School partnership wins tech grant

Thanks to a Hewlett-Packard technology grant secured by the School of Education and the Madison Metropolitan School District, students at Cherokee Middle School will soon have the very latest in technology at their fingertips.

They’ll be using 30 laptop computers that are part of MobiLAN ONE, a computer-stacked R2-D2 that can motor down the Cherokee halls at three m.p.h., with or without a hall pass. Totally self-contained, the unit can travel to almost any classroom within the school.

Margaret Stern, a School of Education project assistant, says Hewlett-Packard’s “wireless classroom” will be used to enhance science and mathematics education. Stern works with five Cherokee School teachers to integrate the technology into the curriculum, and says the wireless computers will give students access to many Internet resources, such as Web sites that help students identify minerals or demonstrate how earthquakes are formed.

Combined with the grant’s software, Discourse Teaching Suite, MobiLAN ONE is an excellent teaching tool because “it promotes one-on-one communication between the teacher and student,” says Stern. The laptops enable the teacher to give immediate feedback on student work, which means “every student can participate in a class discussion and contribute to the group’s knowledge. Additionally, teachers will have access to NetSchools Orion, a members-only Web site that links curriculum to state standards, provides rich support materials, and supports a virtual community for teachers, students, and parents,” Stern says.

The partnership between the UW–Madison School of Education and Cherokee Middle School is one of ten in the nation to be awarded the Hewlett-Packard Company’ “2001 School of Education and K-12 Technology Collaboration Grant.”

At a time when the digital divide is continuing to widen, the grant is designed to bring the benefits of technology tools to low-income, ethnically diverse students. In every K-12 school receiving the grant, at least 40 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

The goals of the grant are to enhance learning opportunities for K-12 students, to give student teachers and practicing teachers more training and experience with technology, and to study the impact of technology on student performance and teacher practice. The grant has a combined equipment and cash value of approximately $140,000.