According to Tom Walsh of the Ellsworth American the new center will serve as a resource for information and research related to the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the world’s largest 1-to-1 educational computing project. Writes Walsh:

Initiated in 2001 by then-Governor Angus King Jr., the project has since put a laptop computer with wireless Internet capability into the hands of every seventh- and eighth-grader in Maine’s public school system.

King said the center would encourage research into the effectiveness of digital education, using a mix of public funding, grants and private donations.

“Why not take advantage of the fact that we have this body of knowledge and try to further that knowledge?” he said. “Beyond ‘Does it work?,’ the center would do research and collect data on what works, on how to do it. And third, it would disseminate that information through conferences and Web sites so that everybody in the world doesn’t have to reinvent things.

“For example, if we’ve learned that there’s a really great technique for using the Web to teach math that somebody in Iowa has come up with, we want to be able to act as a clearinghouse for that so that people can access that from anywhere in the world. That’s part of the power of the Web: this incredible sharing capacity that is essentially new.”

Educational technology researchers at the university have been studying the MLTI since it was first introduced in 2002. The Center is expected to open this fall.

Source: The Ellsworth American, Digital Center Builds on Educational Technology, (via a link from the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation)