Jun. 2006 -- As a technology company, HP is in a strong position to support institutions of higher learning through grants of new technology. Innovation is our business.
Since 2003, HP Technology for Teaching grants to universities in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) have allowed professors and their students to go mobile. The aim is to explore ways in which universities can redesign courses in math, science, business and engineering. All this is thanks to HP’s mobile technology.
HP selects universities in EMEA and invites them to submit a proposal, explaining what they would do with mobile technology. The twelve universities chosen this year are in Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Hungary, Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland and England. Each will receive equipment worth US$ 70,000.
For HP, these grants are an opportunity to explore new concepts for technology in education and research. Something that is useful for universities could become a product or application one day, outside of the ivory tower.
A standard package is given to all the universities: classroom sets of HP Tablet PCs and iPAQs, HP printers, cameras and projectors. There are also stipends for faculty as well as wireless technology.
The equipment may be the same but the universities have different ways of using it.
For Professor Stefano Giordano at the University of Pisa, Italy, the HP grant presented an opportunity to improve teaching both in the basic architectural courses as well as in advanced theoretical and experimental subjects.
Professor Giordano’s first-semester lessons (more than 120 hours) were recorded live using the Tablet PC. You can view these courses managed by the research group at Pisa
here 
. No less than 82 per cent of students at the University of Pisa say they prefer the Tablet PC and video to the traditional ‘chalk on blackboard’ approach to teaching. Ninety-eight percent of the students surveyed found the adoption of the Tablet PC ‘useful’ or ‘very useful’.
The Technical University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic has a space shortage. Building new classrooms is a long-term task. But HP mobile devices and a wireless network helped to solve the problem, almost. These are used for a range of applications -- from supporting the education of the hearing disabled, to allowing geo-informatics students to undertake on-line field work.
At the Imperial College of London, Dr. Sanjeev Gupta and colleagues at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering deployed the Tablet PCs to create an informal digital lab that was easily accessible to students.
Combined with software tools for topographic analysis, digital mapping and visualisation, the Tablets facilitate a hands-on approach by students both in the classroom and during field trips, where data can be recorded while on location.
The Ecole Centrale in Lyon, France, used HP mobile technology to give engineering students a dose of reality to add to their theoretical knowledge. To better prepare them for their chosen profession, the teaching programme replicates as closely as possible the conditions that engineers encounter when working on-site. It includes 'wifi' access to simulation software, the remote piloting of some laboratory work from other locations, collaborative note-taking and sharing results across multiple locations.
At the National University of Ireland, Galway, the students of engineering professor Jim Duggan used HP technology to build an industry-standard Internet auction site. The project made use of the skills learned by students on both the business and language streams, and will be translated into European languages.
“Employers are always looking for highly skilled students so we’re equipping them with real-world experience to give them an edge,” Duggan said. “It’s project-based learning that links hands-on problem solving back to the theory so that students get a better feel for what a real software career would be.”
“We’re almost ready to take on eBay,” he joked.
The grants run for 12 months, from May to April each year. At the end of this period, the universities continue to use the equipment they have received. They can also re-apply and have the grant extended. In fact, two of the universities selected in 2005 had already received the award in 2003.
Some grant winners have expanded upon the projects they began in 2003 with help from an HP Technology for Teaching grant. For example, biomedical engineers at the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome have worked with health care students to create a Hospital Information System for HP iPAQs. The system is used to record, track and retrieve patient data at the patient’s bedside or other remote locations.
HP is building a community of interest around grant recipients, past and present, by holding conferences and organising online sessions with grant winners and education experts. A further development is the Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education (WIPTE), which took place April 6-7, 2006, and leverages not only the HP community but that of Microsoft, DyKnow and others ― all working to build the case for deploying Tablet PCs as one-to-one computing devices.
The Technology for Teaching grants have led to demonstrations, presentations and publication opportunities for academic leaders on the use of mobile technology in education. The grants have enabled students to become familiar with mobile technologies in multiple learning situations.
The participants are taking part in a knowledge transfer of immense value ― in the form of both new ideas and highly skilled people — for the benefit of HP and society.
Printable version
