UNM’s College of Education was one of 10 colleges chosen nationwide to participate in a program with Hewlett-Packard Company aimed at studying the impact of technology on K-12 education.
The College of Education and Bernalillo Public Schools will use three quarters of a two-year, $141,000 grant from the computer company to purchase 30 laptop computers for the schools.
The computers will be connected via a wireless system to a portable network cart that houses a printer and digital camera and provides storage and battery-charging for the laptops.
The wireless connections allow students to browse the Internet and collaborate on school projects through Bernalillo High School’s existing network system.
The remainder of the grant money will fund special training for UNM student teachers and a pilot group of 10 teachers from Bernalillo Schools, said College of Education development director Jeff Hale, who wrote the grant proposal.
The goal of the project is two-fold, Hale said.
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“Basically, this is Hewlett-Packard attempting to introduce wireless technology into the classroom with a view toward improving the education,” he said. “They also want to study whether it’s even relevant. They want to see if technology is useful for imparting already-existing curricula.”
Hale said Hewlett-Packard chose to fund the partnership between UNM and Bernalillo schools because it had developed a computer-driven curriculum in all disciplines, not just math and science.
According to a Hewlett Packard press release, the $4.8 billion company wanted to work with low-income, ethnically mixed school districts.
Hale said 75 percent of Bernalillo students qualify for the school’s free lunch program.
A high percentage of students come from underrepresented minority backgrounds, he said.
Many of the schools’ students come from remote areas of its 50-mile district, said Bernalillo Schools technology coordinator Barbara Lowder.
Lowder said students can use the laptops anywhere on campus and they also can access the network through home computers.
She said that the system, called the HP Wireless Mobile Classroom, will allow teachers to integrate their classes with others and monitor students’ progress more efficiently.
The grant represents a potential for future collaborations between large technology corporations and the College of Education, Hale said.
“The College of Education is proud,” he said. “There are a lot of colleges that would like to get help from HP. We’re not a University of Michigan or Northwestern — for a mountain west state university we’re not as selective, but our mission is to serve more students. This is the beginning of something that could be bigger.”
Lowder said the schools were developing criteria with which it would choose the 10 teachers to send to the UNM College of Education training.
The school anticipates delivery of the computers and mobile network cart by early September. She said after the two-year project ends, Hewlett-Packard will probably reduce the amount of contact with the school, but the equipment and software will remain.
She said more of the district’s teachers would be trained on the equipment after the study concluded.
Other colleges participating in the program include Howard University, University of California Los Angeles, Stanford University and New Mexico State University, among others.
