Linda Ullah hands Hector Perez, a teacher at Mountain View High School, the credential - and stipend - he earned in the Krause Center for Innovation’s Earn While You Learn technology program for teachers.

Foothill College’s Krause Center for Innovation graduated its fourth class of Earn While You Learn teachers and its second class of fellows last week. It also recognized three Santa Clara County public school superintendents for establishing technology-friendly environments in their districts.

Earn While You Learn takes technology-challenged teachers and sends them back to their schools as evangelical technology adepts.

As one local teacher joked after the graduation ceremony, “Let’s see, I can teach summer school, or I can learn a lot of new technology that I can take back and teach my students. H’m. Tough decision.”

The teachers came from 17 school districts; the new class that begins at Foothill this summer will represent 21 districts. This year’s fellows teach in eight Bay Area school districts, including Mountain View-Whisman Elementary, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High and Palo Alto Unified.

Gay Krause presided over the event. Foothill College President Bernadine Fong praised Krause for her fund raising on behalf of the program.

“That’s 230 (participants) times $5,000 each Gay has raised in private money,” Fong said after the ceremony. “She’s working on an endowment campaign now.”

The final stipends for completing their yearlong program requirements were tucked into the credential awarded to each of the 51 first-time Earn While You Learn teachers and nine fellows at Thursday’s ceremony in the Krause Center for Innovation. The teachers have attended conferences, taken follow-up classes, and completed projects - planned during the regular and fellows institutes - with their students and entered those projects in the California Media and Multimedia Festival. In addition, the teachers promoted the center’s short technology courses in their schools and districts and served as mentors and coaches to their colleagues.

This summer, the Krause Center will hold two Earn While You Learn Institutes, one at Foothill and one in Sonoma Valley. Fifty-five teachers from 21 Bay Area school districts have been selected to participate in the institute at Foothill in July. Nineteen Sonoma Valley School District teachers have been selected to participate in the first Sonoma Valley Earn While You Learn Institute, scheduled for August at Sonoma Valley High School.

All fellows receive a PDA (personal digital assistant) to support their collaborative projects. When the requirements for the year are completed, mentors receive a $2,500 stipend; mentees, $1,000.

Each Earn While You Learn graduate receives 12 Foothill College continuing education units, a $4,000 stipend and technology tools to support student projects. Eight of these units and $3,000 are earned during the summer institute. The remaining four units are earned through follow-up classes during the school year. Teachers receive another $1,000 when they have completed all requirements, including a technology-rich, standards-based curriculum project.

Receiving the center’s first Tech-Savvy Superintendent Awards were Manny Barbara of Oak Grove Elementary School District in San Jose, Don Iglesias of San Jose Unified School District and Cindy Ranii of Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District.

Each superintendent was nominated by a past or present Earn While You Learn teacher. Each supports successful classroom technology integration and demonstrates vision in the area of educational technology. Each uses technology in school district-related work and encourages others to do so as well.