BC gives Newton schools $300,000 for high-tech upgrade

The district will be able to buy about 80 laptops and a dozen each of digital visual projectors, flat-screen televisions, and media carts for elementary schools in the first year of the partnership, Newton school officials said.

“It’s transformational,’’ said Emily Ostrower, principal of Countryside Elementary School, one of the half-dozen elementary schools initially targeted to receive the equipment. “Some of our laptops are older than the children who attend.’’

BC, with its Newton campus, already has several links to the city’s public schools. Many BC graduates teach in the city’s schools, and this year nearly 110 undergraduates and graduates will get their student-teaching experience there.

This contribution was a way to strengthen that bond, said Newton Mayor Setti Warren, who approached BC looking for more opportunities to partner.

Having this technology in the Newton schools will also help BC’s student teachers, said Maureen Kenny, interim dean of BC’s Lynch School of Education.

The student teachers will learn how to best incorporate technology into their lessons, Kenny said.

In a second-grade classroom at Countryside, teacher Michelle Powers, a BC graduate, used a projector linked to her laptop for a lesson on biographies and President Obama.

Powers used a mouse to flip the pages of a book about Obama on her laptop as her second-graders watched on the overhead screen.

Between clicks, Powers walked around the classroom and peppered students with questions on who Obama is and what kind of information they should expect to learn in a biography.

Currently, Countryside only has one digital visual projector for each grade level and only one computer in most of the classrooms for all the children to share, Ostrower said.

This additional money will get more projectors into the classrooms and laptops for children to use, she said.

Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at deirdre.fernandes@globe.com.