Microsoft also is donating software and licenses for each of the training labs and, in the United States, providing master teachers a lab kit with software and licenses for their districts. Microsoft's support of Intel Teach to the Future is part of its ongoing commitment to help every school build a Connected Learning Community, where technology enables learning without limits - anytime, any place. In the United States, each regional training agency is provided with equipment donated by Hewlett-Packard Company to establish a training lab for master teachers. Premio Computer will also donate 20 computer labs to participating school districts for delivery of training by master teachers to classroom teachers. To ensure teachers have the equipment necessary to practice their training, each master teacher receives a laptop computer, and each participating district provides a connected classroom PC for the trained teachers.
Districts also have the opportunity to purchase highly discounted systems for each teacher trained.
Participants in the discount program include Acer, AST, Bold Data, Caliber, Hewlett-Packard, Quantex, Premio and Tangent. In each U.S. region where the program is implemented, regional training agencies will recruit and train annually 100 master teachers. Each master teacher will work with individual school districts to train at least 20 classroom teachers per year. Regions for the first year include Arizona, Northern California, Oregon and Texas, followed by Washington and New Mexico. Additional areas will be added in subsequent years with the expectation that 20 training agencies will be in place in the United States by 2002 and a total of 100,000 classroom teachers will be trained.