Palm announced $2.3 million in technology grants to US K-12 schools and colleges today at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Chicago.
Mike Lorion, vice president of education markets at Palm (and a former executive of Apple’s education division) said that Palm would be awarding the grants to over 175 classrooms around the country. The goal is to promote handheld technology for the classroom and get the necessary feedback to improve this technology.
“We think partnering with educators to do research on the best practices and impact of handheld computers in education is one of the most important projects we can undertake,” Lorion said. “We think this shows Palm’s commitment to education. Research from the grants gives educators valuable insight into how handheld technology can be used in teaching and learning. This information helps us to create tools that evolve with the needs of education. We’ve added new research hubs to broaden our research and also extend some studies into the college pre-service and in-service environment.”
The PEP classroom grants are split between urban, rural and suburban K-12 schools. The new PEP research hubs are the University of Michigan, College of Engineering and School of Education’s Center for Higher Interactive Computing in Education (Hi-CE) Program, Ann Arbor, Michigan; the Concord Consortium, Concord, Massachusetts; the University of California at Berkeley School of Education’s Web-Based Inquiry Science Environment, Berkeley, California; Kent State Research Center for Educational Technology, Kent, Ohio: the Archdiocese of Dubuque School System, Dubuque, Iowa; Beaufort County School District, Beaufort, South Carolina: University of Nebraska at Omaha College of Education, Office of Internet Studies, Omaha, Nebraska; Fremont Union High School District, Sunnyvale, California; and the Gulf of Main Aquarium, Portland, Maine.
The research hubs will receive multiple classroom sets of Palm handhelds, and will train and provide ongoing support to teachers.