PEP Grants Overview

Goal

The goal of the Palm Education Pioneers program was to enable exploration and evaluation of innovative uses of Palm handheld computers for K-12 learning, through classroom grants to teachers. To meet this goal, on October 25, 2000, SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization, invited teachers in the fifty United States to apply for a Palm Education Pioneer (PEP) grant. The grant provided Palm computers for teachers and their students and evaluated innovative uses of Palm handheld computers in K-12 classrooms.

To qualify, educators had to develop an innovative plan to use Palm computers in the classroom. SRI is now working with these educators to evaluate the impact of Palm computers on teaching and learning. This research will help inform other teachers, researchers, hardware and software designers, and policymakers about best practices for using Palm computers in education. There were two rounds of the Palm Education Pioneers program, granting Palm computers to over 100 classrooms across the U.S. In addition, the PEP program has supported the work of other researchers investigating handhelds in education. We offered grants of up to 15 classroom sets to 9 research organizations and school districts that will conduct independent studies on teaching and learning with handheld computers.

Check out our evaluation reports of how classrooms used Palm handhelds in our findings section. We have also provided a summary of Round I, Round II, and Research Hub awards.