in Action
L&L Senior Editor Diana Fingal writes about HP’s Innovations in Education grant program
It was a whirlwind trip. A handful of ISTE representatives traveled to Texas, Australia, Singapore, India,
and Mexico in August to provide professional development to the winning
schools of the 2009 HP Innovations
in Education grants. At each stop
along the way, they met with teams of
educators and local mentors to offer
tailored professional development in
line with local education needs. The
focus was on systemic leadership involving technical support within the
school and on inquiry- and project-based learning.
ISTE representatives, including
Senior Director of Education Leadership Jayne James, CEO Don Knezek,
Director of Professional Development
Services Mark Andrews, and Project
Manager Linda Keller, took along Flip
video cameras. They’ve posted some
inspiring interviews on the ISTE Connects blog at www.isteconnects.org.
Although the trip has ended for
ISTE staff members, the learning is
just beginning for the educators and
students in the 33 schools in North
America and 29 schools on other
continents that won the yearlong
grants.
ISTE staff members continue to
work with program managers Hilary
LaMonte and Yolanda Ramos, who
are helping mentors assist the grantees
on their projects. Using ISTE’s online
learning management system, the
mentors will offer guidance and feedback to each school.
The projects vary from school to
school. In Monroe County, Florida,
students are using their new technology and skills to create a biodiesel
project. They will be doing hands-on
activities and inquiry-based science
experiments. Their goal is to get a
school bus in the Florida Keys running on biodiesel.
In India, Rudy Wuthrich is a mentor who is working with four very different schools. “There is one school in
Calcutta where they want to integrate
technology as a research tool into the
classroom,” he says. “Another school
in Tamil Nadu has never had any
computers, and the goal is to expose
teachers and students to this new environment. I hope the students will
recognize that the HP PC is a tool to
connect to the world.”
At the Heritage School in Kolkata,
India, educators will use the grant
money in part to set up virtual lab stations to conduct experiments that cannot be performed in the school’s lab.
“Rather than studying anatomy by
cutting up corpses of animals, students would be able to use virtual reality programs for effective learning,”
Principal Seema Sapru wrote in the
grant proposal.
“The entire face of classroom teaching will undergo a change,” she wrote.
“The teacher will no longer serve as
a disseminator of information via
lectures and textbooks. Rather, the
teacher will adopt the roles of facilitator, tutor, and learner. Similarly, the
student will abandon the role of solitary memorizer of facts and principles
for the roles of researcher, problem
solver, and strategist.”
Meanwhile, mentor Mike Silverton
is working with four schools in Canada. “Although each is a little different, the overarching idea is involving
students in inquiry-based activities,
providing real-world focus to develop
21st-century skills and attitudes in
math and science.”
All the projects are exciting to Jim
Vanides of HP. “It’s all about reimag-ining the classroom, giving students
new kinds of learning experiences
that they couldn’t have before without
the technology, and without the best
pedagogy that’s out there,” he says.
“And then the magic happens.”
48 Learning & Leading with Technology | November 2009
