JORDAN - At Ramsdell Elementary School in Jordan, Clark Smith, district technology coordinator for the Jordan-Elbridge Central School District, describes a project for which the school recently learned it had received a $35,000 award from Hewlett Packard. "We're calling it 'Gardens of Knowledge,"' he says. Classroom studies will teach students about different plants and how they grow. Smith says that the students will then plant a series of gardens - among them a vegetable garden, whose produce will be. donated to the local food pantry, and a butterfly garden.

Technology giant Hewlett Packard (HP) has provided 205 schools nationwide a total of $8.5 million in wireless technology, cash, and professional development via the 2005 HP Technology for Teaching grant program. The HP grant program is further intended to prepare students for leadership in the competitive, digital work force and to ignite interest in careers in science, technology, and engi neering. The U.S. has a shortage of such workers.

Two Central New York schools were among those that received a grant Ramsdell in Jordan and the George R. Staley Middle School in Rome.

At Ramsdell, laptop computers from HP will accompany the students into their gardens to help plot them and then record such information as growth and output. Donated digital cameras will record images of the plants, which the students can use to execute botanical drawings. And finally, the students will prepare a PowerPoint presentation for the whole school, shown on HP-donated projectors.

Smith, who is coordinating the project with the five teachers involved and their classes, says "Gardens of Knowledge" is a year-long exercise.

Rome school heist

Matthew Fidler, technology mentor for the Rome City School District, who submitted the grant application for the Staley Middle School project, "Hog Heist! Who Stole Mr. Benson's Harley?", calls the project "fairly complex." He says that it will "help build science skills" in the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders who participate in it. According to the grant application, besides the five core teachers involved, 500 students will participate.

The five science teachers at Staley will spend this summer developing the program, which involves "stealing" Assistant Principal Mark Benson's Harley-Davidson from the school grounds. Students will use technology to "solve" the crime.

Lead teacher for the project, Salvatore Carollo, a sixth-grade science teacher, says that the students will use HP's high-tech equipment to document evidence at the crime scene.

"You can write on the laptop with a pen, and it translates into text," Carollo explains. Use of scientific methodology, he says, will help the students develop an enthusiasm for science and prepare them for success in high school.

The 174 kindergarten through 12th-grade public schools and 31 twoand four year colleges and universities across the United States and Puerto Rico which have HP grant-funded projects, will have the opportunity to receive additional grants in 2006. Smith says that Ramsdell plans to apply for another HP grant in 2006.

HP has committed $25 million to the three-year Technology for Teaching grant program; more than 400 schools worldwide have received grants since its inception last year.

HP is awarding $6.2 million in cash and equipment to teams of five teachers at 174 K-12 public schools in the United States and Puerto Rico. Preference was given to schools serving low-income students and projects including a math or, science component.

The award package, valued at more than $35,000 for each team, will include five HP Tablet PCs, five HP multimedia projectors, five HP digital cameras, an HP Officejet All-in-One, and a $500 stipend per teacher.

In addition, teachers will participate in a professional-development program led by HP's partner, the International Society for Technology in Education. The professional-development prograin will include customized learning opportunities, expert mentoring, and participation in an online learning community to support teachers' innovative uses of technology.

Over the last 20 years, HP has contributed more than $1 billion in cash and equipment to schools, universities, community organizations, and other not-for-profit organizations around the world. In 2004, HP's giving worldwide amounted to $61.6 million in cash and equipment.