May 11, 2006

UCSD Computer Scientists Awarded
HP Technology for Teaching Grant

By Doug Ramsey

Faculty and students from the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering will benefit from a 2006 HP Technology for Teaching grant designed to transform and improve learning in the classroom through innovative uses of technology. The gift to the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department will provide an award package of wireless equipment and other HP products as well as a faculty stipend valued at more than $69,000. Separately, Calit2 is funding two students to work on the project as part of its Summer Undergraduate Research Scholarship program.

UCSD is one of 40 two- or four-year colleges and universities nationwide to be selected to receive the grants for the 2006-07 academic year. Overall, grant projects through the grant program will impact more than 4,000 students.

Computer Science and Engineering team that is getting funding to work on the UP Note Blogger project. Top (l-r): Bill Griswold, Beth Simon, Erik Buchanan, Michael Kelly. Bottom: Tamara Denning, Roshni Malani, David Lindquist.

Each of the HP Technology for Teaching grant recipients will use HP wireless Tablet PC technology to enhance learning in engineering, math, science, computer science or business courses. The award to UCSD will allow CSE professor William Griswold and lecturer Beth Simon -- both Calit2 academic participants -- to extend their current Tablet-based educational technology system, called Ubiquitous Presenter (UP). The new grant will fund the UP Note Blogger project to explore the idea of treating traditional student note-taking in the classroom as "blogging," an Internet genre for sharing personal experiences in an online forum.

The Ubiquitous Presenter project is currently in use by several CSE faculty at UCSD and by a number of faculty at other institutions in computer science and other disciplines.

Much of the groundwork for the new project has been driven by the CSE undergraduate research team of Erik Buchanan, Tamara Denning (funded for the summer by the Computing Research Association Distributed Mentor Project), as well as Michael Kelly and David Lindquist, who will work full-time on the project this summer as part of Calit2’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship program. In 2001, through its Mobility Technology Solutions program, HP helped Professor Griswold launch the ActiveCampus project, which continues to explore the social and educational impacts of mobile computing in the university environment.

From 2004 to 2006, HP has committed $36 million in Technology for Teaching grants to more than 650 schools worldwide to support HP’s broader education goal of transforming teaching and learning through the integration of technology.

“The HP Technology for Teaching initiative focuses on transforming teaching and learning through technology,” said Bess Stephens, vice president, Philanthropy and Education, HP. “By integrating mobile technology in meaningful ways into their classrooms, instructors can increase student achievement and interest and prepare them for greater success in the competitive global workforce.”

Faculty Contact: Beth Simon, 858-534-5419
Media Contact: Doug Ramsey, (858) 822-5825