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In this blog I've been primarily sharing stories from our higher education community of grant recipients. But I'm still on a "high" from the National Education Computing Conference (NECC), where I met many of our US K-12 HP Technology for Teaching grant recipients from school year 2008-09. While the K-12 (primary/secondary) education world is often thought of as very separate from the higher education world, I see them as a continuum - and the success factors for the K-12 ed-tech projects are similar to the successful higher education projects. It's not just about technology - it's about the changes in the professional culture of teaching...

It has been five years since we launched the first HP Technology for Teaching grants. Since that time, HP has funded more than 1000 projects at schools, colleges, and universities in 41 countries. The projects have been outstanding, and the impact on teaching and learning is significant. All the successful projects have one defining characteristic - they combine excellent instruction with the right technologies to create innovative learning experiences for their students. It is the intertwining of these two variables, instruction and technology, that makes the magic happen.

But why?

I think it's a cultural shift that's making the difference. The opportunity to use technology to redesign the learning experiences of students is ALSO an invitation to revisit the scholarship of teaching. When that happens among a collaborating team of teachers with the support of education leaders throughout their institutions, the culture begins to shift - sometimes subtly at first, but unmistakably in retrospect.

When I listened to our HP Technology for Teaching Leadership grant recipients talk about their two year experience, I heard over and over that the technology was fun and engaging, but that was not all - "We're collaborating together more than ever before" was a common refrain.

If you are interested in examples of technology integration with evidence of improved student academic success and new excitement among teachers, feel free to download a copy of the "book of posters" presented by our 30 grant recipient teams at NECC. Feel free to share the link with primary & secondary teachers and administrators you know.

(Poster book cover, downloadable from www.iste.org/hp)

So here we are, after 5 years of HP Technology for Teaching grants (school year 2004/05 through 2008/09). In the US and Canada, HP provided Tablet PCs, projectors and other devices to each of five teachers on teams from the recipient schools, directly impacting 738 schools, 3915 teachers, and more than 370,000 students. According to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), over 95% of the participating teachers reported that their project had a positive impact on their instruction and on student learning in their classrooms.

The Cultural Shift in teaching is not just theory - it's happening.

Congratulations to all who are pointing the way to the future of learning...

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Worldwide Education Programs
HP Global Social Investment
Hewlett-Packard
Twitter @jgvanides

For information about the HP Global Social Investments, visit www.hp.com/hpinfo/grants