000 to improve the learning outcomes of K-14 students with a focus on science, technology, engineering and math education, according to the center’s website.